POSTED: Tuesday, December 20, 2011 - 7:08pm
UPDATED: Thursday, March 29, 2012 - 11:26am
Any new Mercedes coupe is cause for celebration, though my colleagues at some national magazines aren’t popping champaigne corks over this one.
I say, in the context of 21st century needs and more importantly, gas prices, they are, oh what’s the word? Oh, yeah, nuts.
The C250 is a turbocharged, four-seat coupe with lines so clean it’s liable to slide off your driveway.
Power for this little sweetheart comes from a 1.8-liter, twin-cam four-cylinder with a turbo cranking out only 201-horsepower. Before you snort coffe through your nose at that, the car weighs only 3500 pounds and will take you to 60 miles per hour in 6.7-seconds. Top speed is 130.
Inside, the usual Mercedes touches and build quality, which is to say, of the brick outhouse variety. Everything has a solidity and quality feel that no one, I mean no one has matched.
OK, now for my standard complaint about both Mercedes and the company that started this control-knob nonsense, BMW.
This satanic silver knob controls the radio and if the feds think cell phones are distracting, this thing is like having Pamela Anderson in the passenger seat. In both cases, I defy you to keep your eyes on the road.
It’s dumb, and belongs in that special ring of the netherworld reserved for bad ideas like New Coke and Donald Trump’s hair.
But, here’s where my overpaid colleagues miss the boat. The C250 is rated at 21 miles per gallon in the city, 30 on the highway. We averaged 27 for our week.
All this and the base price is $37,000. That kind of money and performance describes a lot of luxury pretenders, but to get a true throughbred for entry-level Lexus money, that’s like free beer in August.
You’ll need to get in line behind me.