2026 Mercedes-Benz CLA Shooting Brake: Another Wagon We Can't Have

The long-roof CLA will arrive first as a fully electric model; a mild hybrid is expected after.

Another day, another European wagon we're forced to admire from afar. Mercedes-Benz on Tuesday revealed the 2026 CLA Shooting Brake, the long-roof variant of the recently released third-generation CLA model. As you'd expect, it's identical to the existing four-door from the B-pillar forward, but tacks on a more capacious back half for added usability.

Well, not too much usability, mind you: Mercedes itself points out that CLA 3.0 is roughly a wash for passenger volume when compared against the previous model, but has less storage space than the old one, too. At least out back: we're chalking this up to the floor-mounted battery pack nibbling out 1 cubic foot (30 liters) of storage with the rear seats up, an amount which doubles when measuring seats-down volume. The second row is a 40/20/40-folding setup, as is common on German cars. To counter the storage room shrinkage, the Shooting Brake's frunk accepts 3.6 cu ft (101 liters), so the new model still comes out ahead.

Outside, the look is familiar, with the EV's curvy unibrow lighting look sitting atop the faux-grille, the latter emblazoned with 142 little three-pointed stars. The logo reappears in the taillights, which are also connected via light bar, same as the sedan... sorry, "four-door coupe." An enormous panoramic roof panel stretches from the windshield surround right to the tailgate, and—surprise!—also features Merc stars: this time, 158 of them. The big pane of glass can not only switch from transparent to opaque, in segments or in whole, but features a thin infrared-reflecting and a low-emissivity (lowE) coating to reduce unwanted heat in the summer, and retain it in the winter. We're talking a very thin coating: about 1/250th the thickness of a human hair. The embedded stars light up in sync with the cabin ambient lighting.

From the driver's seat, the CLA Shooting Brake cabin is identical to the existing four-door, with less of a dashboard design and more of a wall of screens. A 14.0-inch touchscreen takes up the central spot, with a smaller 10.25-inch display ahead of the steering wheel. Buyers can spec a third, passenger-side screen if they'd like. No prizes for guessing what pattern fills that space if the box isn't checked...

Mercedes has re-jigged its steering wheel with a greater emphasis on physical controls, while also enlarging the touch-capacitive thumb-pad for easier navigation.

Like its not-a-sedan counterpart, the CLA Shooting Brake will initially launch with all-electric variants: the CLA 250+ and CLA 350 4Matic. Both feature a two-speed gearbox, an 85.0-kilowatt-hour nickel-manganese-cobalt battery pack, and 800-volt architecture. The single-motor, rear-drive model produces 268 horsepower and 247 pound-feet of torque. Moving to the dual-motor model bumps those figures to 349 and 380, respectively. AC charging tops out at a useful 22 kW, while DC charging can hit 320 kW, making it possible to add over 193 miles (300 kilometers) of range in just 10 minutes. European ranges on the WLTP cycle come in at 473 miles (761 km) for the single-motor CLA and 454 miles (730 km) for the dual-motor model. The single-motor CLA is also rated to 3,307 lb (1,500 kilograms) of towing capacity; the CLA 350 4Matic scores 3,968 lb (1,800 kg).

While EVs are the only choice for now, the Shooting Brake will soon be available with a 1.5-liter mild-hybrid setup, which integrates the electric motor into the eight-speed dual-clutch transmission.

Sadly, we don't expect the CLA Shooting Brake to arrive on this side of the pond; it hasn't the last two generations. We can dream though, right?

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