The world still doesn’t know what to think about this little hot hatch. I mean after all, it is a hot hatch. Built by one of the world’s premier luxury car manufactures Americans just haven’t been sure what to make of this little dynamo. While in Europe and other parts of the world Mercedes has a HUGE reputation for building taxi’s and trucks , here in the states (and possibly due to the demand from stuffy blue hairs) Mercedes has done whatever it takes to forge and maintain a reputation of BIG , STYLISH, LUXURY. Look at the facts. Mercedes Builds TONS of sport cars … maybe you have heard of a little tuning house called AMG … until 2007 few have been what we would call tossable and fun. NONE have come with manual transmissions, to the contrary Merc has done everything in it’s power to convince us that we need automatics.
Additionally Mercedes spends so much time marketing it’s E , S and ML class cars here that the C in general is treated as a kind of , “we also sell those” type of car. If you have visited a Mercedes Main dealer lately and/or driven the new C300 you know that the tide is turning in our favor here, it is a great, and very sporty car, and can be had with a 6 speed MANUAL. With gas prices having crested $4.00 a gallon and likely to return there, cars like the C class all of a sudden have gain very real , even to snobby blue hair Americans. That brings us to the C coupe. Built and shipped stateside from 2002 to 2007 this car has always been of interest to people like us, that is to say, people that like to DRIVE. Let’s look at the car as it comes. For the 2002 model year most tuners agree that we got the prime car right from the start and ONLY that year. It was fitted with the tried and tested 2.3 litre Supercharged motor. Fitted with an Eaton blower this car had SERIOUS latent potential and everyone knew it. For 2003-07 you could have your K C as we will call it hence forth with a smoother 1.8 motor. It had a silkier character , but lacked some of the tunability and low end punch . Not only that the car was REAR WHEEL drive. Yeah… you read that right. We get a REAR drive, supercharged HOT HATCH and YOU don’t own one … wth? The car was offered with an auto or a 6 speed manual and yes, you should get the manual. You could spec your C230 out pretty seriously as well, kit included a FULL panoramic glass roof, rain sensing wipers, auto lighting , sport pack, 17 inch alloys, leather, CD changer, even NAV. ….. more to come what do you think and is this were I should post?