Our trusty 02 A4 had used up its affordable life with us. It now seemed to need something every 2 weeks & always when I was out of town. It has been a great car & it only had 160kms but for the last year payback had arrived. It is my wife's DD & our family car & it was letting us down too often. I wanted AWD, 4 dr sedan, auto tranny mandatory, Euro or upmarket Asian. The luxury of a new car 4 year warranty won out over the used options - which were all surprisingly costly. BMW was summarily eliminated due to a painful past experience with a 3 Series sinkhole. Volvo, Infinity, Lexus were all removed because I also wanted ease of service - which means a dealer nearby or 'on the way' so my wife could handle it while I am out. She is fearless in the city but she doesn’t drive on multi-lane highways . . .
So the short list was Audi A4 or M-B C300. Both great. Same price more or less. Btw in Canada, the C300 is a new detuned 3.5l V6 & Benz has just topped the segment in sales here recently with a major push. The Audi salesman blew his app’t with us on my one night available so my wife leased the M-B the next day - which is the one she really wanted anyway. I admit that I liked the idea of the V6 rather than a blown 4 anyway.
So our new appliance:
White is such a hard color to photograph.
I haven’t driven it much but in ECO mode, the engine will shut off at traffic lights. Completely. No noise whatsoever. It is really bizarre. Lifting your foot off the brake restarts the engine in a fraction of a second so there is no lag & very minimal noise. But it sure is strange. It can be defeated with a setting in the wheel-controlled speedo display but it resets to ECO every time the car is shut off. It is claimed to really help with gas mileage of course.
Ian