Mercedes-Benz C-Class C200 Kompressor W203 (2000-2007)

Excellent car but not good for rural areas – I enjoy driving my C200 very much, it has a class of it's own. The seats are not very comfortable and too firm for long journeys. The specs and electronics are amazingly advanced for a car built in 2007. It has all the fruits that a driver needs, cruise control, auto lights and auto wipers, bluetooth, GPS etc. The other design flaw is the storage space which is not very practical. you can't fit anything practical in the door bins to the glove compartment, maybe a pair of gloves or a pen but certainly not a bottle of water!

I had to move to a small rural town couple of month ago and that's where the problem started. There are no experienced mechanic for MB here. I have to drive 2.5 hours to nearest MB garage for service and that's not convenient. Unfortunately I have decided to sell my car and buy a Japanese which is much easier to look after in where I live.

Horrible experience – Purchased a C200k 2002 from a dealer serveral years ago (made in South Africa), as a used car with 60k on it - had the car for 4 years and it was a total lemon. Once when driving through the cross city tunnel, the gear leave came out of the fluffed up leather casing and was literaly hanging by a wire. The front door internal handles also came clean off (from both doors, a few months apart) - this is just so basic that it would not and should occur on ANY car, even after you've given it up for scrap. The dealer didn't bat an eye lid at any of these - they'd seen this too often to be affected, but still tried to get out of fixing it. The 3 pointed start on the bonnet began to rust (cheap chrome plating) - the dealer tried to pull the wool by saying this was not due to bad quality, but due to a stone chip whilst driving. When I pointed out that the rust was evenly spread across the back portion of the star and stone chips also usually obey the laws of physics, they replaced the emblem. Then the radio would not accept AM reception and the rear window got jammed (the sun roof also continually jammed). There is just so much tecnhology crammed into these cars then once they are more than 3 years old, things start to go wrong and the dealers scratch their heads trying to figure out how to fix it. When the car started juddering unexpectedly at low speeds, I'd had enough and sold it off for $13,000 - I'd bought it for $39,000 - I now have a brand new toyota yaris and have never been happier - I don't tense up everytime I get into the seat thinking of what could go wrong and how much it would take me to fix. MB's obsession of profit over reliability has turned away a lot of buyers....

Not bad car – Well everyone expect MB to be something that never ever break. We bought second hand C200 Kompressor and in general are happy with it. Fuel consumption is reasonable for a 4 cyl. car. Looks nice inside and out, little uncomfortable on longer trips (may be because of low profile tyres) and space is not bad for car that size. Mercedes service not sure what to say about them because since we bought car we look after it (replacing oils, filters, spark plugs etc). Just did 100 K service and found that fuel filter was never replaced (that's why I don't take to the dealers, service car with someone that you know and can trust or DIY). In general not top of the range but not bad little car.

Solid cruiser, built well, suspension is designed for comfort – Solid cruiser, built well, suspension is designed for comfort, not sporty driving. Too much body roll compared to the newer W204 which we always had during service. Bought it as MB Approved pre-owned, which came with 2-yr factory warranty (excluding interior). Engine timing chain came lose when car was 6-yrs old (90k kms), and this was fixed under warranty. It is a known issue with the M271 engine. Transmission could have an extra gear for better millage on longer trips. Had the car for 2-years (which is the average time before we change car) and did about 28k during this period. Overall, a great car from its era and would recommend a proper check before buying one. As they are fairly inexpensive now, go with an 05-06 model as they are likely to have less issues. The badge, solid feel Expensive options when new, hence pretty hard to find one with more options than stock