[New Car Love Alert…]

Some years ago I was kicked back on the sofa, idly watching a chase on one of those police video car chase programs. Some thief had stolen a big, hugely expensive four door luxury sedan, and the cops were chasing it all over, I think it was southern California, trying to get it to stop. But this wasn’t just any old rich man’s status tank they were pursuing, it was a Mercedes S class, and I watched with a little guilty pleasure as that thing consistently out ran, out cornered and generally out maneuvered all the souped up Ford police cars trying to catch it. And the cops knew what it was they were chasing that night, and that they were going to have a hard time with it. You heard it on the police radio chatter as the pursuit went on.

It was guilty fun sitting there watching a big stogy luxury sedan blast down the freeway, just walking away from the cop car behind it at speeds well in excess of a hundred, then suddenly seem to just turn on a dime, at speed, and blast off in a completely different direction while its pursuers were skidding around trying to change course. In my defense, I’ll say I was also angry for the owner of the car. It was an outrage that such a fine vehicle was being recklessly manhandled by someone who couldn’t have cared less about its engineering qualities, so much as the money he thought he was going to get for stealing it. I think the cops eventually had to use spikes to get it to stop.

I probably was driving Aya, my 1993 Geo Prism, back then. I was happy with that car. But when that TV chase ended I know my heart probably sighed a little. There’s why I want a Mercedes…

Back when I was a teenager, and first fell in Mercedes love, the company had an advertising slogan that went, Engineered Like No Other Car In The World. Okay, take that apart. Like any ad slogan it seems to say a lot, while actually saying very little. Of course you nitwit it’s engineered like no other car in the world…Every car maker does the engineering their own way. The goddamned Trabant can say it’s engineered like no other car in the world too, and count your blessings for it!

But what you were meant to get from that slogan, was that Mercedes put engineering excellence foremost…that in addition to fine materials and workmanship, you were also buying a work of high automobile engineering art. Here’s a typical Mercedes ad from 1971, around the time I was starting to get Mercedes love bad.

Now most cars these days should be able to perform on the test track pretty much like that Mercedes sedan in that ad did back then. But back in 1971, back when most cars sold in America still had solid rear axles and rear leaf springs, it would have been remarkable to see Any car doing that, let alone a large four door luxury sedan. Put a 1971 Lincoln Continental on that test track and see what you get.

The image of the Mercedes-Benz was that it was a stodgy, boxy looking German luxury car that was way over engineered, over powered, and could out maneuver any American sports car on the road, let alone American full sized sedans. And Mercedes pioneered passenger safety engineering in a day when the U.S. automakers were still dragging their heels on shoulder harnesses and five mile an hour bumpers. You knew the Mercedes would protect you in an accident better then any other car. But you also knew that even the biggest and most luxurious Mercedes were powerful and nimble enough to help you avoid the accident in the first place

That was 1971. It’s a measure of how much trust in their engineering Mercedes lost during the 1990s, that their new slogan is Because We Promised You A Mercedes Benz.

I actually could have bought a Mercedes a couple years ago, when Aya, after driving it more then two hundred thousand miles, began telling me that it was time to get a new car. That was February 2005. And I did look at the C class then, and I didn’t like it, and I wasn’t ready yet to start trusting Mercedes again, especially after they’d decided to merge with Chrysler. I wouldn’t trust a Chrysler motor any further then I could throw it. But then they got rid of Jürgen Schrempp, divorced from Chrysler, and came out with an entirely new from the ground up C class that I thought was drop dead beautiful the moment I laid eyes on one. And when I sat in one, I thought, This is Me.

I’m looking under the hood of my new Mercedes the other day, still drinking it all in, still in new car love, and I’m gawking at these big ass steel struts I see jutting forward along each side of the engine toward the radiators. I’ve seen front end frame members before but nothing like these. They look more like they belong on a small truck then a compact four door sedan. And I’m remembering how Mercedes engineers, who seem to be back in control now, had been rethinking, fine tuning, their crash crumple zone technology. Mercedes invented the crumple zone, where parts of the car are designed to give way in a crash and absorb the forces of impact. They were doing that back in the 1950s. But now with supercomputer modeling technology, they’re managing the forces of impact a tad more precisely now, and a few strategic parts of the car are being beefed up to Not crumple, but withstand impact, and transmit the force elsewhere, more effectively around the passenger compartment and away from the passengers.

And I’m standing there gawking at these honking big steel frame members and my eyes wander around the engine, in its own compartment within a compartment, with gaskets that seal to the hood and keep the engine heat and fumes away from the other under the hood systems, which also have their own little sub compartments, and all the stuff that connects everything together which is more robust then it needs to be, and almost arrogantly precise. And I feel the smile coming back to my face again. This is what I wanted a Mercedes for. I didn’t spend all this money for an empty status symbol.

Over at the LA Times, Dan Neil’s review of the new C class begins thusly…

On average, the angriest e-mails I get are from former Mercedes-Benz owners on the occasion of my saying something nice about the company’s products…

Allow me to gloss: "I can’t believe you raved about the [insert gaudy hunk of German schteel here]. I bought a Mercedes a few years ago and it was a total piece of [insert colorful metaphor here]. I took it back to the dealer [exponential figure times] and finally got sick of them looking at me like I was speaking a foreign language [English?]. So, when did you go on the company payroll, you toadying, Hun-loving shill?"

What energizes these missives is a sense of betrayal, and in a perverse way – and wholly unwelcome, I’m sure – the galled, bug-eyed fury of disappointed buyers is a tribute to the expectations attached to the Mercedes-Benz brand…

Just so. And Neil’s initial impression of this new Mercedes is the same as mine…

So, is the new C-class – in the deathless prose of the ad – a Mercedes-Benz? Well, it feels like one. The moment you touch the door handle, you register the lubricated heft, the mantle-of-the-Earth solidity of Mercedes’ biggest and best products. Fall into the stiff, low-bolster seats and the familiar comes at you in waves: The optional COMAND nav/audio/vehicle controller interface is the same as in the S-class, only the central rotary knob is a smaller, knurled aluminum wheel. Much of the switchgear is identical to that of the higher-end vehicles. I was fairly unexcited about the C-class interior until I saw it in person; the grade of materials is richer and more appealing than it looks in photos. This is an organized, serious interior with lots of evident deliberation behind it. Sightlines are excellent, and it’s especially nice to be able to see the hood stretching out with small audacity like the S-class.

I’ve heard complaints about the amount of plastic in the new C class interior. I invite the critics to compare with the Lexus, Acura, and Infinity. A couple years ago I flew into Memphis and rented an Infinity G35 four door and while it was nice, it was more loaded with plastic then the new C, and it also felt cheap to the touch. I could close my eyes and think I was touching the dash of a Chevy. Not so in my C300. The stuff Mercedes is using is a thicker gage and feels on the one hand much more solid and substantial to the touch, and yet on the other soft and supple when you run your fingers across its surface. It’s interesting stuff. I used to work in a custom plastic fabrication shop, and I’m a little familiar with the various kinds of plastics and how their formed and worked. This stuff Mercedes is using isn’t cheap. Just less expensive then all leather sewn upholstery. You want that, go buy an S class. You want more wood and less plastic, buy the E class.

We C class owners are probably mostly folks who can just barely afford the C, let alone the E or S. We’re not rich, we’re middle class Mercedes aficionados and we aren’t spending this kind of money all for nice leather and wood trim. You buy a Mercedes for its engineering as much as anything else. And I think Mercedes is really back on track here with this new C. Again, from Neil…

You can call it lines of force, graviton waves or celestial harmonics, but there is something deeply Benz-like about the C-class’ interior ambiance. It’s not simply the deeply muffled interior and wind noise levels, but the timbre of those sounds. The thing sounds like it should have European air woofling through the air ducts.

The solidness of a thing’s build makes itself felt everywhere. Whether its a house or a car. Some folks just notice that sort of thing more then the surface trimmings. It’s not that all the little details of trim and finish aren’t important, but they’re no substitute for quality engineering. A house should be solidly built because it needs to be a house first, and only then a showpiece. A state of the art kitchen can’t make a house without a good foundation and a roof that won’t last any better then a trailer. You buy a car like a Mercedes-Benz, because first you want the best Car, then you want all the nice trimmings to go with it.

In the C class, because of its price point, some compromises have to be made between trim and engineering. I think I speak for a lot of Mercedes C class owners when I say that I’d rather the engineering came first because that’s what I’m mostly buying. Yes, I adore the 450 watt Harmon-Kardon stereo system. Yes…I really really like the fact that the wood trim in the passenger compartment is Real burled walnut. No..I really don’t mind that there isn’t as much of it in there as in the E class passenger compartment. So long as my C class drives with that same, solid, deeply Benz-like ambiance. So long as it’s really engineered like no other car in the world.

I’m out of the break-in period now, and gradually letting the car go a little faster, corner a little tighter, to see what’s in there. The other day I had it out a stretch of freeway with no other traffic and a good long line of sight. A good place I figured, to give it a little nudge forward and see what happens. Well what happened was the car happily jumped up to a hundred in no time and felt like it was doing about seventy. I quickly backed off. Damn! It was smooth, it was quiet, and unlike a lot of cars I’ve driven way too fast for my own good, it didn’t make my knuckles go white with the sensation I was right on the razor’s edge. In fact the only scary thing about it was it felt like there was a lot more in the car where that came from. I’m not sure I’m brave enough to find where this car runs out of steam.

That’s what buying a car made for the Autobahn gets you.