  2013 Mercedes-Benz C 350 4MATIC. Click image to enlarge |
Review and photos by Michael Bettencourt
With spy shots and a growing number of press reports suggesting that the next-generation Mercedes-Benz C-Class will appear early next year, and go on sale months later as a 2015 model, it’s not a huge surprise that this 2013 C 350 4MATIC didn’t fare so well against sportier but pricier rivals in a recent entry-luxury Autos.ca sport sedan comparison. Mercedes-Benz is good at masking its long eight- to nine-year product cycles with regular engine and technology updates, but there’s a point at which the updates peter out with a view to the next-generation model, and the 2013 C-Class has reached that point.
As such, there are certainly more modern looking and cutting edge options out there for the equivalent of this C’s $55,000 chunk of change.
Still, there’s a unique intersection of marketing forces at play here that may give the current C-Class – the bestselling Mercedes-Benz model in both Canada and the U.S. – some additional appeal. Though Mercedes-Benz usually bakes in a price premium of about 10 percent over competitors, much of that cost will be trimmed down over the next year as dealers prepare to launch the new, much more advanced C-Class, which will offer some of the autonomous driving aids of the next-generation S-Class coming at the end of this year. Though these discounts are common throughout the business with outgoing models, and especially with new gens coming, there will also be the new CLA model ‘four-door coupes’ coming to Benz dealers in September, which throws a whole new twist on the game.
 2013 Mercedes-Benz C 350 4MATIC. Click image to enlarge |
All of a sudden, Mercedes-Benz will offer a new 33-grand (base) entry point for a smaller but fresher and reasonably practical four-door sedan – which is what it will be to most eyes, no matter what Mercedes-Benz calls it. Such an offering could very well interest C-Class buyers in a way that the entry-level B-Class hatchback never did. With the new CLA almost in dealers and much more advanced C-Class on the way, it’s a potential perfect sales storm for current C-Class buyers, with major incentives the very likely outcome, even if Benz tends to mask these in the way of nicely subsidized lease and finance rates and terms.
Given all the above, the current C-Class looks likely to add a welcome new twist in the next 12 months to its traditional values of solid comfort, blue blood badge appeal and royal refinement: value, now based on lower prices, instead of premium-priced advanced technology.
This particular C 350 4MATIC model was perhaps unfairly lumped in with more performance-oriented compact luxury sedans in the aforementioned sport sedan shootout, as noted in the detailing of its fifth out of five placing. The word traditional appears over and over in my notes about this car, and it starts with the car’s conservative, three-box design. It’s not devoid of styling charms, as the headlights were updated in the past year or two with funkier ‘C’-script LED headlights, plus some lower body cladding and a small spoiler courtesy of a Sport package that comes with this trim level adds a touch of visual punch to its aristocratic, some may say grandfatherly, silhouette.
