Mercedes-amg C43 Estate
The otherwise terrifically well-rounded German estate has shown a rare, and frustrating, sign of weakness
LATELY, I’VE BEEN FINDING the C43’s automatic gearbox increasingly frustrating. It’s important to stress that it does a thoroughly excellent job if left to its own devices, slurring seamlessly through all nine ratios, and even when tasked with acting a bit more lively in Sport mode, possessing an uncanny knack of knowing which gear to be in, and when.
However, being the awkward human element as ever, I try to have as much control as I can over my 362bhp performance estate car. Sure, if the journey involves the M25, or for the first 15 minutes after leaving home when both car and me are warming up, then yes, I’ll leave it in Comfort and auto. But the rest of the time I like to decide which gear I’m going to use and when – call it good old-fashioned ‘driving’. And this is where the C43 reveals a rare weakness.
It starts with the human-machine interface. Like so many German cars, the C43’s paddles behind the wheel seem like an afterthought. They’re too small, too plasticky, and not terribly well shaped. It’s almost as if they’re designed to dissuade you from changing gear manually in the first place. Give an Alfa Giulia a try, AMG, and see how it does paddles.
There’s nothing wrong with the C43’s full-bore upshifts, nor its whip-crack downshifts; it’s when the unexpected happens, or the road gets challenging, or – heaven forbid – you don’t shift up in time before the rev limiter. That last one is a real issue. While the V6 is redlined at 6500rpm, the limiter cuts in slightly before that, and if you tag it, the ’box doesn’t quite know how to react. It hangs on to the previous gear for an awkwardly long moment, then slurs in the next ratio like a 20-year-old slusher. If you’ve got the sports exhaust switched on, it all sounds a bit embarrassing, frankly, so it’s more important than ever to spot the ‘Up!’ warning that glares at you from the TFT screen between the main dials.
There are shift lights, too, but these are hidden behind the rim of the wheel for me. Overall, there’s a clumsiness to the ’box’s operation in these circumstances that undermines the C43’s appeal as a car purely to drive. Maybe I should just stop the resistance, put it back in auto, and dream it has a six-speed manual.