Cars by Mercedes have never exactly blended into the background. The vast S-class - the biggest ship in the company's fleet, which has a bonnet marginally shorter than the average street - is generally about as close as we get to seeing Russian Zils on British roads. But even the less massive Mercs hardly seem shy and retiring. They don't actually go about with a price tag hanging off the bumper, but something about their unguardedly opulent shapes seems determined to account noisily for every last penny the driver has spent.
The new C-class, like its older brothers, still says "wad", but it says so a little more decorously. No one will be in any doubt that you pull down some fairly serious annual K, which, I take it, is most of the point of owning one. But at the same time, the famous Mercedes twin headlamps now come in a single, moulded unit that is roughly the shape of a Los Angeles swimming pool and, overall, the car has a softer, more fluid look than the legendary wallets-on-wheels of old.
Even now, though, the argument about the tastefulness of purchasing a Mercedes could be thought to begin and end with the hood ornament. The company refers to the new C-class as "the most aerodynamic saloon in its market segment". An army of alarmingly qualified technicians has probably spent whole years studying computer-simulated airflow patterns and worrying about turbulence around the boot-catch. Yet at the end of it all, the car still comes out with a wind-resistant cake-decoration slapped onto its bonnet.
Once, perhaps, a hood ornament was the height of style and elegance. Now, nothing shouts "naff" louder or longer. However pleasing that triple-pointed Mercedes-Benz symbol looks in printed form or in relief along the rim of the boot, as a lump of silver rising out of the bonnet of a car it might as well be a model of a charging horse or a representation of the head of Po from the Teletubbies. There is no Mercedes that would not look immediately classier without one - which is useful consolation when a bored or aggrieved pedestrian eventually snaps yours off, or hits it with a cricket bat.
In other respects, the car makes vital advances on the departing C-class (the new one has, for instance, a six-speed fan where the old one had only a measly four-speed). And it scoops up some features that previously you wouldn't have got without shelling out for an S-class. Among no fewer than 20 technical features which the cars share are lamps that light themselves in the dark, sensors that regulate the climate control, and what Mercedes describes, arrestingly, as "intelligent airbags" (they gauge the seriousness of the impact, apparently, and fluff up accordingly).
Key-janglers beware, however: the C-class is a keyless zone. The nubby end of the plastic remote fob simply plugs into a socket on the dashboard. Clearly, when it comes to turning over an engine, we are now as far from the crank-handle as we ever will be. When you plug in, the car remembers you from last time: it recalls the way you had the seat before and where the steering wheel and the mirrors were. It can probably be set up to comb your hair the way you like it, if you're prepared to spend long enough with the computer and the manual. And when you want to get out, you remove the key - or rather, the fob - and the seat slips back and the steering wheel column retracts to smooth your way.
I was bitterly disappointed to discover that my Mercedes (the "Classic" version, as opposed to the fancier "Elegance" and "AvantGarde" versions) did not come fitted with the Linguatronic control system: it is available as an optional extra, but sounds pretty much compulsory to me. This voice-activation device, pioneered by Mercedes, originally operated only the phone, but now extends miraculously to the audio system, including the CD player and the radio.
Herein one of the great motoring pleasures - shouting at the radio - graduates from being merely therapeutic to being importantly functional. Just a word from you and the stereo changes tracks or shifts stations, courtesy of some canny software which responds to a number of spoken commands and, who knows, maybe even a range of other commonly used, in-car listener responses such as "Oh, for goodness sake, leave it, Humphrys" and "Don't make me laugh, Hucknall".
By rights, driving the car ought to be entertainment enough. In first gear, the Classic is deceptively sluggish, but it turns out that it's just giving you an opportunity to straighten your tie and ready yourself for the engine's startling power and pace in higher gears. The C-class has, incidentally, a six-speed gearbox, which is at least three more than you really need in a place like London, but its sensitive gradations will come in handy pretty much everywhere else. The gearstick responds to the merest pressure - a motion so dreamy that I almost forgot the bauble on the bonnet. The most astonishing refinements in the C-class are the ones beneath its skin.
The lowdown
Mercedes-Benz C180 Classic
Price: £20,740
Top speed: 130mph
Acceleration: 0-62 in 11 seconds
Consumption: 29.7 mpg
At the wheel: Nasser Hussain
On the stereo: Craig David
En route for: Derby Novotel
