There are better alternatives out there but if you simply must have a Benz for around $26k, this is your choice.Warning! This post is in our archives. Transmission doesn’t utilize power very well, interior disappoints, not particularly pretty. Name one other car the size of a Cavalier that features respectable build quality, and rear wheel drive for around $26,000. And if it takes little cars like this to keep a company profitable so that they can continue to build the high-end dream machines, then I say it’s worth every bit. Is it part of a scheme for higher sales volume? Yes. In a world used to Mercedes cars exuding high luxury and high performance, it may take some time to get used to the little Kompressor. While we criticized the C230 Kompressor pretty hard, taken as a whole, we still find the car appealing. One should really take a moment to learn the multiple dials, gauges, buttons, and switches as there are a bunch of them. Aside from the seats the rest of the interior follows suit with typical Mercedes fashion with a nicely wrapped leather steering wheel and shifter and power everything. Sport bucket front seats are wrapped in, not sumptuous cowhide, but cloth, and they were printed with a weird pattern at that. Even using TouchShift we found the car second guessing us and shifting early-something you can’t afford to do in this car.Ĭonsidering Mercedes reputation, the interior was disappointing considering the car was entry-level luxury, it wasn’t half bad. And of course the Kompressor had an automatic so it made matching revs to gears that much harder. However, most of the herd is gone again before the fun begins. At 5800 rpms the 189 horses show up to play. At 3500 rpms the torque kicks in for a total of 192 lb-ft, but the band is short and is gone again at 4000. Though, wait for the revs to come up and you will find the power band. After much debate and discussion we determined that the four cylinder was just too small for the charger placed on top of it, too much power was being lost getting that super spooled up. We actually experienced what felt like severe turbo lag. In fact, we had to check under the hood to see if it wasn’t a turbo under there instead of a supercharger.
Low end torque is simply nonexistent in the Kompressor. Of course, I was the one driving that Toyota, but that is another story. Low rpm launches were not the forte of this little Merc, as one editor found when he was shown up by none other than a Toyota Sequoia at a stop light. Don’t get us wrong, the Kompressor will scoot through traffic as long as you are keeping the tach needle pointed far to the right. According to numbers and physics we should have been right, however we found that the engineering defied physics a little. Though, we still held our faith as this little three door hatch certainly wasn’t going to require much to move it. Exec Dye was quick to point out that his Mt.
Underhood resides a 1.8L Supercharged four-cylinder, not a 2.3L like the badge suggests. The biggest disappointment was in the propulsion. One editor commented that it was as if someone had slapped a Tri-Star badge on a Cavalier while we weren’t looking. It just doesn’t possess the elegance that the rest of the line up does. From the front end the Kompressor retains the Mercedes aura, however sliding around the side reveals a profile that is neither intriguing nor as pleasing to the eye as one would expect for a Mercedes.
Minus the rear doors and trunk, throw on a glass hatch opening and you have it. The C230 Kompressor sport hatch is basically a C-Class sedan with several feet whacked out of the center of it. However, for $25K, you can have the Mercedes name along with the attention to detail and engineering that goes along with it. Granted, the C230 Kompressor costs about as much as a mid to full-size domestic product will. Mercedes deserves credit for having the initiative to produce a model at a price range that is accessible to a larger crowd.
0 kommentar(er)
