It took a while to find the optimum Mercedes-Benz C-Class when we first tried it in the UK. Executive cars, even compact ones, these days come with such a plethora of different options – passive dampers, adaptive ones, sports suspension, coil or air springs, etc – that finding the idea set-up isn’t easy. Especially when you throw so many different wheel and tyre sizes at it too.

Updated Mercedes-Benz C-Class to introduce new four-cylinder engines

So news that there’s going to be an additional option to the air suspension might not make life easier, but in a mid-life facelift there are bound to be subtle chassis changes too, to keep the C-Class competitive. A more comfort-oriented set-up than, say, a BMW 3 Series always seems to me to suit the kind of character a Mercedes should have. And it’s an approach that seems to really suit the Mercedes-Benz E-Class.

Elsewhere, the interior and tech enhancements sound like good news. AudiBMW and even Jaguar Land Rover are all making improvements to their communications systems, and the best Mercedes systems are, for my money, still some of the better ones on the market, so this will, I suppose, keep them up there.

What hasn’t struck me as in need of desperate improvement are the engines. Here’s an area where no car maker, least of all one with the invention and reputation of Mercedes-Benz, can bear to leave things alone.

Sure, the exterior isn’t much changed, but the raft of improvements beneath the skin ought to raise the C-Class a few notches further up a class ladder on which it was already staying pretty competitive.

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