Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes-Benz set the world talking in 2002 when they rolled out the new C-class cars, which included the C240 and C320 sedans, the C320 station wagon, and the C230 Sports Coupe. The C230 was designed to attract people who have never bought Mercedes before.

With the exterior styling of the much larger and more expensive S-class, technology shared with the larger E-class, and an interior design all its own, the C-Class family in its first full year on the market has established new sales records around the world, but especially here in the United States, helped by the new price-leader C230 Coupe starting $24,950.

The Mercedes-Benz C-Class family began with the introduction of the four-door, which features a brand-new 2.6-liter V6 as the standard engine and, of all things, a 6-speed manual transmission to go with it. The C240 is a sporty vehicle that is fun to drive, though it is neither quick nor fast. The volume sedan model is the C320 with its 3.2-liter V6 and automatic transmission. A few months after the two sedans hit the showrooms, Mercedes decided to show the smallest station wagon it has ever exported to the United States, the C320 wagon, with an especially sporty three-window wagon body style with a forward-canted rear roof pillar. The wagon made to haul anything a family needs, comes only with the larger 3.2-liter high-tech V6 because this engine has quite a bit more torque than the higher-revving but weaker 2.6-liter engine.

Not long after this Mercedes announced the creation of the C32 AMG, a high-performance version of the four-door sedan that uses a supercharged version of the 3.2-liter V6. Rated at 350 horsepower, it comes with a 6-speed manual transmission. The C32 AMG has its own exterior décor, interior trim, special suspension, larger tires and wheels, and is one of the quickest and fastest four-door cars in the world. It is priced substantially out of this segment’s normal $35,000-$40,000 price range at more than $50,000. Mercedes introduced the last model in the family, the C230 Coupe, with a supercharged 2.3-liter 4-cylinder engine, a sportier chassis, a completely new front end appearance, and a radical roofline all in the hopes of attracting the younger crowd. What’s more, the C230 Coupe is a hatchback, the first such design in the company’s history, offering a nearly unbeatable combination of price ($24,950), utility (nearly 40 cubic feet of storage space with the rear seats folded down), and visual impact.

The C-Class is simply the boldest design of any of the small European cars, and the slickest in the entire Mercedes family with a coefficient of drag of only 0.27 for the sedan. While the sedan and wagon versions have a traditional Mercedes horizontal bar grille flanked by huge headlamp assemblies that are part of the new look at Mercedes, the C23 Coupe uses the star-grille front end instead of the bar-grille, with wild twin-oval headlamps, a swooping roofline, and a functional rear spoiler at the short rear end that adds downforce on the rear tires at high speeds. The coupe was shortened seven inches overall compared to the sedan.

Although the coupe is not as aerodynamic as the C-Class sedan, 0.29 to the sedan’s 0.27 coefficient of drag, it’s still one of the slickest cars in the industry, and it looks twice as mean and twice as slick as the sedan, with nothing there that doesn’t need to be there. The long coupe doors make for easy ingress/egress, especially to the rear seats. Nice touches include the turn signal repeaters built into the outside mirrors, and the extra pane of glass underneath the spoiler that adds more rearward vision. The standard ten-spoke alloy wheels are especially sporty. Options for the line include automatic transmission ($1300), leather interior trim ($1400), power seats ($1225), Bose audio system ($610), the COMAND dashboard system with navigation and telephone ($2080), headlamp washer and heated seats ($820), a CD player/telephone package ($1800), and on the Coupe, a panorama roof with rain-sensing wipers ($995).