Mercedes Greenlights CLS Shooting Brake for Production

The Shooting Brake will go on sale sometime in 2012. For now, that’s all we know. There’s no confirmation of powertrains or trims; we don’t even know if this model will make it to the States. We’ll keep you posted once more information is made available.

“It’s all in a name: the origins of the name ‘Shooting Brake’ 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, motorized 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.”