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The four-door coupe market, that most oxymoronic of all vehicle segments, has been spawning new entries of late. Apparently, car buyers are fed up with the convenience of a real back seat, sick of the stylishness of a coupe. But we kid these abridged four-doors. They all have noble ambitions: to be as sleek and as pretty as a coupe, but as practical and roomy as a sedan. With the latest addition to the segment — the Volkswagen CC — just hitting the street, we thought it high time to group all these misfits together. Not necessarily because anyone's going to cross-shop them, but because we want to find out which one best fulfills the mission of this new segment; i.e., which vehicle really delivers on the implied promise of sportiness, stylishness, and practicality. Without further blathering, we give you the Mazda RX-8, the BMW X6, the Mercedes-Benz CLS-class, and the Volkswagen CC.
Mazda's Rotary Oddball
The Mazda RX-8 is both the oldest and the oddest here. It made its debut in 2003 but still looks Jetsonian today. While driving one a few years back, a tow-truck driver asked me if it was a concept car. But the strangeness isn't just in how the RX-8 looks — the rear-hinged half doors are strange. The rotary engine is strange, as is its inherent smoothness combined with a complete lack of torque. And because of all that, most RX-8 drivers are strange. It's part of the ownership requirement.
The RX-8 you see here is the new-for-2009 R3 model, which gets new fascias, larger exhaust pipes, beautiful new wheels, and side vents. More significant are a new final drive ratio of 4.77:1 (up from 4.44), increased body rigidity, reconfigured rear suspension geometry, a sport-tuned suspension with Bilstein dampers, and some of the best Recaro seats we've stuck our buns in. All this makes for a car that isn't noticeably quicker, but one that exhibits more harshness over bumps while holding a death grip on smooth roads.
What makes the RX-8 unique among this pack is the fact that while the VW, BMW, and Merc are sedans trying to pass as coupes, the RX-8 is a two-door sports car trying to pass as a four-door. For the most part it does a fine job. The rear seats are nearly as roomy as a Mazda3 sedan's, if quite a bit narrower and with no center seat in which to sandwich a fifth passenger. The back seats are easy to access as well, with the rear half-doors opening wide for better access than a traditional two-door coupe offers. The problem is located behind those seats, in the trunk, which twists and turns around the gas tank and rear suspension and doesn't offer much in the way of cargo volume. At least Mazda has replaced the spare tire of the early cars with an emergency air pump, because that tire stole a good majority of the tiny space.
Of course, the trade-off for such tight quarters is that this is the most entertaining of our four misfits and the one only capable of playing the split roles of track car and daily driver. The lower-level RX-8 Sport also wears the cheapest base price of this bunch at $27,100, edging out the VW by just $380.
MUV: Misfit Utility Vehicle
The one unmentioned drawback of the RX-8 is its fuel economy — it isn't often that the figures of 1.3 liters of displacement and 16 mpg on the city cycle can sit side-by-side on a spec page. Fortunately for the Mazda, the X6 xDrive50i makes the RX-8 look like a Prius. We averaged just 14 mpg in split driving conditions, just one mpg above BMW's city mileage rating. But when you get it out on the road, the BMW is as paradoxical as the Mazda's spec sheet: The X6's twin-turbo 4.4-liter V-8 is capable of flinging this 5269-pound hunk of steel to 60 mph in just 5.3 seconds. Unlike the lightweight RX-8, this brute relies on stupid amounts of torque (450 lb-ft from 1750-4500 rpm) to make it feel much lighter than it actually is.
On its surface the X6 seems to make the least sense of any of these four. If you set out to make a sporty coupe, why would you raise its center of gravity and add doors? Despite this, we'd rank the X6 second behind the Mazda on the subjective fun-to-drive scale. An optional sport package gives the X6 315/35 R20 rear tires that are wonderful little chunks of overkill and deliver awesome grip. Setting the transmission in sport mode keeps the turbos spooled up and the engine in its sweet spot (which happens to be about at big as the vehicle itself). After a few full-throttle blasts, a Saudi sheik might even send you a thank-you letter for funding the gold plating of his Ferrari 599.
Despite the fastback roofline, the X6 also has the best rear seats of these four cars, with not just head and legroom but the kind of shoulder and hip space that the others can't match. The front seats are no different than an X5's, which is to say they are just as excellent for long drives as for a quick blast. And after running a few errands with the X6, the rear cargo sacrifices revealed themselves to be less significant than first thought; the space under the retractable cargo cover is no worse than in an X5 and the rear seats still fold flat to the floor. In a pinch, a TV box or your awesome 10-burner Weber grille with side-mounted skillets could be crammed in with the rear hatch left open or tied down half way. Of all the new collisions of style, sport, and comfort coming to market, the X6 sacrifices the least in all three. It's just a shame that even the six-cylinder costs over $50,000.
Le Oddball d'Elegance
The Mercedes-Benz CLS is the Passat CC's rich uncle. This Merc was a genuinely new and creative idea when it debuted in 2006 and without it, the CC, and even the X6 for that matter, might not even exist. The CLS got a new 382-hp engine last year and for 2009 gets exterior revisions that are so subtle they might have been fashioned by melting the front fascia with a hairdryer and running it into a wall.
In terms of sacrifices for the sake of style, the CLS makes more than the rest of the bunch. While the cabin is all high-grade leather, attractive wood, or chrome, the shortage of people space shows that when Mercedes calls this a coupe, it is meant in the most literal sense. The rear seats would border on uninhabitable if it weren't for two deep indentations in the front seatbacks that hug the rear passenger's legs. In this regard, the CLS is the height of fashion — it looks pretty, but man does it hurt to put it on.
Except that statement doesn't carry over to actually driving it. The CLS550 is the best highway cruiser of this bunch, which should be expected with an as-tested price of $82,395 and 391 lb-ft of torque minimizing the need for downshifts. With the mid-range option selected, the three-mode air suspension settles in just right. All of the car's motions — steering inputs, suspension rebounds, acceleration, shifting — are fluid and graceful. Plus, a surprisingly large trunk can hold the romantic "weekend getaway" goods with enough room left for your golf clubs should you decide to sneak in an early morning round before the ol' ball and chain awakens.
The biggest drawback of the CLS, aside from its $70,000 base price and tight cabin, is that is has the worst visibility of this bunch. The side mirrors are too narrow, the side windows are less than a foot high, and the rear window is a narrow slit. At least the backlight is lower to the ground and closer to the driver, though. The X6's rear hatch might have more glass, but the high ride height and comically tall butt mean that a tailgating Prius (drafting for extra mileage, naturally) could completely disappear in the X6's blind spot.
Passat Confused Coupe?
So where do all these observations leave the newcomer from Wolfsburg? In a pretty good spot, actually. Like the RX-8, it sits right around the median new-car sales price — though a V-6, all-wheel-drive version with navigation and other goodies pushes the MSRP well past $40,000. The base 2.0-liter is strong and a bit more refined than the optional six, so there's no real need to make that step up into a price range full of BMWs, Infinitis, and Audis. However, should you do so, the V-6 is actually quite efficient — we saw 30 mpg on the highway, even with the added weight of 4Motion.
In size and overall design, the CC is almost the CLS's body double, but it makes fewer functional sacrifices. Visibility is better in every direction and the rear seat offers enough space to garner more than just faint praise. The trunk is just as deep as the Merc's, and the lid is even a bit larger for easier access. The cabin of our tester was trimmed in attractive two-tone leather and the overall fit-and-finish was impressive, while VW's new touch-screen navigation moves the company from one of the worst to one of the best in that department. Unfortunately, the short roofline means that the car's large sunroof is limited to a tilt-only fixture.
If gathering this bunch of outcasts together reveals one thing about the CC, it's that it isn't special enough. The RX-8 provides a distinctly different experience than you'd get in any other Mazda, mixing the world-class handling of a Miata, nearly the rear-seat comfort of a Mazda3, and the weirdness of a rotary engine. The X6 differentiates itself from the X5 by offering a set of stronger, turbocharged engines and unique options in addition to its distinctive profile. And while the CLS uses the E-class for its chassis and as an engine source, the two share little inside and nothing on the outside; they're two very different cars going after two different markets.
The CC, however, shares the regular Passat's entire dashboard, engine choices, and drivetrain options. The CC's base price is about $3000 higher than a Passat's, but it comes with more content, firmer suspension, and far more style. While the Passat could be described as an overlooked German alternative to the CamCord set, the more emotional CC is a competitive alternative to the Acura TL or the Nissan Maxima. In short, the CC feels like a Passat replacement, not a complement.
The CC is itself a misfit among misfits. It not only seems comparatively tame here, it also doesn't look out of place among the cars with which it'll be cross-shopped. Don't get us wrong — the CC is a great car, but it shouldn't be called that. It shouldn't be called Passat CC, either, as it is in Europe. If it were up to us, we'd just call it Passat.
So where does that leave us? Which of these four has the best mix of the practical and the stylish? As we see it, it comes down to the Mazda and the BMW. Do you want a sports car with a little extra room or a roomy car with a lot of extra sport? Because we put driving dynamics first, we'd take the Mazda. But the BMW offers the best synthesis yet of the four-door coupe segment's conflicting attributes. Just don't ask us to describe it in five words or less.
Source: MotiveMagazine.com - Motive Versus: The Island of Misfit Toys
