If you sometimes find yourself yearning for a car with a footprint the size of a small bungalow but without the cumbersome presence of a four-door saloon then Mercedes builds just the car for you, in the form of the CL.
It is based on the S Class platform, sharing much in common with the flagship saloon and promising refinement, luxury and pace equal to the S but with a little bit more of each thrown in.
It features the finest of everything from the S Class range, there's no slumming it here. The cabin is beautifully put together and feels very special, with lots of room to take adults around with you as well. There's even a massive boot slapped on the back - none of the usual coupe compromises here.
Many other cars rely on an occasionally misguided sense of occasion to charm, but the CL is a genuinely capable car. It is arguably the most refined and sumptuous two-door coupe you can buy, its vast bulk pummelling bumps into submission and the cabin insulating you from the outside world.
The Mercedes speeds up and goes round corners with devastating speed in all specifications, but it isn't an involving driver's car - the steering is too light for that. The speed is there in order to gobble up continents, not to thrill. There's a paradox in a car that can get you somewhere so quickly while being so relaxed.
It's a remarkably heavy beast, too, not at all sensitive to the environmentally-aware zeitgeist. Even the entry CL is specced so well that it's frankly amazing that it can even move. You'll need to be fairly spectacularly rich to buy one, however, so why not go the whole hog and get the V12 CL600?
Sure, it might cost you a smooth £30,000 for those twin turbos on top of the more pedestrian CL500 and you'll never use the full pace of it unless you own a runway, but buy it because you can. When you get to the point where you're shopping for cars this big and this expensive you have to have a slightly bombastic side.
The CL is surprisingly likeable and does everything it sets out to do with devastating accomplishment - Carlsberg doesn't build luxury two-door GT coupes, which is just as well because Mercedes is already building the best in the world.