Mercedes-Benz C-Class Estate C300de 2018 first drive

The car certainly made a good effort of it on the test route around Stuttgart, which combined plenty of time in heavy stop-start inner-city traffic with a few stints at speeds closer to what you’d be doing out on the motorway.

While it didn’t manage that hallowed 177mpg figure, its trip computer was still showing an average consumption figure of around 90mpg at the end of the route. That was with the diesel engine being the sole source of power for a good proportion of the total trip, too.

However, while it proved to be impressive from an economy point of view, it’s not an engine you’d be willing to label a glowing example of refinement. While there are certainly diesel units out there that are far gruffer, the C300de’s has a distinctly agricultural edge to its timbre when under load. Even at a steady cruise, its humming away in the background was noticeable, although admittedly I may have become more sensitive to any sound it made after an extended period of running about on battery power alone.

The manner in which the two engines work together is impressive, though. Leave the C300de in its standard Hybrid driving mode and the electric motor provides smooth, linear acceleration off the line. Take off with a bit more urgency and the diesel engine will step in in a largely seamless fashion, with both motors providing that sizeable slug of low-down torque to get the car up to speed in very swift fashion indeed.

The auto ‘box works well, too: you largely won’t notice it working away to swap cogs under the more laid-back driving style that our busy urban route demanded, although whether the same would be true if you were to drive with a degree more enthusiasm, I’m unable to say.

As for the way the C300de rides, it’s a bit of mixed bag. It's certainly a comfortable car; there’s tight, pliant body control here that allows it to deal with undulating surfaces with plenty in the way of confidence. But lumps, bumps and other imperfections in the road’s surface make it lose a touch of its composure, at times giving the impression that it's stumbling over, rather than ironing out, these less-than-stellar patches of Tarmac.

With the mid-2019 launch of the C300de still some way off, prices are yet to be announced, although I’m not hugely confident that they’ll be particularly cheap. The regular C300d Estate will set you back at least £41,400, so I don’t think it’d be entirely unfair to presume this new diesel-electric variant will likely add at least a few thousand pounds on top of that figure.

This will likely mean that the C300de will only make financial sense for a reasonably small number of rather deep-pocketed individuals who know they’ll likely cover a fairly high number of miles on an annual basis. But that’s generally the case with diesel-powered cars anyway, isn’t it? Yes, they don’t make sense for the driver that’s only ever going to use one for the school run or the morning commute, but there are those who benefit from them greatly.