(03 Sep 04)

Mercedes-Benz and fashion designer Giorgio Armani have joined forces to create a special edition of the CLK-Class Cabriolet, the first example of which will be unveiled later this month at the Paris Show.

Armani and Mercedes first got together when the car company sponsored a five-city tour by the Giorgio Armani Retrospective exhibition. Then they collaborated on a one-off CLK show car displayed at the 2003 Milan Fashion Week. The idea of an Italian-inspired Mercedes model isn't so curious, given the fact that there's a Mercedes design studio in the gloriously Italian setting of Lake Como.

To give the new special edition its full title, it's the "Mercedes-Benz CLK designo by Giorgio Armani", designo being the Mercedes bespoke division which specialises in top-class materials and special-effect paintwork. Based on the Milan Fashion Week exhibit, it uses what is for a car body a most unusual exterior colour - not one of the typical high-class metallics, but a matt sand finish familiar from many of Armani's own designs, in this application with a green shading. Some decorative bodywork items are in black.

The interior is also well off the familiar track, because it features upholstery which combines some very modern sportswear-type textiles with saddle-grade Cuoio leather, a high-class material used in the 1950s and since then almost forgotten. What would normally be items of wood trim are replaced by leather, quilted in places, and any chrome in the standard cabin has been replaced by metal with a deliberately "aged" look.

Mercedes will build just 100 examples of the special edition, which comes with various items of AMG body kit and, being based on the CLK 500, a 301bhp V8 engine. Deliveries start next spring.

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