So I took a drive in my new car last weekend, up to Stroudsburg PA, to visit an old grade school friend.  It was beautiful weather for it, particularly Sunday morning and afternoon.  The skies were clear and blue and the trees in the eastern Pennsylvania mountains had their autumn colors on.  I went to watch my friend Glenn, who does sound for the Sherman Theater, manage a 34 band show.  Afterward, he invited me up to a mountain resort lodge Sunday, where he does Chef duty, to see his kitchen operation and have lunch.  So I not only got fed well, I got an opportunity to take the Mercedes down some lovely, winding mountain backroads, just as the leaves were turning

The car showed me that it was everything I’d hoped for in a touring sedan. The road’s rough patches were smoothed out nicely, and yet it never once lost that solid Mercedes road feel.  As I was still in the break-in period I didn’t push the car too much up the grades or around the bends, but it behaved nicely and with a sense that there was plenty of power and cornering ability I’d yet to tap. The driver’s seating was firm and comfortable and I drove back to Baltimore from the lodge for four and a half hours straight without feeling any fatigue.  I always had a good sense of the road around me, and traffic, as I drove.  The sideview mirrors on this car are huge compared to the Honda I just had, especially in the vertical axis and adjusted properly there were no blind spots to worry about.  I always felt that I had a complete grasp of the highway conditions around me.  The car hides nothing from you, and yet it smooths everything out and you feel relaxed and alert as you drive.  Every control you might want is handy, every gage and display readable at a quick glance, and the car responds easy and certain to your every touch of the steering wheel and pedal; yet you always have a sure, solid feel for the road.  Best drive I’ve ever owned, hands down.

A few times I had to accelerate quickly to get past some rude drivers.  I didn’t stomp down on the accelerator, but instead manually down shifted by tapping the shift lever sideways.  The car down shifted very smoothly, and without any appreciable motor roar, and though I was still trying to keep the revs down during the break-in period, the car gave me all the power I needed to handle those situations.  The v-6 was smooth and amazingly quiet the whole time.  In part probably because it practically lives in its own little compartment within the hood compartment.  Acceleration just happened.  I’ve heard complaints about the new 7 speed transmission down shifting too aggressively but I never encountered that.  Probably because I was trying to keep my revs down.  But I’ll likely rely more on the shifter for that sort of control when I need it then the accelerator.  I’ve driven sticks for so long it’s almost second nature.  Not having a clutch is what I’m having to adapt to.

The stereo kept me good company all the time, the Sirius satellite signal never dropping out along the mountain roads.  I had the CD changer full and my iPod attached to the connector in the glove compartment.  The 450 watt Harmon-Kardon stereo system sounds really, really nice.  I never appreciated how a high end stereo might actually be worthwhile inside an automobile.  But in a car as quiet inside as the Mercedes, it’s actually worth having.

About the iPod adapter: Connecting an iPod to a high end car stereo like the Harmon-Kardon, you really know that it’s not a high end playback device.  The difference between it and the CD player, and for that matter the Sirius signal, sometimes becomes painfully clear when listening to a song that sounded just fine in the ear buds, only to have the Harmon-Kardon mercilessly expose its every audio flaw.  I have some songs on the iPod that I’d ripped long ago with a low end PC mp3 converter and I could instantly tell which ones those were listening to them played through on the car stereo.  What surprised me was how variable the sound quality on the stuff I’d bought from iTunes was.  Some of it matched the quality of the Sirius signal easily.  Some of it sounded dull and flat.  There were variations in sound level that forced me to turn up the volume on the Harmon-Kardon and then I heard how noisy the iPod’s circuitry was.

The Nav system gave me a good sense of the backroads I was traveling along, neatly augmenting the directions to the Lodge, and then later back to the Interstate, that my friend Glenn gave me.  I have never had a problem finding my way from one end of this country to the other using paper road maps, and until I saw the Nav system on a friend’s Acura in operation, I’d always figured them to be for folks who couldn’t find their way to their own front door without help.  But seeing the Acura’s Nav system, it occurred to me that it could be helpful to have a roadmap display on the dash, showing me exactly where I am, so I’m not always having to pull off the highway and check my road atlas if I get a bit bewildered.  What I discovered last weekend is that a Nav system really helps when you’re driving through a knot of highway interchanges that you’re unfamiliar with.  And on long drives down the highway, it gives you plenty of warning when your next turn or exit is coming up, or when the highway is splitting off up ahead, and you need to be in the left or right lane.  That’s really handy.  

On the way back home from Stroudsburg, the Nav system guided me easily through the highway knots around Harrisburg.  I barely had to pay attention to the highway signs.  I just watched the traffic around me, which was moderately heavy, and listened to my invisible co-pilot’s directions.  It was really nice having it there.

The only irritating downside to the Nav system I found, is that if you decide to pull off the highway for gas or snacks it quickly turns into a nag, frantically telling you to turn around, Now, and get back on course.  It thinks you’ve made a wrong turn and it’s trying to be helpful and get you back on track again.   But it’s really annoying when all you want to do is get gas and take a bladder break.  I learned to quickly flip through the Nav menu to the Cancel Route Guidance menu selection.  There should be a Nav system guide pause button somewhere on the steering wheel.  Of course, I could probably cancel the Nav system guidance with a voice command, but I’m still struggling with the voice command system because…

…There are way too many voice commands to easily remember. What’s good about a well designed menu system is that you don’t have to remember everything, just the top level stuff. Then you drill down to what you want.  The Voice Command system doesn’t work that way, and I’m still trying to figure out how it Does work.  For instance, when I’m in the Nav system, I can say "Radio" and the radio will come on, but I’m always forgetting how to get the satellite music system on. Is the command "Sirius", or "Satellite" or "Satellite Radio"…???  Sitting here writing this without the manuals to look at, I’m still forgetting it.  I’m sure in time I’ll have it all down pat, but for now it’s very annoying to always be giving a voice command that the Command system doesn’t understand, and then trying another one and another one and then just giving up and going through the video screen menus with the joystick instead.

Luckily, with the console joystick, navigating through the on-screen menus is a snap. But what’s useful about the voice command system is that you can theoretically use it without having to take your eyes off the road in a situation where you don’t want to do that. So at some point I need to get better at using the voice commands. There’s an "individualization" system setup menu item that I’ll probably have to go through sometime. It’s supposed to allow you to teach the voice command recognition system your own voice. Maybe that’ll improve things.

But the drive’s the thing…much more then the bells and whistles.  And the Mercedes drives like a dream come true.  It’s no high powered sports car, and it’s no lithe little Lotus or Porche, but I’m a four door sedan kinda guy and it’s everything I ever wanted in a road trip car.  The passenger cabin is plenty roomy enough for me and some friends, and its decadently comfortable.  It’s got a big enough trunk, and it feels and handles great on the highway and the backroads.  And it’s loaded with all those passenger safety features Mercedes-Benz is famous for.  Every little detail of comfort and style in the car, also seems to have been designed with a safety feature in mind.  The wood trim inside the cabin is backed with aluminum so in an accident it won’t splinter.  The Active Body Control System will pre-tension the seatbelts if it detects an emergency maneuver.  The car came with a spare set of windshield wiper blades and a first-aid kit.  I’ll know more about the reliability factor as I go along, but initial reports on the new C300 class seem to be very good.  I could only wish it got better gas mileage and drank regular instead of premium.  But I knew what I was in for there when I bought a luxury car and I’ll just pay the extra cost.  I don’t have to drive to work every day, so the road trips really aren’t all that bad on my budget.