220 BlueTEC SE Premium 177 Auto 4dr Saloon

Does the job, but all its rivals do it better

I got myself a facelift W212 on a lease deal through work because my dear old W202 was dissolving before my eyes. My W212 was the taxi-spec 220CDI SE.

The good bits:
It's very spacious and comfortable, easily swallowing five people and as much luggage as you can muster.
It's excellent on long motorway journeys, being very easy and relaxing to drive. The Mercedes cruise control system is still the best in the business for intuitiveness and ease of use too.
The engine packs a decent punch and returns good fuel economy, once it has been run in.
A small detail, but the front cupholders are excellent, holding all manner of cups, bottles and cans stable. You can take them out to clean them too.

The bad bits:
The interior is drab and dreary to behold, and the fit and finish leaves a lot to be desired. Cheap, scratchy plastics abound, and a lot of the secondary controls feel flimsy enough to break off at any moment. The quality of the leather on the seats is dreadful too, being dry and hard. The Audi A6 is in a different league when it comes to interior ambience.
The engine sounds like an old tractor at idle, and isn't especially refined on the move either.
The gearbox clunks its way through shifts in automatic mode, even when warm. In manual mode, it's so slow-witted that gearshifts have to be booked weeks in advance.
The sound from the standard audio system is dull, flat and insipid, probably a deliberate move to make the premium system worth having.
The COMAND system works well enough most of the time, but there are some daft irregularities such as how you have to turn the control knob clockwise to zoom out on a map. I've checked with other people, and all they agree that this is totally counter-intuitive. It's not the most user-friendly system out there either.
You don't get folding rear seats as standard. This is not exclusive to the W212, but it's still inexcusable at this price point.

Should you buy one?
No! The 5 Series, A6 and XF all feel much more 'special', a Lexus GS will be more reliable and a Mondeo is better to drive, more practical and cheaper. If you had no choice, then the W212 will do a perfectly adequate job of being a car, but nearly all of its rivals do it better.

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