What's the difference between a Tuna fish and a Mercedes-Benz? You can't tune a fish, and you can't tune a Mercedes-Benz; so one might call it fishy when Mercedes-Benz starts tinkering with 2.0 liter turbocharged four cylinders and all-wheel drive. Sound familiar? It should.
An unusual take for a Mercdes-Benz vehicle, it appears that Mercedes-Benz is targeting a more youthful demographic with a special appearance of the CLA45 AMG in hit video game, "Driveclub". Developed for the Sony Playstation 4 by Evolution Studios, by placing this highly desired vehicle in such a realistic video game, it gives everyone the opportunity to drive a true performance machine.
Interesting enough, Daimler says that the CLA45 AMG will be outfitted with a turbocharged 2.0 liter four cylinder engine that is capable of producing an initial 360 horsepower. One would wonder if that is to the wheel or at the crank; most likely the easier of the two. Not only will it feature the tuner favorite 2.0 liter four banger, it also comes with 4matic all-wheel drive.
Sounds to me like old man Mercedes-Benz is chasing the elusive tuner market; which is something promising yet funny to come from a nameplate known for obsessive ECU protection. How do you tune a Mercedes-Benz? That's a good question. With previous models, the only choice was to rip out the OEM ECU and wire in a standalone computer. Will the new CLA45 AMG offer an open source, flashable solution? Probably, but it will most likely only be tunable by proprietary Mercedes-Benz software and hardware.
So this brings up the question of future Mercedes-Benz products and general tunability. Will we be able to add something as simple as a K&N air filter element without sending the ECU into a frantic panic mode? Hopefully, Mercedes-Benz has been taking note from Mitsubishi, Subaru, Toyota, and Mazda and is finally jumping on the pro-tuner bandwagon.
Most likely they aren't, but it is nice to dream about it.
Comments