Mercedes Benz C-Class 2022 review: new shape, giant screens

The new C-Class is courting the youth market with trendy lines, big, lush touch screens and a sport mode that is very, very good fun.

Mercedes definitely wants to attract a younger audience with the ‘trendy, sexy lines’ of the new C-Class

It is perhaps a reliable measure of how old you are if you can remember a time when there was nothing on television. I’m talking just two channels, one showing F-Troop or the Ray Martin Show and the other featuring a man on a farm discovering there are burrs in his socks and kangaroos loose in his top paddock.

There was a time when, similarly, the fact that your car had the three-pointed star of Mercedes-Benz on it also hinted at you being a certain age, old enough to remember that it was the Mike Walsh Show before a young Ray took over.

Perhaps TV screens have grown so much larger over the years merely to contain all the content now available to horribly spoiled young people, but then screens have proliferated, and grown, everywhere, to the point where you can’t go for a drive in the new Mercedes C-Class without finding one almost the size of my first television affixed to your dash.

The C-Class goes big on screens

Car companies know that if they want to appeal to younger people at all — as Mercedes definitely does these days, just look at the trendy, sexy lines of the new C-Class; it’s no longer an old-man’s saloon — they need to have big, lush touch screens. And that those screens should look as much like an iPad/iPhone as possible, so much so in this case that it’s a wonder Benz isn’t in court fighting a copyright case with Tim Cook.

The trick, of course, as it is with all those giant televisions, is finding something to put on these screens, and when it comes to Traffic Light Assist one gets the sense of a certain desperation. Basically, when you pull up and stop at a traffic light, the central screen turns on a streaming video display that shows you… exactly what you can see through the windscreen.

Have another screen for good measure

I really hope that no one saw me attempting to get my head around this idea as I switched my befuddled face from the screens to the outside world and back again, quietly mouthing “but what’s the POINT?”, like a broken old philosopher.

I am reliably informed that the Traffic Light Assist is part of Mercedes’ Augmented Reality systems, which can superimpose useful graphics — like navigation arrows — over the stream from your cameras. In the case of the traffic lights, if you’ve parked too far forward and can’t actually see the lights, “it superimposes the current traffic light status, thereby saving you from troublesome contortions when waiting for the green light”, according to Benz.

Troublesome contortions do sound unpleasant and best avoided, and this is possibly more of an issue in Europe where, for some reason, they sometimes put traffic lights only on one side of the road.

Clearly, this smooth-looking C-Class — built new from the wheels on up for its fifth generation — is not your grandpa’s Mercedes; it’s down with the kids, and their need to have screens assist them with every possible part of their lives.

Mercedes C-Class front view

The 2022 C-Class comes as the base model C200 ($78,900 plus on-road costs) and the C300 ($90,400 plus on-road costs), and we’re seated in the comfy cabin of the latter, which means a considerable uptick in “Ooh, fancy!” features.

Besides the easy-to-navigate MBUX multimedia and voice-recognition system (and most welcome compatibility with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto), we’ve also got the plush AMG Line electric leather seats, a Nappa leather-trimmed sports steering wheel, a head-up display, a raft of excellent safety features, tinted privacy glass from the B-pillar back, and a sunroof.

The designers have actually done a great job of making the cabin feel classy and classic, in the German way, and yet virulently modern. The first thing that stands out in this mid-size luxury sedan is the customisable neon ambient lighting that lines its way around the interior — the kind of thing a Ritalin-addled 10-year-old boy would think was extraordinarily cool, because, quite frankly, it is extraordinarily cool — while the second thing you’ll likely take note of is that huge 11.9-inch LCD infotainment screen, which floats free of the dash.

After dark the C-Class interior lights up like a rolling nightclub

Things are fairly wonderful inside the C300 then, particularly at night when the neon lighting makes it feel like a rolling nightclub, but what’s it like to drive this techno tour de force?

Pretty enjoyable, it turns out. These days a 2.0-litre turbocharged engine is a fairly substantial donk for a car of this size, and this one puts 190kW and 370Nm to the ground through the rear wheels, all while using just 7.3 litres of fuel per 100km.

That rear-wheel-drive set up means it can be enjoyable, involving and even a bit exciting on the right bit of road, but first you need to learn which buttons to press.

In the standard Comfort mode the C300 starts up in, the engine feels a little sleepy, like a dog that’s dozed off by the fire, and it takes a bit of a poke from your toe to get it moving, but that mode is very much designed for crawling around town, or sloping along freeways.

Sport mode takes you from zero to 100km/h in just six seconds

The Sport setting, however, awakens the beast with a growl from the exhaust and can propel the C300 forward with a pleasing amount of gumption, leaping from zero to 100km/h in just six seconds.

We spent quite some time testing the Sport and Sport+ settings, because they were just too temptingly fun and we were outside Sydney enjoying some of the very best roads in the State (I can’t recommend the Old Pacific Highway enough), and yet despite some enthusiastic enjoyment, we got very close to the claimed fuel economy, which really was impressive.

That was likely helped by the ‘EQ Boost’ 48V mild-hybrid system, which consists of an integrated starter-generator and lithium-ion battery that takes some of the pressure off the petrol engine, as well as providing an extra 15kW and 200Nm of electric boost at low engine speeds, which also helps to explain how it hurls itself out of corners with such enthusiasm.

The C-Class has a fuel economy of 7.3 litres of fuel per 100km, remaining efficient even during sport mode

Towards the end of our week together, I was starting to understand how Mercedes can get away with charging what feels like quite a lot of money for this much sedan (the price has risen a whopping $15,100 over the old C300, but Benz says you get a lot more tech and a bigger body for that cash). It’s the kind of car that makes you feel rich, for a start, but somehow, unusually for a Merc, it also makes you feel young.