C250d 2.1 Sport Premium Plus Auto 4dr Saloon

comfortabley underwhelming and f***y speakers

For a premium brand this car is not up to the expectations it is sold with. On the good side it is comfortable and the engine delivers plenty of power smoothly, whilst the interior looks are great (especially in the premium plus setup with Burmester sound system) and only bettered by Volvo in their newest car. The Volvo leather seats are also leather, whilst here they are leather effect vinyl subduing the luxury feel.
This car is a great motorway cruiser, but putting it on other roads is underwhelming. To keep any pace you need to manually downshift when approaching roundabouts, else you end up having automatic gear changes at just the wrong time. The steering is far from pin sharp and having it set to 'sport' makes no improvement. If you drive it on winding country roads, you really need to use the paddle shift or sport-plus mode if you don't want to get frustrated by the poor gear selection.
Having lived with this car for two years it is disappointing and let down hugely by Mercedes customer service. The Burmester sound system has f***y speakers and whilst these were replaced under warranty, it improved but did not cure the distortion. So now it is intermittent and 'not reproducible' so the dealership won't do anything more. The dealer does however want to replace the rear brake pads at 30,000 mile despite the car being on it's first set of tyres and having been driven almost exclusively on A roads and motorways with minimal need for braking - This would suggest faulty calipers or poor brake setup.
What really lets this car down though is the customer service from the Mercedes-Benz dealer who are really shockingly poor. They have really made sure that I will never buy a Mercedes again and would recommend against buying one.

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