Colorado ((Idaho?) greetings!
My wife wanted to trade her Ford Expedition in on a car that had four doors, all wheel drive, and got good gas mileage. The other cars she was thinking about were making my skin crawl, then I remembered reading about the CLA 45 in an Autoweek article. I showed her that article, we call the dealer the next day. They only had two allocations for the entire state, and one was already spoken for. So we took the remaining one, which happened to be delivered first on 28 Nov 13.
It has been a great car. A year after buying it, I ended up having to bring it up to Idaho her I was working. It does fantastically well in the snow, as long as you have winter snow tires and it's not so deep that you have to plow it with your front air dam!
This summer, I started auto crossing it with the SCCA in Idaho. The car is presently in the "not otherwise classified" category, but the local region classified me as B Street. The car is still much better than my skills, but I have consistently been the fastest street class car in the Idaho regional club that I have attended. This past weekend I went to the SCCA event in Bozeman Montana, and was the fastest street car there against competition included 2 Camaros (one with a Hennesy 700hp package), a Z07 Corvette, a Shelby Cobra GT500 Mustang, and an Alfa Romeo that were all in faster classes than mine. 😀
Would love to hear if anyone else has tried tossing it around an auto cross course. If You haven't, then I *highly* recommend you google your local SCCA Solo chapter and try it!
Mike