Report: Mercedes-Benz to eventually axe most coupes, wagons

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Fans of two-door and long-roof vehicles from Stuttgart may want to avert their gaze. According to some talking heads in the know, Mercedes-Benz is in the throes of paring down the total number of body styles in their lineup. If predictions come to pass, it won’t be too many years before slinky coupes and stately station wagons are a thing of the past at Merc.

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“At the end of the day, we simply don’t need estate cars or underperforming two-door offerings to boost volumes,” a senior member of Mercedes-Benz’s strategy team told an American auto outlet, presumably under the agreement they not be named for fear of being sent to the company’s naughty step for a couple of weeks. “The most essential elements of sustainable contemporary luxury cars are space and time — that’s our number one priority.”

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Sounds like Stuttgart is aiming for quality, not quantity, as they enter a brave new world. From a strictly business perspective, it makes sense; focusing on the most popular and profitable vehicle types helps the bottom line while keeping shareholders happy. Still, we will pour one out for the eventual demise of German-built wagons with 600 horsepower and svelte tri-star coupes with style for days.

Fortunately, none of this will happen overnight. It’s already publicly known the C- and E-Class coupes are departing this year and being replaced with a single CLE-Class coupe, one which will likely straddle the two old cars in terms of size and offer at least one powertrain with world-destroying levels of power. So-called ‘four-door coupes’ are also apparently on their way out within a couple of years, including the CLS-Class (which arguably invented the segment) and your author’s favourite Mercedes-AMG GT 4-door. Surprisingly, the source also indicated the ‘coupe’ variants of the GLC and GLE may not stick around after their next restyle.

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Customers in Nordamerika haven’t cottoned to station wagons in decades but fans of the style (and shoppers in Europe) may find the next-gen E-Class — due 2024/2025 — to be that model’s last shooting brake hurrah, whilst the current C-Class in all its iterations is likely to vanish by the end of this decade. We don’t think this means Mercedes is abandoning that particular segment, rather they’ll be introducing a new machine on a different platform — one without provisions for a wagon.

Suits at Mercedes have been making noises about refocusing on shoot-the-moon luxury, a decision which may leave smaller models (both in size and volume) out in der cold. Until then, we’ll drive ‘em while we’ve got ‘em.