When it comes to Mercedes-Benz, don’t expect too much objectivity from me: I’m violently biased towards the manufacturer’s cars. We go back decades, after all, and ‘Benzes have long featured in my automotive fantasies and highpoints.
For instance, The day that I first saw a then-new 230E in the metal, back in 1986, still stands as one of my most memorable car encounters. As a 16-year-old petrolhead, I simply couldn’t comprehend that something so infinitely ahead of everything else of the era – including its hardy but ageing predecessor – could actually make it into production.
Even today, if I had to buy an affordable runaround it would be a well-loved E220 from the last years of W124 production, although its successor in 1996 was a bit indifferent.
While the front end had a rather startled look with its round headlights, the rear was distinctly bland and appeared to have been designed by another team in another country – just lacked its predecessor’s homogeneity.
If that sounds a bit uncharitable it’s only perhaps because the W124 was such a hard act to emulate. But I’m delighted that the current E-class has marked a return to crisp conservatism and Swabian solidity.
Another boyhood automotive highlight was the time that the owner of the local supermarket, where I’d work on the weekends, gave me a lift in his 1980-something 280 SE. Again, I marveled at the sheer solidity and hushed, bank-vault-like security of this pluto-barge – something that continues to amaze me whenever I get behind the wheel of an old S-Class (W126).
Little wonder then that these Teutonic tanks still seem to be in demand today as almost bulletproof battering rams during cash-in-transit heists.
And as a school boy I was already plotting Benz ownership – at the same time my pimply peers were fantasizing about the hot hatches of the day – while pondering that the world seemed to be divided into Mercedes and BMW people.
The former were calm and conservative, the latter just a little, well, brash.
Today, you’re still far more likely to see a particularly stupid personalised plate on a BMW than you are on a Mercedes, although from an engineering point the Bavarian maker’s products remain superb. I’ve owned one of its cars and two of its motorcycles and intend to buy a third – presuming, of course, that I can convince my partner that motorbikes are not the devil’s tools.
But amazingly, I haven’t yet owned a Benz.
The last time I had a “proper” job – before becoming a full-time freelance journalist well over a decade ago – I spent weeks trawling Johannesburg dealerships and agonising over whether to get a mid-‘80s 380 SEC or a late-‘70s 450SL. Then Playboy, the magazine I was working for, folded and I found myself worrying about other things.
Incidentally, in 1979 a locally assembled 450SL cost R32 330. Its fixed-head counterpart, the 450SLC, cost R34 444. Today you can still pick up a so-so SLC for about the same price, but expect to pay up to triple that for a clean SL of similar vintage. Yet more proof that, for reasons I’ve never entirely worked out, when a car loses its top, it excels on resale.
Today, the three-pointed star line up looks harmonious indeed. The only blots are the CLS, which just looks a bit too “gangster” for its own good, and the R-Class, which is wonderful if you need to transport a clutch of executives in business-class comfort, but slightly pointless if you don’t.
The C-class, for one, just seems to get better and better with each mild revision.
The new C200 CGi BlueEFFICIENCY that I’ve just spent a week wafting around in once more embodied the best of Benz. Adding to its allure was the fact that it came in Elegance guise – which means that you get some tasteful wood trim and the essential star on the bonnet, as opposed to a rapper-sized one in the grille.
Equally importantly, it was an automatic, and a self-shifter is an essential part of the calming, balming Mercedes driving experience, which always reduces my pulse rate by a good percentage. Plus, with 135kW and 270Nm on tap from the turbocharged 1,8-litre (the superchargers have now been ditched, hence the CGi nomenclature) performance was acceptable enough for me to laugh at anyone who suggested that the car might be a little lethargic.
But most of all the C200 CGi succeeded in doing what one of my favourite British motoring journalists wrote of the Rolls-Royce Corniche a few decades ago. And that’s leave the occupants feeling fresher and more relaxed at the end of a journey than at the beginning…
