Best Mercedes-Benz Wagons

Best Car I have ever driven – This is a drivers car with a very responsive 3 litre Twin Turbo 6 cylinder automatic (also with Flappy paddle). So many drivers aid options you can… Read more

only get on more recent model cars. Eco/Sports mode. Lane assist, park assist. I drive this car for fun although occasionally i like to ferry the in-laws so it suits both racing and cruising. Fuel economy is always around 9.5 litres per 100 km although on the sedate long freeway runs i have attained 7.4 litres. I have had the car for 3 years and am still discovering all the features (like retuning automatic transmission). My criteria for a motor vehicle was it had to be rear wheel drive, with a bit of power that was fun to drive. Not disappointed in any way. Genuine parts and servicing can be on the expensive side though. My $1200 service at Mercedes cost $400 with local mechanic.

Look the care is probably well intentioned. however the company has clearly extended the features beyond their skillset and the design is dreadful,… Read more

so things just don't work. Every time I take it out it feels like I have to fight my car.

This is my third - I owned a C350e and a C300e before but the new 2025 C350e is nothing like its predecessors. The designers have attempted to make the car so sophisticated without thinking things through that a previously wonderful model is one you will regret buying. I've gone from a brand-loyal advocate to a "never again" person who wants my 5-year old trade-in back.

There is no enjoyment with this car - driving/fighting it is a high stress experience in which you have to assume it's about to do something st^pid and that is not what you want.

For example:

1. It's supposed to be a hybrid but it often does not charge because the company remotely sends updates and every time they run they delete all my preferences and resets the vehicle to a factory default ("do not charge the battery"). Might sound like a little annoyance but the controls are so enormously complex that it takes a good half hour to turn charging back on. Not only that but having the vehicle silently reset itself to "default no charge period - 24 hours" is just so st^pid that it illustrates the poor level of design thinking inherent in the model. Worse, it means you leave it on charge and then take out out only to find you may not have the miles you expected because there is no warning that "I decided to stop being a hybrid last night".

2. Aside from charging, other settings just randomly reset. For example recently it just turned off folding the wing mirrors - no warning. It was dangerous and again took a good half hour to fix.

3. Tyres are very expensive and low quality. The first blow out was less than a day after collection. I had to get the vehicle towed as there is no spare. No dealers stock their tyres so I had to buy not one but TWO tyres - one to drive me to a place to get the Mercedes one. It cost well over a thousand dollars and I was left stranded by a road for hours.

4. I've given up attempting to use the radio. It is so hard to turn it on or off that it's a hazard.

5. It has an "answer phone" button. yesterday my phone had an incoming call. the car detected it - ringing was even brought up on the overhead display (and the system speakers) but the "answer" button on the steering wheel did nothing. Instead you need to click through about 5 or 6 screens on the console and even if that *were* possible before the call diverts to voicemail (it isn't) it's hazardous.

6. It randomly slams on the brakes and comes to a stop with sirens blaring as if you have hit a wall. It turns out it has an "emergency brake" that is triggered by all sorts of normal environmental things including a change in the angle of a road. My driveway is not a particularly steep one, but because an angled drive meets a level road, the brakes slam on at the bottom of the drive with screaming sirens designed to leave you shaken for the rest of the trip. It has already left me with a cut head by slamming on the brakes so hard while I was doing a shoulder check I was thrown against the window. It has slammed brakes on for other things too - I don't know what they are but you can be doing 40 and suddenly go from 40 to 0 (with screaming alarms and being thrown against windows) for no obvious reason at all. Fortunately that's less common but it does happen. Probably because the camera mistook something.

7. You literally have to "log in" to the vehicle to use it. There is an (undocumented) setting buried way down inside that lets you tun that off but it's the stupidest setting ever. You want to get in the car and drive it, but no. it wants you to enter your password? Seriously?? Don't ask me how I turned it off - I could never repeat the process but it did take multiple calls and a good hour of hunting.

8. It claims to read speed signs. It doesn't. It's right maybe 70% of the time but is wrong often enough that you just can't assume it's right ever so it's simply a distraction when it starts flashing at you for "speeding" when you aren't or randomly decides that it wants to go at 20kph more than the top speed limit anywhere in the state! Since you simply cannot use it, what's the point of this feature at all??

I could go on...

Frankly the 2025/6 C350e is a poorly designed and unsafe car due to the level of stress it delivers. Don't buy it and wait until they fix its design flaws.