Overview
Engineers designed and crafted the CL body to provide a bold and elegant shape, a spacious seating area, excellent visibility and a passenger cabin optimized to be free of road and wind noise and highly resistant to impact forces.
Stylists penned the body's dramatic lines to impart a vivid sense of sophistication, sportiness and style. The shape is both beautiful and functional, with a low, sloping hood and a large greenhouse for excellent visibility, combined with a wide, muscular stance for fine road-holding and expansive interior room.
Dramatic details include a bold center line running the length of the body, an integrated chin spoiler, rakishly angled headlights and a sharply sloping rear end whose smooth lines are unbroken by a trunk key cylinder.
Precise Fit And Finish
To enhance the look and feel of the CL, its body panels were designed to have very narrow gaps and a flush fit between adjacent body panels. The fit between glass and metal has also been kept to a minimum.
Integrated Headlights
For improved flushness and gap control, combined with a smooth and clean appearance, the CL uses integrated, one-piece front headlights. These multi-function lamps incorporate the high- and low-beam reflectors and front positioning lights into a single assembly behind a one-piece polycarbonate lens, eliminating unsightly gap lines between the various headlight pieces. Additionally, the headlight reflectors are adjusted inside the headlight housing, improving fit and finish tolerances by allowing the whole assmebly to remain in a fixed position on the vehicle.
Integrated 7-Function Taillights
To complement the clean, sweeping styling of its rear deck, the CL uses one-piece, 7-function taillights that are smoothly integrated into the body's shape. When unlit, the taillights have an all-red appearance for bold visual appeal. By using a cyan and red inner lens, however, the unlit appearance of the backup-light outer lens changes to the required white when lit.
No Trunk-Key Cylinder
To preserve the design of the CL's tail, designers opted not to include a conventional trunk-key cylinder in the rear decklid. Instead, the trunk can be opened with the standard remote keyless entry system by holding the button for two seconds, or by a release in the cockpit. The result of this innovative thinking is a striking design whose purity remains unmarred by the demands of conventional styling cues and increased security of the trunk compartment from break-ins.
Trunk Storage
To enhance cargo carrying capacity, the CL features a large trunk with a low liftover height. To increase the versatility and utility of the CL, the trunk has been equipped with a lockable pass-through hatch that allows the storage of long items such as snow skis. An optional ski bag is available to protect the interior from wet skis.
One-Piece Fixed Door Mirrors
The CL is equipped with one-piece fixed door mirrors, which reduce mirror vibrations and wind-turbulence noise. The mirrors are also carefully shaped to provide excellent visibility in the rain by directing water flow up the side windows--rather than allowing it to splatter against the window glass.
To reduce the possibility of damage to the mirror and its mounting area, the mirror is designed to break away upon contact.
On the 3.0CL, the door mirrors are heated to reduce fogging and prevent snow or ice buildup.
Visibility
The large greenhouse contributes to a spacious feeling for the occupants and also provides excellent visibility for enhanced safety. Visibility was optimized by using a low, sloping hood and a low beltline, plus thin but rigid C-pillars which greatly reduce the rear-quarter blind spot compared with competitive makes.
The CL has an outstanding total visibility of 318 degrees.
Heat-Reflecting Glass
To minimize solar heat transfer into the passenger cabin and greatly improve climate control-system performance, the CL is equipped with heat-reflecting green glass. This glass is specially formulated to reflect radiant heat by absorbing infrared and ultraviolet rays. This type of solar glass performs significantly better than conventional blue, bronze or standard green glass in keeping the interior cooler.