So far, everything I’m seeing on the reliability of the new C class is good.  This owner’s review on the Mercedes Benz Club of America C-class forum was especially heartening, since the man seems to have done the kind of long distance road trip loop I love doing…

We left Vancouver WA…went first to San Francisco for a week…then Las Vegas, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, then Monument Valley, Albuquerque, picked up the old Route 66 road through Kingman AZ, to San Diego…back to SF, then Sacramento…then home on 9/24.

Stats: 4750 miles covered [the car now has exactly 5000 miles on it], 26-28 mpg at freeway speeds, temps ranged from 40-115F, altitudes to 9000 feet.

Roads: Everything from Interstates with 75 mph limits [and actual speeds of 85], to back roads with pitted surfaces and extreme twists for miles at a time. Really smooth pavement was rare; back roads in AZ and NM were sometimes very rough. These observations are important to the next point…

The Car: Absolutely fantastic. The best part about the new car is the ride / handling compromise – very absorbent ride over every kind of surface, but handling that is noticeably better in every way over the W203. Another improvement is the larger trunk…we got everything we needed inside, and it is more useable than the previous generation in this respect. Great seats [nothing new here], very quiet, and the quickest car we’ve ever owned – passing is easy, and speed changes are mostly a matter of just thinking about it. AC was really tested during the SW part of the trip – we saw 115F in Vegas, and never less than 95F for nearly two weeks. Coolant temps never budged over 90C, the cabin was always cooled instantly after a hot sun soak, and so far the car has used no oil at all. And it’s tight – no noises inside, no squeaks or annoyances.

Issues: None. That’s right, everything works. Our car was built in Bremen in June, and carries a serial number in the 17xxx range. I knew we were running a risk – so far, so good.

Other misc observations:
-Didn’t think I’d care about the satellite radio, but now we’re hooked.
-The cruise control has a feature that I’ve never encountered on an MB before – if you speed up temporarily using the pedal, when you ease off, it doesn’t just coast back to the set speed [like every other car we’ve ever owned], but will actually apply the brakes gently to resume the old speed. Disconcerting at first, just something to get used to.
-The grade logic in the transmission is superb – whether going up hill or down, it was always doing the right thing – no hunting, and providing just the right gear to minimize brake use on down slopes. Very impressive.

Summary: The BEST CAR EVER in our household, and I’ve owned 54 cars total since 1962. DB has its act together again.

("W203" is a Mercedes chassis ID.  Apparently Mercedes folk like to identify the cars by chassis number over model designation.  I reckon that’s because Mercedes will make these not-so-minor changes in a model designation from time to time.   The new c300 is chassis W204.)

This is the kind of driving I intend to do with this car myself, and a few of his observations match with mine so far:

• The 7 speed transmission always seems to be right on the mark, regardless of the road grade.  I’ve read complaints about it downshifting too much, but I’ll just bet those are coming from folks who have theirs set on the "Sport" program and not "Comfort"  The "Sport" shifting program should be more aggressive.  I’m still in the break-in period, and Mercedes says to only use "Comfort" for now, but "Comfort" is fine.  The shifts are so smoothly done I have to watch the tach to know they’re even happening, and they happen at exactly the right moments.  I’ve not felt the car straining to accelerate even once, and the downshifts are barely felt if at all.  Acceleration just happens.
• Road handling is way beyond any car I’ve ever owned.  The ride is smooth, and yet you never loose the feel of the road, or what the car is doing.  I’m not in a position to be pushing it yet, but it seems to take corners really nicely.   I’ve driven it down a few windy Maryland Piedmont backroads and never once have I lost that solid Mercedes sedan feel in a corner or turn, no matter how much the road is undulating.  It is a pure joy to drive.  But then…it was made for the Autobahn after all…
• I encountered the same cruse control behavior he did, when I accidentally turned it on while trying to signal a lane change.  That’s all too easy on a Mercedes because the cruse control lives on a stick on the steering wheel close to the turn signal stick.  They’re easy to confuse at first.  I didn’t realize I had the cruse control on until I started down a hill and felt the car start breaking a tad to maintain speed.

And I know about how wonderful Satellite Radio is while long distance driving.  For local driving it probably wouldn’t make much difference to most drivers.  But when you’re crossing large swaths of countryside, its nice, really nice, to have a constant signal on a station you like.  Plus, unlike Clearcut Clearchannel damaged broadcast radio, satellite radio has a variety of music that’s always there.  You like bluegrass?  There is a bluegrass channel.  You like Techno-Trance?  There’s that too.  Classical?   Yup…several different flavors of it.  And so forth.  Plus…Sirius has a gay channel.  You’ve no idea how wonderful it is to have a gay channel to listen to, while you’re deep in red state territory, and the only thing on the broadcast dial is hate, hate, and more hate.

I’m taking a trip to Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania Saturday to visit an old friend.  I’ll get a chance to let the Nav system direct me somewhere and give the car its first little road trip weekend.  I’m halfway through the first thousand mile break-in period, and by the time I get back the car should be ready for its complementary thousand mile check-up.

A little history… 

My first car was a blue 1973 Ford Pinto.  It had no name in my mind, other then just Pinto because the model name seemed just right for that car.  It was small, it was cute, and I loved driving it.  I was fresh out of high school and working various fresh out of high school kid jobs.  At $1997.48, the Pinto was barely affordable.  At the time, one of my uncles owned a Mercedes diesel sedan and it was a marvel.  Solid in a way none of the U.S. made cars of the 1970s could even come close to being, and yet agile on the road.  It boasted safety features the U.S. automakers kept insisting would kill their business if they had to put them on their own products.  I was a little teenage geek: where the other guys were all about Corvettes and GTOs, I was about my uncle’s Mercedes-Benz.  Everything about that car made sense to me.  But the pricetag for even the least expensive ones was well beyond what a teenage stock boy could afford.  So I just dreamed…

I ran the the Pinto for 135 thousand miles and took fanatical care of the engine to get it there.  But after ten years of driving it, everything but the engine was starting to come apart.  By 1983 it was ready for the junk yard.  A friend offered me his mom’s old 1974 Chrysler Imperial for 500 bucks and I snapped it up because in 1983 a 500 dollar car was about all I could afford.  It had a 400 cubic inch V8 and was so damn huge the dash had two ashtrays in it.  It could hold four in the front and four in the back bench seats easily, and maybe another six in the trunk.  It also had a big ass hole in the floor under the driver’s seat that I could look down at and see the asphalt going by.  I named it The Blue Whale. 

A reckless driver in a little Ford Capri hit me head on while I was waiting to turn at an intersection, and while I was grateful that I had that massive car around me when it happened, that was the end of The Blue Whale.  I was into hard times then, and could not afford to replace it.  I did public transportation to and from whatever work I could find for another four years or so. 

Then in 1991 I got some work as a software developer.  The only problem was the job was in Baltimore and I was in Rockville.  The agency I contracted through rented me a car for a couple of weeks until I got my first paycheck.  From a friend of a friend I bought a huge white 1974 Ford LTD panel wagon, another $500 junker.  It had 240 thousand miles on it, having been owned by a lady who drove it all over West Virginia for her gumball business.  I named it The Great White because Moby Dick just seemed obvious.  It had another big ass V8 engine with a collapsed lifter in it somewhere that rattled loudly.  The fabric on the inside roof was hanging down partially blocking my view out the back window, and eventually I just pulled it all off.  Thereafter the layer of foam between it and the roof started flaking off and I’d have a hair full of it by the time I got to work.  For about two years The Great White got me to Baltimore and back from the basement room I was renting in Wheaton. 

Then in 1993, more confident that I could keep earning a living doing what I was now doing, I moved to Baltimore, into my first apartment ever (I was 38 years old).  I was feeling so confident in my income as a software developer that I bought my first new car since 1973: a little green Geo Prism.  I named it Aya.  Aya was a champ, took me to California three times and carried me over two-hundred thousand miles and never once left me stranded anywhere.

By 2005 I was ready to step up a tad, and decided to go for a slightly bigger car, and more bells and whistles.  I bought a black 2005 Honda Accord sedan with all the trimmings and named it Beauty, because it was so damn beautiful.  Beauty carried me to California twice, and was, before now, the best highway car I’d ever owned.  I could drive that car for hours on end and never feel tired.  Just last July I put over eight thousand miles on it, driving first to Memphis, then to Topeka, then to Portland, then to Oceano California, and back through the southwest to Baltimore.

I fully intended when I bought Beauty, to own it as long as I’ve owned every other new car I’ve ever bought, which is to say until it had absolutely no trade-in value whatsoever.  But a friend of mine bought himself a very lovely Acura TL, and it got me to asking myself if I was ever going to get around to going for the car I always wanted or not. 

All these years I would occasionally peek into a Mercedes dealership and steal a look at the cars…particularly the low end sedans that were at least theoretically affordable.  Someday.  Maybe.  I would get a brochure and take it home and spend hours looking at it.  Two weeks ago, my Honda paid off, I peeked into a Mercedes dealership again, sat down in one of the new c300s, and thought…I’m 54 years old now…Am I ever going to do this…?

You don’t want to be going right back into debt again over a new car so soon after you’ve paid the one you already have off.

I’m 54 years old now…Am I ever going to do this…?

Your car only has 47 thousand miles on it.  Buying a new one now would be a total waste of money.

I’m 54 years old now…Am I ever going to do this…?

You could get ten more years out of the car you have.  Easy.

But by then I might be too old to enjoy driving a Mercedes.  I’m 54.  In ten years I’ll be 64.  And then the argument will be, can I afford to be borrowing money on a luxury car when I’m that close to retiring.

You don’t need it.  Put it away for retirement.  Put it into the house.  You just don’t need a new car.

I’m 54 years old now…Am I ever going to do this…?

I stressed over it for two weeks.  Then I did it.  I’ve named it Traveler.  One ‘l’…so as not to be confused with Lee’s horse.  I am no admirer of Mr. Lee and his Lost Cause.  The name just came to me as I was sitting in it and thinking about all the places we would go.  In German its Reisender.