Spied: 2012 Mercedes CLS

The Mercedes-Benz CLS-Class, the car that pioneered the oxymoronic "four-door coupe" design, just received a mild refresh for the 2009 model year, but has been on the road without a major change in five years. That will change soon, though, as a new model has already been caught winter testing.

Snapped by our spy photographers in the frigid north, this particular example appears to wear only tape to disguise its features, giving us a very good look at the new car. Right up front, you'll notice a big, prominent grille that stands off from the nose of the car slightly rather than melting into it as with the current car. It draws up into a shallow peak at the center where it meets a new crease running down the center of the hood.

Flanking the new grille are fresh headlights that have been pulled down to reach around the sides of the front fenders rather than over the tops of them. Through the tape, we also see LED turn signals running beneath the HID lamps. Down below, new fog lights are heavily obscured by the tape job.

Moving around the side, Mercedes has eliminated the bone line that started aft of the front wheel and speared the door handles on its way to the taillights. Instead, Benz designers have accentuated a line created by the tops of the front fenders that carries on along the bottom of the window line and across the rear fenders, where it creates a small shoulder bulge before running into the leading edge of the taillights.

There in the rear, the taillights have been stretched out into a leaf shape that reaches up around the sides of the car. Towards the middle, the taillights now reach onto the trunk lid, which now falls over the main taillight lamps like a bed sheet rather than slicing across them as it did on the old car. An exaggerated lip spoiler gives the rear end a stronger, more muscular stance, but curiously, the tail pipes appear to be missing on this mule.

According to our sources, the CLS will also serve up some new engines, all of them V-6s and V-8s and featuring direct injection and turbocharging. Rumor has it a 435-horsepower twin-turbo V-8 is in the works, as is a twin-turbo 5.5L V-8 that will find its way into the AMG version. As Mercedes-Benz works on its green cred, its possible we'll also see a CLS 400 BlueHybrid in the future.

Thanks to: Motor Trend