Clarkson on the Mercedes C 280 Sport
09-30-07, 11:59 AM
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Clarkson on the Mercedes C 280 Sport
http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/tol...cle2108760.ece
Mercedes C 280 Sport
Drive this and the road zealots will have you
Mercedes C280 Sport
Image :1 of 2
Jeremy Clarkson
While I was away last week, someone came in the night and erected a couple of handmade road signs on the grass verge outside my house.
They advertise a new website that encourages road users to report fellow citizens for dangerous or antisocial driving. I think it may be called www.interferingzealot.com.
The idea is simple. If you are annoyed by someone’s driving you simply post their numberplate, and a brief description of their crime, in the hope that they’ll log on too and be so ashamed they’ll turn over a new leaf and become a vicar.
Let me give you some examples. A chap with the username of StephenHarrison, who has made 157 posts so far, quotes the numberplate of a car that, he says, on July 9 in Birmingham city centre “positioned itself in the left/straight-on lane, then turned right at the roundabout”.
It gets worse. Another chap, called Kev627, tells us that in Perham, Hampshire, a chap driving a Ford Fiesta “indicated 100 yards before the exit prior to the one it used to leave the A342”.
I’m surprised to find that someone in Glasgow didn’t tell the members he’d seen two Muslim men “drive right over the pavement and into the terminal at the city’s airport in a burning Jeep Cherokee”.
Sadly, I’m afraid I don’t know whether I appear because I don’t know what my numberplate is.
But I do know this. We are talking here about the dullest website in the whole of human history. And also the most terrifying . . .
The problem is that we now have so many laws in the UK and so few policemen to enforce them all that the slack is being taken up by an army of bitter and twisted fiftysomething busybodies with beige clothes and upper lips puckered so badly by rage that they look like one of Mr Kipling’s cakes.
Think about it. When we were growing up it was illegal to murder someone, and er . . . that’s it. Now it is illegal to eat an apple while driving, or use a mobile phone. It is illegal to smoke a cigarette in a bus shelter or use more than two dogs to kill a fox. It is very illegal to smack your children and if you try being a Brazilian in a Tube station you’re in real trouble.
To enforce all these new laws we have a police force of 140,000, most of whom do four days a week of ladder training and one day a week arresting doctors for attempting to explode.
To try to get round the problem the government has introduced new tiers of policing such as speed cameras and those Highways Agency teams you see on motorways in chequerboard 4x4s. They look like policemen and they have the legend “traffic officer” emblazoned in the back window. But their main job is to clear up the mess after an accident. Which means, technically, they are Wombles.
Then you have the community support officers, who have fewer powers than Luxembourg and are really nothing more than neighbourhood watch wardens in hi-viz jackets.
If they see a Brazilian fox eating an apple in a bus shelter they have to call for a proper policeman, who can’t come because it’s night time and the station is shut, or because he hasn’t had any fox training or because he’s otherwise engaged on the top deck of the No 42, arresting a doctor for having a backpack full of baking powder and hair gel.
The fact is this. The government is churning out the laws, and the only way they can be enforced is if ordinary people start to shop their fellow citizens. That brings us neatly to two places at the same time. Moscow, in 1967, and www.interferingzealot.com. Which actually, are the same thing.
No, really. How long will it be before you will only confide in your oldest friends, and then only in a whisper, in case an agent of the state is listening.? You think I’m joking but trust me on this. Today you are being reported for indicating a bit too early in your Ford Fiesta. Tomorrow, when they get round to making climate change scepticism a crime – and they will – the equivalent of StephenHarrison and Kev627 will shop you for leaving your TV on stand-by.
It all flies in the face of everything I learnt at school. That you never, ever shop anyone to the teachers.
And it’s all the wrong way round. Instead of setting up websites where people are exposed for breaking laws that shouldn’t exist, I suggest we set one up that reveals the names and addresses of those who call for such laws to be imposed in the first place. I even have a name for such a thing: www.shop-a-dingleberry.com.
In the meantime, though, I must thank the people who put up the signs outside my house. On these chilly summer evenings they came in very handy. As firewood.
And now it is time to move on to the subject of this morning’s column. The new Mercedes C-class.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.
I haven’t finished yet.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.
I’ve owned a couple of Mercs in the past four or five years and have grown accustomed to the way the on-board computer works. I know how long you hold the mute button down to make the traffic announcement system go away. I know that you have to push the second button up on the right twice to make the sat nav map bigger. I know how to use the phone. It’s all intuitive.
And now they’ve changed it, which means I spent most of my time in this car fiddling with what looks suspiciously like a rip-off of the BMW iDrive system. I’m sure that in time you could get used to it. I’m sure it’s all very German. But so was the old system. So why change it, you clodhopping imbeciles?
Occasionally I was able to ignore the hulking presence of the new computer system and concentrate on the car itself, and I must say it wasn’t too bad in a straightforward, Mercedesy sort of way. It’s bigger than the old model, a little bit heavier and it rides around on suspension that can trace its roots back to the 190 from the early Eighties.
That said, the 280 I tried came with the seven-speed gearbox – that’s two more than it needs – but the changes were so smooth you never really noticed that it was doing them more than is actually necessary.
Other things? Well, it was quiet, extremely smooth riding and quite fast. Although the diesel version you’ll buy won’t be.
I liked it more than the dreary BMW 3-series, but is it, I wondered, significantly better than the much cheaper Ford Mondeo?
The Ford is more spacious and better looking – the C-class, with all its fancy styling details, looks like a Kia Magentis. But there’s a sense in the Merc that you are driving something that’s been hewn from the solid rather than assembled.
There’s some evidence to suggest this might be the case.
When Daimler-Benz merged with Chrysler, the American engineers realised after a short while that the Germans at Mercedes were paying five times more for their seats than they were.
So they sent some Chrysler seats to Stuttgart saying, “Hey guys. We think you’re being overcharged.”
Having spent a few weeks examining the Chrysler seats, the Germans replied, “Nein. Ve zink it is you who are being overcharged.”
There was a time, I agree, when Mercedes stopped taking such care, but they’re back in business now. You can’t quite put your finger on why, especially when a woman from Radio Nether Wallop has just interrupted Terry Wogan to say the pelican crossing on Acacia Avenue has stopped working and you can’t find a way to shut her up.
And as you fumble about with all the buttons on the centre console you won’t be looking where you’re going. Which means that when you do finally get home you will turn on your internet to find that Kev627 and Stephen Harrison have put you on www.interferingzealot.com.
Vital statistics
Model Mercedes C 280 Sport
Engine 2996cc, six cylinders
Power 228bhp @ 6000rpm
Torque 221 lb ft @ 2500rpm
Transmission Seven-speed automatic
Fuel 30.7mpg (combined cycle)
CO2 224g/km
Acceleration 0-62mph: 7.2sec
Top speed 152mph
Price £31,077
Rating 3 stars
Verdict Good if you ignore the computer
Mercedes C 280 Sport
Drive this and the road zealots will have you
Mercedes C280 Sport
Image :1 of 2
Jeremy Clarkson
While I was away last week, someone came in the night and erected a couple of handmade road signs on the grass verge outside my house.
They advertise a new website that encourages road users to report fellow citizens for dangerous or antisocial driving. I think it may be called www.interferingzealot.com.
The idea is simple. If you are annoyed by someone’s driving you simply post their numberplate, and a brief description of their crime, in the hope that they’ll log on too and be so ashamed they’ll turn over a new leaf and become a vicar.
Let me give you some examples. A chap with the username of StephenHarrison, who has made 157 posts so far, quotes the numberplate of a car that, he says, on July 9 in Birmingham city centre “positioned itself in the left/straight-on lane, then turned right at the roundabout”.
It gets worse. Another chap, called Kev627, tells us that in Perham, Hampshire, a chap driving a Ford Fiesta “indicated 100 yards before the exit prior to the one it used to leave the A342”.
I’m surprised to find that someone in Glasgow didn’t tell the members he’d seen two Muslim men “drive right over the pavement and into the terminal at the city’s airport in a burning Jeep Cherokee”.
Sadly, I’m afraid I don’t know whether I appear because I don’t know what my numberplate is.
But I do know this. We are talking here about the dullest website in the whole of human history. And also the most terrifying . . .
The problem is that we now have so many laws in the UK and so few policemen to enforce them all that the slack is being taken up by an army of bitter and twisted fiftysomething busybodies with beige clothes and upper lips puckered so badly by rage that they look like one of Mr Kipling’s cakes.
Think about it. When we were growing up it was illegal to murder someone, and er . . . that’s it. Now it is illegal to eat an apple while driving, or use a mobile phone. It is illegal to smoke a cigarette in a bus shelter or use more than two dogs to kill a fox. It is very illegal to smack your children and if you try being a Brazilian in a Tube station you’re in real trouble.
To enforce all these new laws we have a police force of 140,000, most of whom do four days a week of ladder training and one day a week arresting doctors for attempting to explode.
To try to get round the problem the government has introduced new tiers of policing such as speed cameras and those Highways Agency teams you see on motorways in chequerboard 4x4s. They look like policemen and they have the legend “traffic officer” emblazoned in the back window. But their main job is to clear up the mess after an accident. Which means, technically, they are Wombles.
Then you have the community support officers, who have fewer powers than Luxembourg and are really nothing more than neighbourhood watch wardens in hi-viz jackets.
If they see a Brazilian fox eating an apple in a bus shelter they have to call for a proper policeman, who can’t come because it’s night time and the station is shut, or because he hasn’t had any fox training or because he’s otherwise engaged on the top deck of the No 42, arresting a doctor for having a backpack full of baking powder and hair gel.
The fact is this. The government is churning out the laws, and the only way they can be enforced is if ordinary people start to shop their fellow citizens. That brings us neatly to two places at the same time. Moscow, in 1967, and www.interferingzealot.com. Which actually, are the same thing.
No, really. How long will it be before you will only confide in your oldest friends, and then only in a whisper, in case an agent of the state is listening.? You think I’m joking but trust me on this. Today you are being reported for indicating a bit too early in your Ford Fiesta. Tomorrow, when they get round to making climate change scepticism a crime – and they will – the equivalent of StephenHarrison and Kev627 will shop you for leaving your TV on stand-by.
It all flies in the face of everything I learnt at school. That you never, ever shop anyone to the teachers.
And it’s all the wrong way round. Instead of setting up websites where people are exposed for breaking laws that shouldn’t exist, I suggest we set one up that reveals the names and addresses of those who call for such laws to be imposed in the first place. I even have a name for such a thing: www.shop-a-dingleberry.com.
In the meantime, though, I must thank the people who put up the signs outside my house. On these chilly summer evenings they came in very handy. As firewood.
And now it is time to move on to the subject of this morning’s column. The new Mercedes C-class.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.
I haven’t finished yet.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.
I’ve owned a couple of Mercs in the past four or five years and have grown accustomed to the way the on-board computer works. I know how long you hold the mute button down to make the traffic announcement system go away. I know that you have to push the second button up on the right twice to make the sat nav map bigger. I know how to use the phone. It’s all intuitive.
And now they’ve changed it, which means I spent most of my time in this car fiddling with what looks suspiciously like a rip-off of the BMW iDrive system. I’m sure that in time you could get used to it. I’m sure it’s all very German. But so was the old system. So why change it, you clodhopping imbeciles?
Occasionally I was able to ignore the hulking presence of the new computer system and concentrate on the car itself, and I must say it wasn’t too bad in a straightforward, Mercedesy sort of way. It’s bigger than the old model, a little bit heavier and it rides around on suspension that can trace its roots back to the 190 from the early Eighties.
That said, the 280 I tried came with the seven-speed gearbox – that’s two more than it needs – but the changes were so smooth you never really noticed that it was doing them more than is actually necessary.
Other things? Well, it was quiet, extremely smooth riding and quite fast. Although the diesel version you’ll buy won’t be.
I liked it more than the dreary BMW 3-series, but is it, I wondered, significantly better than the much cheaper Ford Mondeo?
The Ford is more spacious and better looking – the C-class, with all its fancy styling details, looks like a Kia Magentis. But there’s a sense in the Merc that you are driving something that’s been hewn from the solid rather than assembled.
There’s some evidence to suggest this might be the case.
When Daimler-Benz merged with Chrysler, the American engineers realised after a short while that the Germans at Mercedes were paying five times more for their seats than they were.
So they sent some Chrysler seats to Stuttgart saying, “Hey guys. We think you’re being overcharged.”
Having spent a few weeks examining the Chrysler seats, the Germans replied, “Nein. Ve zink it is you who are being overcharged.”
There was a time, I agree, when Mercedes stopped taking such care, but they’re back in business now. You can’t quite put your finger on why, especially when a woman from Radio Nether Wallop has just interrupted Terry Wogan to say the pelican crossing on Acacia Avenue has stopped working and you can’t find a way to shut her up.
And as you fumble about with all the buttons on the centre console you won’t be looking where you’re going. Which means that when you do finally get home you will turn on your internet to find that Kev627 and Stephen Harrison have put you on www.interferingzealot.com.
Vital statistics
Model Mercedes C 280 Sport
Engine 2996cc, six cylinders
Power 228bhp @ 6000rpm
Torque 221 lb ft @ 2500rpm
Transmission Seven-speed automatic
Fuel 30.7mpg (combined cycle)
CO2 224g/km
Acceleration 0-62mph: 7.2sec
Top speed 152mph
Price £31,077
Rating 3 stars
Verdict Good if you ignore the computer
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