2009 Mercedes-Benz C-Class C300 Luxury Sedan

Pros

Sleek looking body. Creamy ride and quite inside. COMMAND controller is 10x better than iDrive

Cons

Fuel seems to disappear. Needed 1st repair in 2.5 months. Plastic overkill makes it feel cheap.

This is my long but complete review to the best of my ability. We traded in our 2007 BMW 328i after a 2 year lease. We are happy with the decision because we like the MB better than the BMW. The interior is much nicer. The ride is a lot smooth and not so hard. The interior is a lot quiter. We even like the look much better. The COMMAND system for the navigation is much better than the iDrive which we still could not understand after 2 years. The nav screen is large and bright and we like the birds eye view of the system for reading maps. The iPod controller does function but we did not set it up properly. The dealer is excellent and service dept is exceptional. We have found the gas mileage to be unacceptable for such a car. We often fill it up and the trip computer shows an average of 14.1 MPG which is mostly city. The dealer said nothing is wrong with the car although he said many customers have tried to return the car because of the poor gas mileage. There is nothing they can do to resolve this. The other complaint we have is within the first 2.5 months of ownership, it needed service for a new brake controller or something to do with the electronics of the brakes. I don't know exactly as he tried to explain it in simple terms. In any event they also had added 2 qts of oil which he said they need to watch for because this could mean trouble later on. We have read many reviews and complaints about similar things. I know that many of the reviews are written by dealers to try and get people to buy their cars but I would pay more attention to the negative reviews as they usually are true and written by from experiences such as mine. Would I buy a Merc again? It's too soon to say but I have angst where this might be heading. The interior is also quite cheap for a luxury car. Mountains of plastic cover everything and could be assembled better.