A face only Jimmy Durante’s mum could love? Well, maybe it’s not fair to tease someone with a large nose, but the new Mercedes C-Class has quite the proboscis.
It’s no surprise. This new four-door saloon shares the high-tech new MB.EA platform with the incoming new electric GLA, which has a similarly expansive conk. With both cars, the idea is to recapture some of the grandeur of the classic Mercedes models of the 1950s and 1960s, with their forthright, square grilles.
Has Merc been more successful in its grille’ing than its Munich-based rival BMW, which seems to be retreating from its recent clash with good taste? Arguably so. You’d never describe this new C-Class as pretty, but it just about manages to be patrician, rather than just silly. It’s definitely better in its looks than the slightly frumpy new GLA.
It’s quite a tall car by saloon standards. This new C-Class is 60mm taller than the existing petrol-diesel-hybrid model, mostly because of the need to package its 94kWh (usable) battery.
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To try and build back in some sleekness, the Mercedes design team has given the C-Class a slightly fastback-look rear end, similar to that seen on the recent AMG GTXX concept car. Even so, the boot remains a separate saloon boot, rather than a liftback, and it looks very much like this time there’ll be no C-Class estate.
Under the handsome/challenging skin (delete as appropriate), the MB.EA platform is packing some serious performance. That 94kWh battery is enough to give the C-Class a range of up to 762km, and that’s with the high-performance C400 4MATIC powertrain, which gives the car 489hp and a 0-100km/h time of just 4.0 seconds.
Perhaps more importantly, it can also charge rapidly, at up to 330kW from a DC high-power charger, adding 325km of range in just ten minutes of charging. The 10-80 per cent charging time is a mere 22 minutes, and this time (unlike with the new CLA, which runs on a different, separate EV platform) there’s compatibility with both new, faster 800-volt chargers and older 400-volt connectors.
Critically, for Mercedes, those figures are shy of the new BMW i3, which, although slower to 100km/h, has a much longer claimed range in four-wheel-drive eDrive50 form — 900km — and charges even faster — at up to 400kW. The C-Class will, eventually, come with other batteries and rear-wheel drive single-motor layouts, which may stretch its range further, but that’s also true of the BMW. Clearly, this is going to be a protracted range/charging/power war between the big German car makers — which is good; it’s at least a bloodless war from which we can all benefit.
Mercedes has certainly not skimped when it comes to finding efficiency within the C-Class. The rear electric motor has its own dedicated two-speed gearbox, which can successfully mix lightning-fast acceleration with low-drain high-speed cruising.
There’s also optional Airmatic air suspension, which knows what kind of road you’re on, and adjusts its height accordingly, dropping the C-Class’ bodywork lower to the road for greater economy at motorway speeds.
Even the heating system has been designed for maximum retention of voltage, with a clever new heat-pump setup claimed to warm up the cabin twice as fast as a conventional combustion model, while using half the power to do so.
Thanks to that and much more, Mercedes claims that the C-Class can cover 1,000km with only one brief charging stop, such as Berlin to Paris. Or perhaps Mizen to Malin and back again.
As well as being taller, the new electric C-Class boasts a longer wheelbase than that of the existing combustion model (up by 97mm to 2,962mm), which should mean better rear seat accommodation, and the boot measures a useful 470 litres, backed up by a large 101 litre ‘frunk’ storage area in the nose.
As with the related GLC, the C-Class’s cabin is dominated by screens. There are hardly any physical buttons, aside from the welcome return of proper switches and scroll wheels on the steering wheel.
Everything else is subordinated to three huge screens (that’s the Superscreen layout) or one unbroken, massive nigh-on-one-metre full-width screen (that’s the Hyperscreen).
Mercedes claims that the C-Class’s AI-driven tech is slick enough to make sense of all that. But the potential for vast amounts of distraction and frustration is obvious, not least because the passenger is being encouraged to play video games or watch streaming services such as Disney+, right in the driver’s peripheral vision.
Needless to say, a high-performance AMG variant is also planned, likely using three electric motors (one front, two rear) for maximum agility and power, and that should have around 1,000hp to match the incoming new M-version of BMW’s i3.
You’ll be able to take a closer look at the C-Class when it starts to arrive in Ireland towards the end of this year.
