Mercedes-Benz C-Class Review, Price And Features

Mercedes-Benz C-Class Review, Price And Features

You will enjoy driving the Mercedes-Benz C-Class - it strikes a compelling balance between handling capability and overall comfort. A traditional rival for the Mercedes C-Class is the BMW 3 Series, which is a bit more involving to drive quickly through corners, thanks to crisp steering and more tautly controlled suspension. Compared with the BMW, the Mercedes鈥?suspension is a bit softer and its steering feels a bit lighter, not quite matching the 3 Series鈥?intimate sense of connection with the road. The C-Class鈥檚 strength is that it offers much of the fun of the BMW and Jaguar when hustled along a twisty road, while feeling smoother and more comfortable - qualities which bring their own kind of driving pleasure. And every C-Class is now fun to punt along. Even the C220 d is a respectable performer, even if it remains more about relaxed motoring than excitement. The more expensive C300 feels very swift and is a great package for those who relish a blast along a backroad. It pulls strongly across its rev range and spins cleanly, working its way into a powerful crescendo above 5000rpm if you keep your foot planted. All C-Class cars have paddle shifters, which give you manual control over gear selection for sporty driving. There鈥檚 also an Agility Select switch, which allows you to adjust various parameters, including the weight of the steering, the sensitivity of the throttle and how aggressively the gearbox shifts. The additional steering weight of the Sport modes works nicely on twisty roads, as does the additional throttle sensitivity that means you don鈥檛 have to push the accelerator as hard to achieve the same response.

Right now, I think we're about 81.4, but we're continuing to work on the design. So I don't know that we'll hit 84, but let's face it, if we go into production at 81, did we fail? I want to hit it because I said I would. But from a social impact and product value, anywhere in that neighborhood is going to be dandy and I know we're there. 6800 price for a vehicle with power windows, ABS, and multiple airbags - how is that possible at a cost lower than your average 900cc motorcycle or large scooter? Paul Elio: I wish I had an answer for that. On fuel economy, I have a simple answer. On price, there's probably five or six large contributors that add up to a big answer, and we can walk through them. First of all is the business model. I believe vehicles are an example of content gone wild. The big guys have adopted the package system. For example, on the Toyota Yaris, we calculated that Toyota could build 10 million unique Yarises if they wanted to.

They don't do that because they don't want to cripple their inventory system, so somebody a while ago came up the the package system (LX, SX, DX), and that constrains their inventory to several hundred vehicles. That works good for the OEMs, but it's bad for the customer. As a customer, if I want the leather seats, I have to buy the fancy radio and the fancy wheels whether I want to or not. And if you look in your vehicle right now, there's several thousands of dollars of stuff you neither need nor want. So we're doing it differently. We're only building it two ways - standard and automatic, that's it, with the base content that 95 percent of Americans want - power windows, power door locks, air conditioning and stereo - as standard. So if you want the blind spot detecting mirrors, and I do, I love those things, you can get that on your Elio. If you want a power leather seat - Lear is our seating supplier, they make a bajillion of those every year - you can get that.

Pick your option, we have it. But we put it on after we've made the vehicle. We have seven marshaling centers - it goes off to the proper marshaling center - and that content gets added to your vehicle. We close our stores at 9PM, and we build out vehicles until midnight, so we have three hours to clear the system. They go on trucks and with seven marshaling centers, we're within nine hours from all of our facilities. So theoretically, at 10 AM the next day, you get the vehicle exactly the way you wanted it the day before, no matter what time you walked in the store. Now, we'll probably promise something like 2 PM, because there's snow, traffic, and stuff like that, but it will definitely be next day. So that saves a ton of money, because you're not paying for the stuff you didn't want on the vehicle. Second is how the vehicle is designed.

The traditional auto manufacturing model is everything is segregated to components with the line between components being very rigid and they optimize on the component level. We design the vehicle in a series of what we call "Supplier Summits", where all the suppliers get together and work on the vehicle as a group for three days. Normally, these suppliers are never allowed to talk to each other, and the summit is the first time they've ever been in the same room. So any suppliers that are around have breakout sessions with Elio Motors, because sometimes the answer is to charge me three dollars more for an airbag because I can save five dollars on the frame if we go this way. So as we go through the design, we're optimizing on the vehicle, rather than the components, because my customer doesn't care what the seats cost, they care what the vehicle costs.