{"id":2111823,"date":"2026-08-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2111823"},"modified":"2026-08-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T21:00:00","slug":"mercedes-benz-cla-long-term-report-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2111823","title":{"rendered":"Mercedes-Benz CLA – long-term report"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I want to talk about massages.<\/p>\n

Being an awkward British man by birth, massages are the opposite of my comfort zone. What should be the epitome of a relaxing experience is actually fraught with stress and anxiety.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

It\u2019s not just the blaring alarm inside my brain shrieking \u201cA STRANGER IS TOUCHING YOU”. What if they\u2019re thinking \u2018crikey, someone enjoyed Christmas last year\u2019? What if there\u2019s a grotesque mole or amusing birthmark between my shoulder blades no-one\u2019s ever told me about?<\/p>\n

Should I remain silent throughout, concentrating intensely on the panpipes and whalesong? Is it rude not<\/em> to groan with satisfaction as the pressure works out my knots and aches? Maybe it\u2019s like burping \u2013 a hearty compliment to the chef in some cultures, but a hideous faux pas if you\u2019re dining with royalty.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s ever-present danger I overcompensate and appear to be enjoying it too much. It could uncork catastrophic flatulence. Or perhaps I suddenly come over all ticklish and lash out reflexively, karate-chopping the unsuspecting masseuse across the windpipe.<\/p>\n

Last time I had a massage I spent most of it apologising, and remained so tense for the duration I left with three new muscle strains and a ripe hernia. Which is why I prefer to enjoy my massages sitting bolt upright, while listening to the football, in the middle of the A43 near Corby.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Yes, as I spend most of my waking hours driving cars, a massaging seat is one of life\u2019s most precious blessings. And as new cars get more homogenised \u2013 more platform sharing, more identi-screens, more characterless electric propulsion \u2013 massage seats are, let me tell you from years of experience and testing, one of the defining differentiators of the car industry.<\/p>\n

Peugeot\u2019s are absolute rubbish. So is Mini\u2019s attempt. They lazily inflate and delate the lumbar support balloon in the backrest. Imagine sitting on a portly man who\u2019s breathing heavily.<\/p>\n

The mainstream VW Group does the same thing but better \u2013 weirdly Skoda\u2019s offering works fairly convincingly. And in some models you still get an activate-massage button on the seat itself, so no need to risk life and limb prodding a touchscreen.<\/p>\n

I maintain enormous respect for what Mercedes-Benz achieved with the previous-gen S-Class, which not only contained a shoal of tame pufferfish in the seat, but introduced pockets of localised heating to create a \u2018hot stone\u2019 massage sensation.<\/p>\n

The effect it had, corroborated by several ashen-faced colleagues, was a supremely successful laxative. Mercedes perfected the biologically optimal combination of intense heat and persistent kneading to open your body\u2019s bomb bay doors and empty the tank.<\/p>\n

My single favourite massage provider remains Bentley \u2013 it\u2019s almost invasively thorough. But if I may nitpick Crewe, your treatment programmes don\u2019t last long enough. Please don\u2019t wind back the intensity unless prompted. Or the seat detects I had a curry for dinner. Can seats do that? Best not give them ideas.<\/p>\n

So where does the entry-level Mercedes saloon rank? Well, that depends. Because while all AMG-line CLAs have massage seats, none of them will rub-a-dub as standard.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because Mercedes is using massage seats to wade into the murky ethics of subscription-based features. To save time and money in the factory, every CLA with these comfortable (if slightly narrow) chairs has a massage function. But as delivered, there\u2019s no option to activate it in the touchscreen.<\/p>\n

Instead, you must first journey to the \u2018Digital Extras\u2019 section of the CLA\u2019s comprehensive phone app. There you\u2019ll be presented with various offers to unlock equipment you\u2019re carrying around, but must pay extra to use.<\/p>\n

To enable the massage function, you\u2019ll cough up a non-unreasonable \u00a31.60 per month. Or to avoid yet another subscription drip-feed on your account, pay \u00a316 for a 12-month activation. Use it once a day and each massage costs 0.04p.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re feeling incredibly altruistic towards whoever will buy your CLA after you\u2019ve finished with it (or you plan to keep the car until you die and bequeath it to your grandchildren) a one-off permanent activation will set you back \u00a349.<\/p>\n

Now, if massage seats were on the options list and I mentioned they were a \u00a349 box we hadn\u2019t ticked, you\u2019d think we\u2019d been cheap. \u00a349 is less than a full recharge at one of Britain\u2019s rip-off motorway service stations.<\/p>\n

But I suspect we\u2019re still not ready to accept cars being built with equipment that lies dormant unless we pay extra to unblock it.<\/p>\n

When VW announced ID.3 buyers wouldn\u2019t receive the motor\u2019s peak horsepower unless they coughed up a few more quid a month, or BMW tried to hide heated seats behind a paywall (reasoning you only use them in winter and would save money over the lifetime of the car), both were crucified in the court of petrolhead opinion.<\/p>\n

So, allow me to save you \u00a31.60. I signed up for the CLA\u2019s massage seats. And they\u2019re\u2026 okay. Only two cushions in the lower half of the backrest get to work. No shoulder rubs. No under-thigh squeezes. It lasts about ten minutes, and the on-switch is hidden in an especially tricky-to-access touchscreen sub-menu. So it\u2019s pleasant, but inessential.<\/p>\n

Sorry if that\u2019s not the happy ending you were hoping for.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I want to talk about massages. Being an awkward British man by birth, massages are the opposite of my comfort zone. What should be the epitome of a relaxing experience is actually fraught with stress and anxiety. It\u2019s not just the blaring alarm inside my brain shrieking \u201cA STRANGER IS TOUCHING YOU”. What if they\u2019re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,237],"class_list":["post-2111823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-topgear-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2111823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2111823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2111823\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2111823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2111823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2111823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}