2016 Mercedes Benz C300 - This Is What A Luxury Car Should Look Like

In this day and age where the most plebeian of basic transportation has the accoutrements of a Bentley, you have to hand it to Mercedes Benz for peddling their C class sedan at a  showroom cash register tilting, $60,000 per copy. Yes, the base price is thousands less, but what's the point of a stripper Benz? What's more, it's not only Mercedes Benz' best selling car, it's the best selling luxury car in America. Credit that with Mercedes Benz' 2014 update of the C class that was so fantastic that it helps the "C" transcend value. If you must know, the best selling luxury vehicle in this country is the Lexus RX.

Transcending value meaning that this car is so wonderful that people would buy it almost without looking at the sticker price. I love this "little Benz" and it's perhaps one of less than a handful of automobiles on the market today that seriously would like to have. And look, it has four doors and not two. I almost feel like a grown up.

Hasn't always been the case for the Mercedes Benz C class. For most of its tortured life on blacktop, a "C" on the trunk of a Benz denoted a vehicle that was for people who really couldn't afford a Benz. Save for a C class with the vaunted, "AMG" festooned to it's flanks. That dubious role now belongs to a car that's even homelier than 1993-2013 C class Benz', the A class. 

The C Class replaced the oh-so-'80's "190" series that debuted to much overrated fanfare in 1984. Mercedes has always had an "entry level" vehicle for sale in the United  States but never before had they offered a Benz for sale in the U.S. that looked so down market. Well, that was up until they started selling the "A-Class".

There's always been a familial resemblence to all Benz' and the original "C Class" cribbed many design cues from larger Benz' models. However, some designs work better on larger canvases. While an improvement over what came before it, the "C" was even more so a Benz that labeled it's owners as wannabees than the 190 was.

The larger canvas analogy can be applied inversely as well. Like this delicious 2014 "C Class". It too apes the lines of  the larger E and S class Benz' but its much better balanced. The current "E" and "S" Benz/ look like they're larger versions of the C Class versus what the previous C's always resembled - smaller versions of its bigger brothers. Semantics? No, not really.

Once the red headed, bastard step child of the fleet, the Mercedes Benz "C Class" is now the belle of the ball. This is what a luxury car, small or not, should look like.