Had the car for 3 yrs, a CDI 180 Avantguard. Used mostly by my wife for work as a district nurse. The performance was way down on expected for a 2 litre diesel, don't believe its 80Kw, my 66Kw Focus feels much qicker. I fitted a Dragon performance chip which has made a big difference especially to the fuel economy, we can now get 60mpg plus with ease, why couldn' Mercedes make it like this? There have been reliability issues with the central locking, wipers & engine management, cost of spares is ridiculous £520 for 2 new rear door locks fitted @ the main dealers for example. On the plus side the comfort space & access is brilliant. A great car untill the warranty runs out.

Loved this car. I felt it was part of me. I had great visibility. I maneuvered everywhere I wanted. I loved this car. I rented an automatic for 24 days for the 2nd time and will now look to buy one.

We wound up with a Mercedes A180 automatic diesel as a rental car for 20 days and loved every moment we spent in it. We put nearly 1,600 miles (not kilometers) on the beauty, through switchbacks all over Austria and through the Dolomites.
The visibility was great, it was extremely comfortable to drive, gave us power on the A roads when we needed it, handled like a dream in the mountains and burned virtually no fuel. If we could buy this car in the U.S. we would do so in a nano-second.

I rented the car for 3 days in Nuremberg, Germany and drove to the Alsace region in eastern France. The Mercedes A180 CDI (Manual 6/Diesel) had great performance and handling on the autobahn at a crusing speed of 160/70 km/hr and the car was able to sprint pass an Audi 1.8TT at a brisk 195/200 km/hr; quite suprising. The seats could wear thin on your back and legs after 2.5/3 hrs. of driving and thats about the average 'fatigue time' for most cars or SUVs I've driven. The orientation of the reverse gear (left of gears 1 and 2) takes some focus and mental note taking. If you are not used to a 6 speed gearbox you can mistakingly select a forward gear (gears 4 or 6), because of where a reverse gear would be placed on a 5 speed vehicle. Even though I had some resevations when it came to renting the vehicle (My 1st choice was a Peugeot 407 for 1 week) the A180 CDI turned out to be quite a dynamic vehicle.