Comfort

Comfort Comfort in front is ample, but rear passengers must grapple with tight leg room and restricted head space. Visibility is also compromised, and there’s precious little storage area inside the CLS.

Slide into the 2006 Mercedes-Benz CLS 500’s driver’s seat and you’ll find nearly as much head and legroom as the E500. Comfortable 10-way power-adjustable bucket seats and a power-adjustable tilt/telescope steering column make it easy to find an ideal driving position. A three-position memory feature on both the driver and front passenger’s seats allows everyone to store their preferred settings.

While there’s ample room up front, the CLS500’s two-place back seat gives up a significant amount of head (1.5 inches) and leg (7.5 inches) room compared to the E500 sedan. While this creates obvious problems for taller passengers, even the vertically challenged have to be careful not to whack their heads on the doorframe when getting in and out.

The same low-profile windows and fat C-pillars that look so good from the outside also tend to limit visibility from within. Complicating matters further are smallish outside mirrors that we found difficult to adjust in order to get an optimal view.

With so many of us carrying cell phones, iPods and the like, it’s curious that the interior’s storage options are limited to two small covered bins in the center console – one each between the front and rear seats – and shallow map pockets in the doors. Out back things are a bit better with a nicely finished trunk that provides a very respectable 15.8 cubic feet of cargo room. Our test car’s optional power trunk closer meant lowering the lid was a simple as pressing a button.