The new Mercedes CLA250 borrows from the familiar

evidently Mercedes-Benz product planners glimpse this as a salient strategy for growth, as the company's flashy new CLA rips a sheet right out of its larger CLS's publication. The CLS, the initial "four-door coupe”, has generated so many imitators since its 2004 debut that it is only fair, Mercedes should be permitted to copy it, too.

On the eve of the 2013 Detroit auto display, Mercedes disclosed its plan for recruiting a new lifetime of customers to the three-pointed star, and it took the pattern of a racy, nominally inexpensive compact sedan.

The CLA, like the CLS, characteristics a reduced, slanting roofline and four doors with frameless windows in the kind of a coupe. But as anyone who has viewed the CLS from the back chair, the conceive asks for back travellers to bang their heads on the doorframe throughout ingress and egress.

Those lines do look slippery; according to Mercedes, the CLA's 0.23 coefficient of pull, a assess of aerodynamics, is the lowest number ever for a output form.

The car also breaks ground as Mercedes' first front-wheel-drive form for the US market. In an interview after its introduction on 13 January, Dieter Zetsche, head person of Daimler, the Mercedes parent, notified BBC Autos that the CLA was founded on the same front-drive stage used by the diminutive A-Class and B-Class hatchbacks in other markets.

"The US market isn't very fond of hatchbacks, as we are in Europe, so this vehicle should be well-received", he surmised.

The outcome is very close to the Acura TSX in size and specification, and it is juvenile drivers who grew up with front drive that the company is aiming at with the CLA, which will start for less that $30,000 when it proceeds on sale in September. An all-wheel-drive 4Matic type will pursue in 2014, as will a more powerful twin-turbocharged engine.

While the CLA has an entry-level luxury cost, all of the anticipated Mercedes expertise is present. A collision-alert radar system is benchmark equipment, along with a 5.8-inch infotainment display.

Power is from a 208 horsepower, 2-litre 4-cylinder motor driving the front wheels through a 7-speed dual-clutch transmission. A 2.2-litre diesel engine is accessible for Europe, but is a long shot for the US, Zetsche said. The car's base motor in Europe will be a smaller-displacement gasoline motor evolved in joint venture with Renault and Nissan, he added.

if the CLS can, like Bowie, top the journals recycling vintage concepts continues to be glimpsed, but Zetsche is undaunted. "We not ever talk about future volume," he said, "but we are very assured this vehicle will be a success.”