Mercedes-AMG CLS 53
Why 7.3: Bought for the roofline, not the drivetrain — AMG-lite badging on a very good luxury liner. It gets driven plenty, which keeps it off the trophy floor; it just never gets driven for the sake of it.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Sound
The M256 straight-six is smooth and the electric compressor fills the bottom end, so a genuine six-cylinder hum does come through. But it is turbocharged, filtered, done at 6,100 rpm and topped up through the speakers. Mid-table, and deliberately so.
6-cylinder · turbocharged · 6,100 rpm redline · rated 5.5 / 10 for engine sound
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €66k (2019) → €40k (2026), trending down · illustrative data
Child seats · ISOFIX
Two ISOFIX anchors on the rear seats — the CLS's four-seat cabin means both are true outboard positions.
No ISOFIX on the front passenger seat, matching Mercedes' rear-only layout across its sedan range.
Mercedes CLS owner's manual (ManualsLib) + consistent rear-only ISOFIX layout confirmed across the C-Class, E-Class, R-Class and G-Class manuals (owner-community sourced, not manufacturer documentation)
The long version
This is the four-door bought instead of an E-Class coupe by someone who wanted the silhouette without the two-door inconvenience, and the mild-hybrid inline-six underneath gets treated as an afterthought by owners who couldn't describe its output if asked. It gets used constantly, which is exactly why it never accrues the enthusiast floor that protects cars people actually care about — depreciation runs uninterrupted because nobody is bidding on the memory of a great drive. AMG's badge is doing marketing work here, not engineering work, and the resale curve knows it.