Middle child overtakes on the style front

The Merc C-Class has always been something of the middle child. Constantly compared to a dazzling rival, the BMW 3 Series, while in more recent year, also fending off the challenge of a younger upstart, the Audi A4.

We are now into our fourth generation of C-Class (fifth if you count the original 190E of the 1980s) and the critical appraisal has always gone something along the lines of solid, stolid, safe but unsexy. The 3 Series ever-sharper chassis and the A4’s more delectable styling have always conspired to overshadow the C-Class.

But wait, what’s this? In the manner of that neglected middle child arriving home brandishing their PhD papers, the new C-Class has come out of the blocks unlike any C-Class before it and, genuinely, stands a chance of unseating the mighty Bavarian.

It is a handsome car, especially in the pearlescent blue of our test machine and with the Avantgarde trim’s big tri-corner star mounted front and centre in the grille. Other versions of the C-Class, with the blank grille and the star fixed atop the bonnet look a trifle fey, too much the whiff of trying to be a mini S-Class about them. While we’re on the critical trail, there’s also an effect, from some angles, in certain lights, of the C-Class looking as if it’s made by joining the ends of two unrelated cars together, but on the whole it’s pleasing to the eye. Look closely and you’ll see some truly gorgeous detailing around the headlights and radiator grille, for instance.

Thing get better, much better when you move inside. I can honestly say that in my almost two decades of writing about cars I’ve not seen a genuinely better cabin than this. As good as? Yes, but not definitively better and that’s a judgement that stretches right up into the automotive stratosphere of Ferrari and Rolls-Royce. The way the piano-black centre console sweeps up like the curl of a surfer’s wave, the perfectly arranged row of metallic toggle switches that control the air conditioning, the neat, expensive looking dials that appear to have been lifted straight from the window of Weirs of Grafton St. The quality of assembly is also excellent, and Mercedes’ arrangement of three column stalks (one for the automatic gear selector, one to control lights and wipers, one for the cruise control) makes most rival car makers’ efforts look clumsy and over-complicated.

It’s more spacious than previously was the C-Class case (albeit still a little on the snug side if you’re talking about loading in kids and safety seats). If we’re talking practicality then, officially, the 480-litre boot matches the BMW 3 Series for space, but in practice it feels a tad shallow.

Fire up the engine and immediately a recent common Mercedes complaint comes to mind – excess engine noise. It’s something that afflicts the recent, smaller Mercs such as the CLA and GLA quite a bit and the familiar 2.1-litre four-cylinder turbo diesel (fitted here in 170 bhp guise) is the culprit. It’s a flawy that seems to signal the brand’s focus remains on larger diesels and racier petrols than the more low-rent entry-level engines that end up in Irish cars. Thankfully though, in the C-Class, it seems to be merely a low-rev, low-speed, low-temp affliction and once you’ve been on the move for any appreciable length of time, the engine does a good job of shutting up.

Merc’s own seven-speed gearbox makes a decent companion for the engine, and it shifts neatly and swiftly in manual mode too, using the paddles behind the steering wheel, but its not quite so smooth nor as seamless as the brilliant eight-speed ZF box in use by rivals like BMW.

For all the gripes about the noisy engine, it delivers on fuel economy. A rating of 110g/km of Co2 was once the preserve of hybrids and small diesel hatchbacks, and pleasingly, the C-Class gets very close to matching its claimed economy figures in the real world. The spec sheet says 4.5-litres per 100km (around 62mpg) and you should easily be able to squeeze 55-60mpg out of it.

It remains a talented performer in the chassis department. I’ve long held an heretical opinion that Mercedes actually makes cars that are better to drive than does BMW. That’s contrary to what most if not all of my colleagues believe, but with the new C-Class my view still holds strong. The steering is informative, well-balanced and perfectly weighted, the steering wheel a slim-rimmed joy to hold and the overall combination of ride comfort and cornering alacrity hard, if not impossible, to criticise.

It’s not cheap. Our lightly-specced C220 Avantgarde clocked in at a hefty €50,000 and I reckon you’ll find mildly better value in the 3 Series or A4 price lists, not to mention what Jaguar might manage with the upcoming new XE.

At last though, the middle child, the supposedly solid, reliable, unremarkable one, has finally pulled a class-winning performance out of the bag. For my money, the new C-Class now sits atop the pile of mid-size sports saloons.