German Car Zone

Well, you should know by now that Australia is always last to get anything!!

Maybe at the moment.

I know that the W203 C-Class for RHD markets was made in South Africa. Might be sometime before Mercedes gets the tooling down there?

Thanks for this information.

Not all were, my parents friends got one of the first W203s to come off the production line, and said the car was made in Germany, before they moved manufacturing to SA! They love MBs, have had many over the years, and I was surprised to find they had no faults with their W203, and it was as good as new. Maybe the ones made in Germany were much better quality than ones made in SA!

South African-made C-Classes seemed to fair pretty well overall. I think MB got the quality control setup right down there (and now in the US). I suppose the early variants of the W203 C-Class for RHD markets were made in Germany, and later in South Africa. Probably going to be the same with the W204 C-Class. Perhaps they're checking out better production techniques at Sindelfingen and once they've perfected them they will move production to South Africa.

Glee88, have you got the latest news from your dealer?

BTW, have you included Bi-Xenon headlights in your order?

Nope...didn't option the bixenons.

Dealer still not sure when first delivery will take place.

I just got a call from the dealer at Chatswood (Sydney) and he's said that there will be a launch in the last weekend in July....

Asked him whether pre ordered cars will be available before this and he said nope....all cars will go out after the launch....sux!

Have been told the new C-Class is definately being produced in Germany and that only a limited number of engine variants will be coming out.

Yes the W204 for Australia is being built in Germany. USA will get the South African build I am told. This was confirmed by 3 dealers I spoke to.

I pre-ordered my C200K in late April this year and have been told it is currently being built in Germany. According to the dealer, MB work on a "decades" system within the month and mine is supposedly scheduled for the 2nd decade of June. I believe there are 4 decades per month.

From there I'm told a 2 month shipping/compliance time to arrive in Aust, thus have put in my contract that the vehicle is to arrive no later than end of August, however I do expect it early to mid August (fingers crossed, sooner).

As mentioned here, yes I too have been told official launch late in July. Mercedes Australia have already had their cars for the press and internal fleet built (May built cars) and should now be shipping over to Australia. I was lucky enough to see the MB orders in the system and many were quite "generic" combinations, eg, black on black, silver on black, etc. Nothing special, so thus why I had to go down the custom factory build, as I wanted mine customised nicely, otherwise I would have taken a "standard" combination May built one.

Mercedes had some issues with ADR compliance with the flashing brake lights (we don't get it), plus the advanced agility suspension option (again ADR said lowering 15mm is too much and thus not approved for here). We also miss out on the intelligent lighting system because of how it varies the beam length........ADR, get with the times!!!!

Don't go on what is in the brochure for standard equipment. We do get items like Pre-safe & Parktronic as standard.

Pricing hasn't been confirmed, but given the exchange rate at present, I would only hope things improve, yet HIGHLY doubt it.

I cannot wait for my car to arrive.......counting the days!