Soft-top but a great drive
Mercedes has a plethora of new roof-optional cars coming. It all starts in fine style with the new C 200 cabriolet, reports Paul Owen.
Attending Melbourne’s annual Motorclassica event is like visiting an exhibition of live car porn. There’s phallic E-Type Jaguars mixing with curvaceous Alfa Romeo 6Cs, muscular and welloiled Allard and Bristol 402 sportscars rubbing their waxed fenders against fetish-pleasing vehicles like the jet-black Mercedes 220 saloon bearing a numberplate that’s obviously someone’s bad joke – HTL 626.
If Max Mosely had suddenly goose-stepped through the opening night crowd of powersuited men and Prada-armed women while wearing his preferred attire for bedroom entertainment, I wouldn’t have been surprised. For if the Emperor Caligula had ridden in cars instead of chariots, this would have been his grand vision of an orgy on wheels.
The perfect venue, then, for Mercedes to uncover the $461,200 Mercedes-AMG S 65 cabriolet. It’s evidently the seven deadly sins all wrapped up in metal. There’s a 5.5 litre twin-turbo V12 under the bonnet that potentially develops enough torque to either speed up the spin of the planet when you drive it west, or slow it down when you point it west.
Few petrol-powered fourwheelers can boast of four-figure driving force outputs in Newtonmetres, but this enters the same exclusive club as the Bugatti Veyron as one that can. If you require 463kW under your right foot, the S 65 cabriolet’s got you covered.
A rare beast has therefore just joined the company of a whole lot of other historically-significant but hard-to-find cars on display at the Motorclassica. The S 65 cabriolet might not have been the true star of the 2016 event (for me, that prize goes to the Allard), but it could eventually become one sometime around 2032. For we Kiwis will collectively be lucky to buy more than the odd one or two over each year of the S 65 cabriolet’s entire availability here.
It’s tempting to say that the S 65 cabriolet is ultimate Mercedes for NZ, but of course it’s not. That honour belongs to the MercedesMaybach S 650 cabriolet just launched at the Los Angeles Auto Show. Where will it end?
Far greater numbers of us will likely opt for the new little brother of those S-cabriolets instead.
The incoming C200 cabriolet costs $89,900. There definitely is a family resemblance with its larger siblings in a faintly-more-saintly way. If four-seater cabriolets can be considered sensible cars, then this is quite possibly the one that makes most sense of all.
Where the S-models are likely to induce envy and lust in those that view them, and be considered proof of gluttony and greed in those who own them, the act of buying a C 200 cabriolet could be considered the exercise of cold, calculated logic.
Gaining access to the cabriolet version of the C200 might require the spending of a $17,000 premium above the $71,990 saloon that shares the same 135kW/ 300Nm 2.0-litre turbocharged fourcylinder engine, but this is a class act when it comes to the usual automotive heresy of cutting off a metal roof and adding a soft-top.
The owner of HTL 626 would be quick to point out that Stuttgart’s oldest car company learned plenty about soft-top design when making the huge seven-seat Mercedes 770 cabriolets that were favoured by his numberplate’s namesake, the deposed Kaiser Whilhelm II, and Emperor Hirohito back in the late 1930s.
And he/she would probably be right, for the soft-top of the C 200 cab is a device of pure genius. It mounts or stows itself with speed while the car is still on the move at city pace, quells wind noise to metal roof levels when erect thanks to the multiple layers of fabric, and the breeze management with it down is equally impressive thanks to the airstream-diverting spoiler at the top of the windscreen. There is also a comprehensive quick-acting roll-over protection system included in the package.
Usually cabriolets result in structural deficiencies and added mass that can degrade the handling of these variants when compared to the donor saloon models, but the C-class cabriolet is just as obliging to drive as the 120kg-lighter C 200 with the roof in situ.
Expect a near-identical driving persona to the four-door – the same willing powertrain with a talent for saving fuel, the same neutral handling balance and compliant comfort-oriented suspension. Same lack of tactile steering wheel feedback when compared directly to the BMW alternative. It’s just that everything’s slowed down a little by the weight of the underbody structural reinforcements, added servo motors (including welcome seatbelt extenders), and power tonneau covers that cabriolet projects tend to create.
Shifting that added mass won’t be as challenging for the two coming C-class cabriolet models that bear the Mercedes-AMG brand as it is for the Benz-badged C 200. The $135,900 C 43 cabriolet will pack 270kW/520Nm’s worth of turbocharged V6 punch, while the $189,900 C 63 S cabriolet will up those outputs to 375kW/700Nm via its twin-turbo V8. Times for the 0-100kmh sprint will be lowered to 4.1 seconds when the latter arrives.
Which just happens to be exactly the same 0-100 time that any potential owner of the S 65 cabriolet can boast of.