Mercedes-AMG CLS 53 (2018)

Fifty-three, then. Not 63, not 43 and, heaven forbid, not 65. The new Mercedes-Benz CLS – the sleek four-door coupé now into its third generation, can you believe? – is here, and the rapid AMG variant, the 53, is almost as significant as the fact that the car itself is new. Perhaps more so. But let’s deal with the CLS bit first. It’s a new CLS, frameless of window, large-Mercedes-platformed of platform, seating five and promising to do the same ‘sleeker E-Class thing’ as it has done during the past 15 years. To that end, it’s E-Class sized, 4.98m long, with a range of turbocharged and electrically enhanced diesel and petrol engines, which will extend to a four-cylinder petrol come September. In ‘53’, a new AMG naming strategy has emerged, as it has for the regular models, where an increasing number indicates merely an increasing power output, albeit derived from a structure originally based around engine capacity.