If you're the kind of person who laments the demise of the fast, compact, all-wheel drive estate - like the old Subaru Impreza WRX STi wagons - and you thought the recent news of Volkswagen bringing out a Golf R Estate was good, you should love this: Mercedes-Benz has filled in the gap in its four-door coupé line-up with a CLA Shooting Brake. And there's an AMG version from the off.
Exterior
There are non-AMG versions of the CLA Shooting Brake, but you don't want to know about those, do you? The most obvious change is the roofline aft of the B-pillar, which has morphed the car into a really elegant miniature wagon, much like the Shooting Brake is the better-looking of the two CLS models. That new boot gives the CLA 45 Shooting Brake 1,354 litres of load-lugging ability, but, perhaps more crucially, extra rear headroom - something the coupé could definitely do with more of.
Interior
Highly specified as standard, the CLA 45 AMG Shooting Brake has the same sporty cabin as the coupé, although if you're feeling brave you could opt for the OrangeArt Edition. This limited numbers special, as you've probably guessed, introduces some orange detailing to the car outside and in, with the seat treatment particularly, er, eye-catching.
Mechanicals
Same running gear as the CLA 45 AMG here, so the 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engine making 360hp and 450Nm of torque. Mercedes claims 0-100km/h in 4.7 seconds, 0.1 seconds down on its coupé sibling, but bizarrely lower fuel consumption at 6.9 litres/100km (40.9mpg), rather than the quoted 7.1 litres/100km (39.8mpg) of the existing CLA 45 - maybe that sloping rear end improves aerodynamics. Like the coupé, the Shooting Brake employs a seven-speed AMG Speedshift DCT automatic transmission, 4Matic all-wheel drive and three-stage ESP stability control. It has a maximum, electronically limited velocity of 250km/h.
Anything else?
The Mercedes-Benz CLA 45 AMG Shooting Brake doesn't yet take on the new Affalterbach-related nomenclature of 'Mercedes-AMG CLA 45 Shooting Brake', presumably so it can better fit in with its coupé sibling for now. See more of the CLA 45 AMG Shooting Brake at Geneva in March 2015, which is when the car's launch programme kicks off in earnest.