Mercedes-Benz C220 CDI Sport

Road Test

Your Say

Mercedes-Benz C220 CDI Sport

Test date 20 June 2007 Price as tested £27,845

For Looks of Sport version, high-quality interior, wide power band, handling balance

AgainstDiesel rattle at idle, manual gearbox, foot-operated parking brake

Ask any Olympian and they’ll tell you the medal they really don’t want is not bronze, but silver. Get a bronze and you’ve got a medal; get a silver and you’ve not got a gold.

So quite how Mercedes’ C-class engineers must be feeling after nearly 15 years with the wrong precious metal around their necks can only be imagined. They’ve never made a bad C-class, but it has never mounted a consistent challenge to the BMW 3-series. The suggestion that it has become the preferred transport for a generation of hat-wearing gentlemen of a certain vintage won’t have helped Merc’s bid to make the C-class more youthful.

So with this, the third-generation C-class, Mercedes has decided to offer two cars in one; SE and Elegance models will come with a traditional louvred grille for those of a millinery bent, and Sport versions get an aggressively slatted front and a vast three-pointed star to tempt bright young things.

More engines and body styles will be available soon, but already there are five petrol motors and three diesels. Our spotlight falls on one of the likely best-sellers, the C220 CDI Sport, which costs £28,002 before extras.

This C-class is larger in every direction than the one it replaces. So it is very much to Merc's credit that the C220 CDI Sport weighs just 45kg more than the old C220 CDI Avantgarde SE.

A vast amount of work has gone on under the bonnet to drag the 2148cc four-cylinder motor to the pace of the class best. A new turbo/intercooler installation is one of 90 modifications which help to bump up power by 20bhp to 168bhp at 3800rpm and torque by 45lb ft to 295lb ft at 2000rpm. It also uses less fuel than before.

You’ll find nothing revolutionary in the suspension; it’s the same fundamental design of struts at the front and a multi-link rear end first used on the 190 back in the early 1980s. But it worked then and it still strikes a fine balance between ride comfort, wheel control and packaging efficiency.