Mercedes C-Class: beautiful car but choose auto

Mercedes manual not a smoothie

This morning I took my daughter to school. She was playing lacrosse for the school team. It’s a high-speed, high-skill game. And, I hasten to add, looks highly dangerous, too!

Anyway, halfway there I had to apologies to Sarah. It’s not me making that awful jerking motion – it’s the car.

I’ve been testing the Mercedes C-Class C180 SE. A fine machine it is, too. Except it’s a manual.

Now, call me old-fashioned, but all Mercs should be autos. Mercedes were never great at manual boxes. And this shows that there’s still progress to be made before the transmission is as smooth as the car deserves.

My old E320 estate had a terrific auto box – even at a 160,000 miles. And the recent C-Class Estate I drove demonstrated how good Mercedes autos truly are (see Driving to Medway with a Mercedes C-Class Estate).

But this manual: you lurch away from the traffic lights on a long clutch, the transmission shunting back and forth. Agh! So undignified for a Mercedes.

And how very different from the direct action of the Audi A4’s manual box and clutch that I run. Engagement is firm; the box mechanically fluid.

Not that the Audi’s perfect, of course. The clutch rest is skewed to the right. In the Mercedes it’s straight ahead.

The steering in the Mercedes