Test drive Mercedes Benz C-class w203 2000-2004 sedan

Major boys

With the worldwide climate warming, the attitude of Daimler-Benz towards young people immediately warmed up. The fruits of new love were Mercedes S-Klasse Sports Coupe and Estate.
For the time being, Mercedes-Benz was quite satisfied with the fact that the main age of customers of these cars is from 40 and older. The uncles ride on comfortable limousines, and God with them. They earned a calm old age. But the youth in the West does not hide the west of the fruit-she gradually crowds the elderly at leading posts, and she pockets to pocket from the bright red VW Golf to the respectable Mercedes. The calculation of young and ambitious, more precisely, with an eye on their credit cards, were designed by Sports Coupe and Estate.
The wagon on the design of the front line is almost completely different from the C-class sedan. The shed 25 mm longer and is an order of magnitude more beautiful and swiftly, and there was no trace of the previous Mercedes universals. Poking the roof of the trunk and the line of moldings and doors converging to the front wheels create an image light and purposeful.

The compartment, on the contrary, has practically no body panels common to the sedan - we can assume that it is just a different car. Even without a familiar sight on the hood.
Wings or tail? Rare, but meticulous connoisseurs of the world automotive, seeing Sports Coupe, will begin to discuss for a long time and tedious that this is not a compartment, but a hatchback. They will prove that there should be three independent volumes in the back of the compartment - a motor compartment, passenger salon, trunk. When there are two volumes in the car, and the trunk is spatially combined with a salon, this is a hatchback. Well, God is with them. Even if this is so - the scheme proposed on Mercedes has a number of advantages over a standard compartment.
The three-door S-Klasse has the same wheelbase with a sedan, but in short 183 mm. The doors, as it should be in the compartment, are much wider, and the seats are leaning forward and a little up, so sitting on the rear sofa is easy and convenient. Places on the gallery - in excess for two passengers. Even three of it will be enough to maintain the human dignity inherent in Mercedes passengers. The fact that the hatch in the panorama roof extends up is also practical - this allows you to free the space above the heads of the rear passengers, making the roof more thin. But all the same, on a huge third door of the trunk, a touching warning-pictogram is glued: do not clap abruptly, otherwise you will hit the heads of passengers.
And if the Germans decided to position the three-door C-Klasse as Sports Coupe for strategic reasons, it means that it is. Moreover, how you call the car, so it will go.
I said flew! Sportsup, by definition, should not go, but rush. Therefore, we immediately chose ourselves Mercedes C230 Kompressor. These motors enjoy the special love of our buyers - you pay customs for 2.3 liters, and you get almost 3.2, thanks to the boost system. Consciously with the automatic transmission - our buyer again prefers Mercedes with a machine gun. And after reading the press release on the eve of the evening, they once again made sure that they were not mistaken. If you believe in dry numbers, then overclocking to 100 km/h on the machine is inferior to mechanics by only 0.1 seconds.
And we rushed! The route along the mountain road, to which neat Germans took 45 minutes, took us a little more than 20. And it could not be otherwise - the car simply provokes an acute and aggressive driving when there is simply no time to follow signs that limit your speed. The main feeling is not Mercedes, it is something more. To the already familiar internal comfort and the highest level of saturation of auxiliary electronics - in numerous functions of the on -board computer, we did not have time to figure out - completely new sensations were added. Firstly, the work of the suspension. Sports Coupe is much tougher than ordinary Mercedes, but an order of magnitude better keeps the way. We didn’t even succeed in slipping into the easiest skid, even provocatively adding the gas in the bend, forgetting that we are going on the back drive. By the way, the coupe pedal does not respond quickly quickly, and a sharp pickup occurs in the region of 2 thousand revolutions. And we acted absolutely correctly, choosing an automatic box - it switches the programs with such accuracy and so on time that I did not even have a desire to experience the manual gear mode. Here, unlike other sectral systems, the checkpoint of the checkpoint should not be swayed back and forth, but to the left and right. Which is a little unusual.
And in the forest and on firewood. And what about the station wagon? Also a little harsh, despite the fact that the springs and shock absorbers are different in him. But still in a sports way. In this case, we chose the most powerful machine-with a V-shaped six-volume of 3.2 liters and with the same automatic. This car fully reveals the best features of Mercedes. As my colleague put it, the sensations are such that you do not go, but literally dissect the space like an icebreaker.
But the C320 estate is not the car on which you need to rush along the mountain roads, like a frantic one. There are freeways for this. The station wagon was created in order to transport goods. Not a cement for repair and not seedlings in the country, although the seedlings of elite roses will be in it to the place.
By the way, there are not so many places in it - the volume of the trunk is only 470 cubic meters. DM in the staffing and 1384 cubic meters. DM with decomposed rear seats. It is enough to lay all the luggage, heading for a week in the mountains (skis - to the roof). Or a couple of mountain bicycles in a folded state - but this is only with the spaced seats. This procedure is very simple, and even a pregnant woman will cope with her a minute.
Despite the small size, the trunk is very functional - it has an inertial curtain that covers small baggage from immodest glances. And the grid that protects the heads of the sitting from the back from the slipping of the cargo during braking. Additional space opens under a polic, in the stamping for the spare. There, a compressor and a spray can with foam against punctures are compact. True, at the request of the client, this gentleman's set can be replaced - free of charge - with a doom. There we also found a touching plastic folding box, in which a certain amount of can beer is asked.
 
Hat for Senka. The fact that the new representatives of C-Klasse will be popular in Europe is not in doubt. For example, the price of Sports Coupe starts at $ 20 thousand, which is quite possible for advanced youth from among the former collarbone. Estate will also find its niche - with freedom of travel in the framework of united Europe. And we have? When Mercedes marketers calculated the average age of the owners of their cars, apparently, Russia did not take into account that these cars are not bought by age but by money. And, most likely, Sport Coupe will be in great demand. Beautiful, prestigious. And for traveling to hunt, we prefer G-Klasse.
Panoramic roof is a corporate difference between the new C-Klasse Sports Coupe. It consists of two transparent sections that are above the heads of the front and rear passengers, delaying more than 98 percent. Solar ultraviolet radiation. If desired, both sections can be covered with electric shutters crawling out of the central partition
After pressing the key next to the rear view mirror, the front of the roof smoothly lifts and drives back. A hatch opens above the heads of the front passengers, and the ceiling above the rear remains transparent
The entire structure is made on an aluminum frame and is glued into the upper part of the body. Unfortunately, the panoramic roof is not included in the standard equipment, and an additional fee must be paid for its installation
Simultaneously with the new Mercedes C-Klasse models, the SEQUENTronic checkpoint was also presented, which is set by order only on certain versions of Sports Coupe and Estate. This is another hybrid of an automatic machine and mechanics: the transmission resembles sequental automatic machines-gear shift is carried out with a light swaying of the gearbox handle back and forth
Sequentronic was built on the basis of a mechanical 6-speed box. Its difference from the standard C-Klasse mechanics lies in the absence of a clutch pedal. The pressure disk and the fork are driven by a hydraulic pump. The signal for the pumping power drive is transmitted by wires directly from the gearbox handle. Mercedes engineers say that the entire system works faster than a person, and the time of switching from one transmission to another is reduced to 0.6 seconds
Text Nikolay Kachurin, photo of the author and Daimler-Benz AG

 

Source: "Autopilot"