Dec 17, 2008 12:10 PM
27633 Views
Well another experience of driving the Mercedes C180 on the roads of UK. Its absolutely spell bound experience and hard to express. But will try my best to do.
Ok This was holiday to south Wales and cardiff to Gower, Rhosilli beach etc. 4 of us in this piece of marvellous engineering. Its was a Mercedes C180 standard Automatic transmission(courtsey: Avis Car Rental).
It has excellent ambience inside with brilliant A/C, fantastic leather interiors, and brilliant onboard computer system which we realised halfway through our journey. It even has on board bluetooth connectivity to your mobile phone ie., you can connect your phone to the car's bluetooth so that you can talk while driving without holding your phone (you can hear the voice of the person you are talking to from the speakers of the car, Brilliant tech isn'it?). (and if the music is playing while the phone rang it will automatically stop playing the music for you to be able to speak)
The most Exciting part of the car was the GPS system on Board and the discovery of it is an exciting story.
As we were driving down to cardiff (Wales) during the night we realised that the car was speaking and we ignored it for throughout untill the next day early morning. We discovered a samll button kind of switch near the gear lever marked as TM. We pressed the button and a heard a dialing tone and then a beautiful girl's voice was heard saying"Mercedes Helpline How may I help you sir?"We were astounded and apparently we figured out that it was a GPS and will give us a route to any destination, any emergency help, and breakdown service anywhere in the UK exclusively for Merc customers.
Well thats the most brilliant piece of tech I have seen in any car. Ok sorry I will cut the crap.
It can reach the top speed of 120 miles/hr ie., 200 km/hour on UK roads (We did it on the M4 could not hold for too long though)
Economy (pronounced as mileage in India) was 20 KM/liter which was excellent for an Automatic transmission (most of our driving was on the highway) so may be in the city it might be 16-17km/liter. In India the talk is that its mileage is 10-12 km/liter.
Excellent road grip, outstanding turning radius in its front wheels (haven't seen in any other car)
and ofcourse you have state of art technology inside the car (you will feel the expericence of sitting in a cockpit of a plane) for a person who is tech savy will like it. Unfortunately for a person who doesn't like so many switches around may not like the car from inside.
Its rich leather interiors and seats makes you comfortable with a feel of expensive car.
But ultimately it is marvellous engineering with perfection.
Well coming to the Indian version I have come across many people in the net complaining about unsatisfactory service from the MERC people. I do feel sorry for all those who have gone through a bitter experience as I can imagine no one would want to go through such a experience after paying a huge money for a car.
However, the MERCEDES is much better than the BMW from my experience as I have driven both.
Happy Driving
Praveen
