For enhanced safety, the front and rear seat shoulder belts of the Mercedes CLE have pretensioners to tighten the seatbelts and eliminate dangerous slack in the event of a collision. The MINI Cooper Hardtop 2 Door doesn’t offer pretensioners for its rear seat belts.
The CLE’s pre-crash front seatbelts will tighten automatically in the event the vehicle detects an impending crash, improving protection against injury significantly. The Cooper Hardtop 2 Door doesn’t offer pre-crash pretensioners.
In the past twenty years hundreds of infants and young children have died after being left in vehicles, usually by accident. When turning the vehicle off, drivers of the CLE are reminded to check the back seat. The Cooper Hardtop 2 Door doesn’t offer a back seat reminder.
The CLE has a standard front seat center airbag, which deploys between the driver and front passenger, protecting them from injuries caused by striking each other in serious side impacts. The Cooper Hardtop 2 Door doesn’t offer front seat center airbags.
The CLE offers four-wheel drive to maximize traction under poor conditions, especially in ice and snow. The Cooper Hardtop 2 Door doesn’t offer four-wheel drive.
Earlier warning of stopped traffic, traffic signals, dangerous road conditions, weather, or accidents, can keep driver's safer and prevent crashes. The CLE has Car-to-X Communication, a system that seamlessly communicates important warnings to the driver about impending danger, if they're available. The Cooper Hardtop 2 Door doesn’t offer a system that can receive automated systems from infrastructure or other vehicles.
The CLE has a standard blind spot warning system that uses sensors to alert the driver to objects in the vehicle’s blind spots where the side view mirrors don’t reveal them. A system to reveal vehicles in the Cooper Hardtop 2 Door’s blind spot costs extra.
To help make backing out of a parking space safer, the CLE has standard Rear Cross-Traffic Alert and Active Brake Assist automatically engages the brakes to help avoid a collision. MINI charges extra for Cross Traffic Warning on the Cooper Hardtop 2 Door.
Both the CLE and the Cooper Hardtop 2 Door have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, driver and front passenger knee airbags, side-impact head airbags, four-wheel antilock brakes, traction control, electronic stability systems to prevent skidding, crash mitigating brakes, post-collision automatic braking systems, daytime running lights, rearview cameras, driver alert monitors, available lane departure warning systems and around view monitors.
The Mercedes CLE weighs 1010 to 1472 pounds more than the MINI Cooper Hardtop 2 Door. The NHTSA advises that heavier cars are much safer in collisions than their significantly lighter counterparts. Crosswinds also affect lighter cars more.