Mercedes Benz C Class 180 Review

Overall Rating

quiet, refined, understated, comfortable

slow, my experience of mercedes after sales service has not been good.

I bought my 1998 C180 (the uplift model with four air bags) privately in 2001. it had 19000 miles on the clock and was in pristine condition. Unfortunately, it came with only one ignition key, so be warned, these cost about £70 and have to be ordered from Germany.

The car looks the part in spite of its compact nature. Certainly it seems to have more Mercedes presence than its replacement model with its BMWesque pretensions. However, despite the marque's reputation for solid engineering the car has not been without its serious problems.

At 29,000 miles as I set off from work I encountered a stomach churning crunching noise under the seat. It sound like a dozen bricks were being churned in an oil tin. The car would not go (not that you would want it to making a noise like that) and I had to call out Mercedes excellent "mobilo" service to get me home and lend me a replacement car while it went in for inspection. It turned out that the car's prop shaft had failed and it needed a replacement. As the car had been bought privately and was two months past its three year warranty that would be £600 thank you very much. Appeals to Mercedes that this was not what one would expect of a quality car which had a full Mercedes service history, and that they should at least contribute something towards the cost of repair fell on deaf ears.

The repairs done, we settled down to a period of satisfied ownership. The car is not fast but this is not an issue for me. It is refined, very quiet and extremely comfortable. It does have a few gizmos, such as air conditioning (absolute requirement when the car is black as in this case) and electric windows etc but has no more gadgets than drivers have come to expect from quite modest family cars such as Vauxhall's Astra.

Another minor problem arose shortly before the car's MOT test was due. Both headlights failed within 50 miles of each other. I bought the replacement lamps at a car factor shop and set about replacing them, done it lots of times without any problems. For some reason though, Mercedes have elected to use a system which is extremely fiddly. I managed without problem on the near side head lamp but the off side was made difficult by the air filter housing. I was doing this outside the shop where I had bought the lamps and the small spring clip, well, sprang away and could not be found. I went to Mercedes and explained and asked for a replacement spring clip. "Sorry sir, there is no part no listed, you will have to buy a new headlamp fitting, that will be £150 please". £150 for a glorified paper clip!

I eventually took the problem to a local garage who made a clip and fitted the lamp for a minimal charge.

The car has now completed 57,000 miles and there is a strange rumbling sound coming from the gearbox on starting up from cold ..time to get rid methinks.

Members' Comments ontwyford.'s Review

• boxer123 on 21st Dec 2003

  interesting & slightly worrying feedback. I got a C180 selection as a company car in 2000.Yes it's slow, but it is solid and heavy and I feel safer than in Volvo S40 I had prevously. I had some BAS light problems 30 miles after delivery as new.But since then I BOUGHT the car, and now it has 54,000 with no problems. I hope the prop shaft does not fail. Wife drives it now. Seems OK to me, but she has reported some mysterious loud noises. The small rubber grommet at the base of the washer bottle failed & leaked. The petrol gauge reads funny sometimes