Mercedes-Benz C300 Coupe good travelling partner for couple taking to the open road
This offering from the pointed star acquitted itself well on the trail from Stuttgart and up through the German Alps
Minutes after receiving the key to the Mercedes-Benz C300 Coupe in the suburbs of Stuttgart we head off south on the autobahns. Our destination: the German Alps.
Stuttgart, the home of Mercedes-Benz, is Germany’s sixth most populous city, with 600,000 people. Yet escaping the greater metropolitan area does not involve an hours-long crawl. We reach the southbound motorway with ease thanks to an exemplary network of highways connecting Stuttgart and its many suburbs. The navigation system in the C-Class coupe and its optional head-up display are also a big help.
Apart from monitoring your speed, the head-up display also notifies you of the speed limit on the road you are on, which is handy when city speed limits are low and speed cameras ubiquitous.
We borrowed the coupe for three days with the aim of determining whether it makes a good travelling companion. This let us drive across southern Germany and experience the celebrated German Alpine Road that runs from the shore of Lake Constance, bordering Austria and Switzerland, to Lake Königssee in the southeastern-most part of the country.
The autobahn to Austria is not particularly congested but the lack of speed limits proves illusory; there is enough traffic to dampen thoughts of attempting a personal speed record during daylight hours. With a maximum output of 245 horsepower from its 2.0-litre turbocharged engine, the C300 coupe manages no more than 210km/h during the run. It’s not the fastest vehicle on the roads – with a top speed of 250km/h – but it would have been hard for a supercar to go significantly faster.