Mercedes-Benz C-Class Coupe (2016 – 2024) Review

The 2016 Mercedes C-Class Coupe is competitive in pretty much every area compared with rivals such as the Audi A5 and BMW 4 Series. It’s comfortable and enjoyable to drive, classy inside, reasonably practical thanks to four decent seats and a decent boot, and it comes with a good amount of luxury and safety kit. Perhaps most importantly for coupe buyers, though, it looks the absolute business, thanks to its bold details and its curvaceous rear end. Very worthy of your consideration.

Putting looks before what’s on the inside doesn’t automatically make you a shallow person. Just look at the Mercedes C-Class Coupe for proof. Granted, it’ll only hold four people rather than five like the C-Class Saloon will, and the boot can’t swallow as much luggage, either, but when it looks this good, you can really see why some people would happily make the trade.

A stylish two-door take on the compact executive saloon is hardly a new idea. The German ‘Big Three’ have been punting out cars like this for years, and these days, things are very tight between the C-Class Coupe and its big rivals, the Audi A5 and BMW 4 Series, in terms of size, space and price. In fact, it’s pretty much nip-and-tuck in every area, so what does the Merc do that the others don’t?

Well, for starters, it delivers a more relaxed driving experience, with a softer, more absorbent ride and a greater emphasis on refinement.

Find an example fitted with optional air suspension - as we suggest you do - you’ll live an even more comfortable and sophisticated life. You’ll need to choose your engine carefully, as some of the smaller petrol ones don’t really deliver on performance and quietness, but go for the C220d diesel, and you can’t really go wrong.

It feels pretty sophisticated in other ways, too. The interior quality is great, with plush materials and thoughtful, stylish finishes, while the amount of standard luxury kit you get is generous enough to hammer home the feeling of luxury. You get plenty of safety kit, too, so even though your brood will be more cramped than they would be in a C-Class Saloon, they shouldn’t be any less safe.

Drawbacks? Well, the car uses Merc’s older-school infotainment system, so the super-clever functionality on other models isn’t available here, while not all versions get Apple Carplay or Android Auto as standard.

Like we said, a couple of the engines aren’t really up to muster, and when push comes to shove, rivals from Audi and BMW are a shade roomier and more entertaining to drive.

There’s more give in its suspension than that of a BMW Series, so it rides bumps and potholes in a more settled way. That said, it’s rather more fidgety than an Audi A5 over smaller ridges and ripples, so it’s not the comfiest car of its type.

It isn’t the sharpest handling, either. There’s more body roll than in the rivals mentioned, and the steering is a slower, so fast direction changes aren’t quite as crisp, but it still handles corners securely.

The four-wheel-drive versions have some useful extra grip and traction on the road, but the rear-driven cars are still very good on that score, and are actually more fun.

If you can, we’d really recommend adding the optional air suspension, which allows you to stiffen things up or soften them off according to the driving mode you select.

Regardless of the mode, it rides a lot more fluidly than with the standard suspension, keeping you more comfortable in all situations, and there’s keener control over body movements in the corners.

The choice of engine you have in your C-Class Coupe will depend on the age of the car you’re looking at. Early examples came with 2.0-litre petrol engines including the C200 with 184PS and the C300 with 245PS, or 2.1-litre diesels in the form of the C220d with 170PS and the C250d with 205PS.

Later on, the diesels were replaced with 2.0-litre units giving either 194PS (C220d) or 245PS (C300d). With the petrols, the C300’s output rose slightly, the C200’s 2.0-litre engine was swapped for a 1.5 with both a turbocharger and an electric motor to give 184PS, and a C180 was added to the range, using a turbocharged 1.6 with 156PS.

So far, we’ve only tried a couple of them, the C200 and the C220d. The C200 doesn't have the character you want in a glamorous car like the C-Class Coupe. Despite its extra mild-hybrid boost, it’s really flat, so you have to rev it hard for even moderate performance, and that doesn’t make for a particularly relaxed experience.

However, the C220d is much more like it. It’s hugely muscular right from the bottom of the rev range, so it never needs more than a gentle tickle of the accelerator to get you going at a decent rate, and it has a very tidy turn of pace when you work it harder.

The C-Class Coupe itself hasn’t yet been driven into things by the experts at Euro NCAP, but both the C-Class Saloon and the C-Class Cabriolet have, and both emerged with a maximum five-star score.

Standard safety kit is pretty generous. Automatic emergency braking, tyre pressure monitoring and a system that detects whether the driver needs a break, are all on hand to help prevent you having an accident. If one becomes unavoidable, there are seven airbags and Isofix child seat mounting points to help keep you from harm.

There’s even a pop-up bonnet designed to give better protection for any unfortunate pedestrians. All versions have super-bright LED headlamps, but on AMG Line Premium trim and upwards, you get cleverer multibeam ones that flood the road ahead with light, but bend their beams around oncoming cars so as not to dazzle fellow motorists.

Tyre pressure monitoring is standard across the board, but you only get a repair kit to address any problems on that score, rather than a spare wheel.

Space up front is as generous as you would expect, and although the rear seats - of which there are only two - are rather snug on both headroom and legroom, there’s enough space for a pair of moderately sized adults to sit in reasonable comfort. Climbing in and out of the back takes a little bit of bendiness, but that’s the case in all coupes.

The boot is a very decent size, too, and with a relatively wide opening, the space is reasonably easy to get at. There’s a load lip to negotiate when loading heavy items, but that’s the case in rivals, too.

Handily, the rear seats fold in a 40-20-40 configuration, which is more versatile than the more common 60-40 arrangement, and although the extended loadbay you get is sloped, there are no steps in it. However, while the C-Class Couple is competitive with rivals on both interior space and boot space, it’s worth noting that rivals from both Audi and BMW are marginally better on both scores.

Everything you see and touch is finished soft-touch plastic, stitched leather, grained wood, genuine metal or high-gloss panelling.

It all feels very tactile and appealing, and the range of tastefully selected surfaces and textures combine to make things look interesting, and well as classy. All versions get the same part-leatherette upholstery, too, so there isn’t much of a disparity in poshness between the bottom-level trim and the top.

Inspect super-closely, and you will find one or two surfaces in the lower reaches of the cabin that aren’t as solid or as substantial as those in an Audi A5, but they’re hidden away out of sight and do nothing to undermine the impressive feeling of quality.

While most modern Mercs have been given the company’s latest MBUX infotainment system, the C-Class Coupe makes do with the company’s older system.

Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing will probably depend on how much you like touchscreens, which is used extensively by MBUX. In the C-Class Coupe, meanwhile, you scroll through on-screen menus using a simple rotary controller on the centre console, and in our book, it’s a much less distracting way of doing things.

It still isn’t quite as user-friendly as the equivalent system you’d find in a 4 Series because the menus are more complex and convoluted, but it gets better the more you use it, and the graphics are sharp enough and quick enough. Early cars got a 7.0-inch screen, while later ones got a 10.25-inch one that made the on-screen icons bigger, improving useability.

All versions have DAB radio, a Bluetooth phone connection and sat-nav of some variety. However, early cars didn’t have Apple Carplay/Android Auto, and even with today’s models, you only get it if you upgrade from AMG Line trim to AMG Line Premium or above.

At the time of writing, prices for brand new versions of the C-Class Coupe started at just under £39,000 for the C200 AMG Line and rose to more than £49,000 for the C300d 4Matic (four-wheel drive) AMG Line Premium Plus.

That’s the maximum if you ignore the faster AMG versions, which for the purposes of this review, we will. If you’re after a diesel version, the cheapest one - and also the version we recommend - is the C220d AMG Line at just under £42,000. Compared with rivals, the C-Class is a fraction more expensive, but there really isn’t much in it.

It’s always worth checking Merc’s website for offers and promotions, too. At the time of writing, we saw the C180 AMG Line being offered for around £375 per month on a four-year PCP deal following an initial deposit of around £5800. That represents a discount of around £5000. There’s also very little in it for how quickly the C-Class Coupe depreciates compared with its main rivals, so used prices will be just as tight.

There’s been some chopping and changing with the car’s engine range throughout the car’s life, and also, the official NEDC testing procedures were swapped for tougher WLTP ones to give figures that better reflect real-world driving conditions.

That makes comparisons between early and late cars very difficult, so for now, we’ll simply concentrate on the newer examples.

The 300 d does 49mpg, but bear in mind that the figure drops significantly with the addition of 4 Matic four-wheel drive - it's the same for the C220 d. The C200, meanwhile, will do 42mpg according to official stats, while the C300 does 40mpg. Compared with rivals, the C-Class Coupe’s efficiency figures are pretty good.

Not including the most powerful AMG versions, insurance groupings start at 31 and rise to 42, and when you consider that group 1 is the cheapest one and group 50 is the most expensive, you can see that all versions sit towards the higher end of the scale, despite the modest power of some.

Check out the various reliability surveys doing the rounds, and you’ll find that Mercedes doesn’t perform as well as you might expect, usually figuring towards the foot of the table for manufacturers. It usually outperforms Audi and BMW, though.

Early cars came in Sport and AMG Line trims, but later, AMG Line became the entry point and you could then upgrade through AMG Line Premium and AMG Line Premium Plus trims. AMG Line cars come with most of the luxury toys you need in a glamorous car like the C-Class Coupe.

That includes alloy wheels, two-zone climate control, rain-sensing wipers, parking sensors, a reversing camera, keyless go, electric front windows heated and electrically adjusting front seats, cruise control and part-leatherette upholstery.

However, we wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to upgrade to AMG Line Premium trim for its 64-colour ambient lighting, multibeam LED headlamps and upgraded infotainment kit (wireless phone charging, digital instrument cluster and 225W sound system). AMG Line Premium Plus trim adds keyless entry, a powered bootlid, a 360-degree camera, a panoramic roof and an even more powerful 590W Burmester stereo.