Mercedes S-Class Coupe Caught Testing Again

thats what i was thniking. if they rename it then they shouldve titled it as SEC.

Maybe they realized that they don't sell as many CLs as they wanted to since the CLS and the outgoing CLK eats up the CL market portion. Another reason is because of Bentley Continental's GT, Porsche Panamera Coupe, Maserati GranTurismo, not forgetting the DB9.

They tried to sort out the model names, but they lost the plot. Perhaps they are trying again. There was a logic to "SEC" that does not apply now, so SEC is out out question. It stood for S from S-class, E from Einspritz (injection) - this was the time of curburators, and C from Coupe. So it signified an S clss coupe with injenction. The CL moniker was based on another long standing acronym of Mercedes, SL, which stood for Sport Licht (SL), meaning light sports car. So they thouht of CL for the coupe version (though none are "light", except for the original 300SL). The K signified "Klein(er)" (Small(er) or "Kurz" depending on your interpretation. So for the smaller brother of the CL, CLK was createt. The smaller bother of the SL was the SLK, and so on. But then they added the CLS, and then the CLC, which were obviously not fitting with the name designations. People often thought the C in the CLK signified C-Class and thought that this was the reason why the name was dropped with the latest model. It has nothing to do with this. The original CLK was visually an E-Class but was still called CLK because it was the small CL. Now that mercedes wants in addition to the CL and CLK a smaller C-Class coupe, and possible an A-class coupe, as well as a successor to the CLS, there was no choice but to try to re-name all of the Coupe Class range. So, the modern equivalent of an S-Class coupe in the "SEC" mould should have been, strictly speaking,an SC (which does not sound very nice), and in the "CL" mould, "CLS" (Coupe Licht S-Class), which unfortunately already exists and there marketing wise impossible to be used know for the flagship. It is clear they tried to use this format, but it failed, because the c-class coupe is called now CLC and at some point the E-class coupe was referred to as the CLE.

Thank you for your great detailed explanation. I guess they also realized that their cars are getting bigger and heavier as well. Guess it's the marketing people is behind the rebadging process to push the slow volume models. I wonder if they ever going to build a convertible version of the S-Class. They never did with the CL, here's hoping.

@mbcy: Great explanation. Thanks.