Mercedes CLS Shooting Brake In Production

Well, not exactly now!

But Mercedes has officially confirmed the production of the CLS estate, which they call the Shooting Brake, and it will reach the market in 2012.

The CLS Shooting Brake will be built at the assembly line in the Mercedes-Benz Plant Sindelfingen where the next SL will be made as well. Daimler has plans to make this car along with C-Class Sedan, the E-Class Sedan and Estate, the S-Class and the coupés CLS and CL as well as the Maybach models and Mercedes-Benz Guard vehicles.

Now if you are wondering where the name “Shooting Brake” has come from, then you have to read this:

Break, or the homonym Brake, was the name once given to carriages used to “break” in wild horses and also to restrict (or “brake”) their urge to move, so that they could be put to use as work horses. Since the carts could easily be broken as part of this process, people tended not to use ones which they may have urgently needed for other purposes. Where necessary, “Brakes” were often fitted out with variable bodies, which were only really used to carry along anything that may have been necessary for the hunt, for example. Any such vehicle which was used when going out shooting was called a Shooting Brake or Shooting Break. In the 1960s and 1970s motorised Shooting Breaks were popular in Great Britain – exclusive cross-over vehicles, which combined the luxuriousness of a coupé with extended space on offer and additional variability.