Mazda CX-5, Mercedes-benz C-class
Speed limiters and skiing holidays
Mileage on arrival 7998 Mileage now 18,718 List price when new £35,655
Value now £20,000 Test economy 42.1mpg I LIKE TO take every long-term test car I run on a long road trip in order to really put it to the test. This time it was off to Austria in the C-class for a ski holiday.
Two friends were joining my wife and I, so I had arranged for a roof box to be fitted to the car, suspecting that its boot wouldn’t swallow enough luggage for four. But while I was right, I was surprised at how much we did get in.
The fact that the journey down through Belgium and Germany was unremarkable is also to the C-class’s credit. It’s an 11-hour schlep from Calais to the Austrian Alps, and not all executive saloons can seat four adults in comfort for that amount of time. But the C-class proved it has enough space to do just that, and no one complained of back ache.
Just as impressive was the fuel economy, which turned out to be around 42mpg for our entire trip. That might not sound like much for a modestly powered four-cylinder diesel, but when you consider the addition of the roof box, plus the weight of four adults and all our luggage, and of course the autobahn cruising speed of 100mph, suddenly that seems very reasonable.
True, the C-class pitches and rolls more than I’d like, but even that was less of a problem on this trip, with the car heavily loaded.
On the whole, then, the C-class showed itself to be an adept continent crosser. And it proved one important thing to me: that if you plan to drive to the mountains regularly, you might not need that SUV after all; a set of winter tyres and a roof box for your saloon will do the trick for less money and won’t lumber you with compromised economy for the rest of the year.