German Car Zone

Check out the link below. I thought it was a matter of time that MB (Oz anyway) would restructure their pricing to make them a bit more competitive. IMO, the new pricing is quite sharp.



Mercedes adds features - at a price - drive.com.au

Not long after I posted this, I came across Carpoint and they offered a better breakdown of the new pricing structure.

Mercedes-Benz re-acquires targets August 2007 Car Review - CarPoint Australia

It is about time MB realise their cars are way over priced in the Australian market, some of the equipment should really be standard, stuff like rear side airbag in the A, B, and the CLK class shouldn't really be optional in the 1st place. All ML, R and GL should have reversing camera as standard as well. Car alarms should be standard in all MB costing over $100k.

MB might have 'adjusted' the price for the new C-class but it hardly cost MB Australia anything to replace the C180 with the C200 because they share the same engine hardware anyway. A top of the range C280 still cost $98k drive away, and that is way too expensive considering a BMW 335i is priced not so far away, no wonder MB Australia does not offer the C350 in Australia.

The new pricing is ok, I don't think it will improve sales as much as MB want because those people who has the money to buy a MB will buy it anyway regardless how much the car will cost, people simply want one. Take a look on the street and see how many basic spec C180s are on the road. There are cars with better features on the market, such as the Lexus IS250 but people still chose to buy a C180 instead, and live with the no frills package. So I guess MB is targetting after those potential Lexus type of buyers?

Agree!

Mercedes needed to up the equipment WITHOUT any price increase! Their margins must be easily large enough to absorb this. But at least they are getting better SLOOOOWLY.

You know I believe Mercedes puts awfull alloys as standard to force buyers into hugely expensive optional ones! Have you guys seen the ones standard on the s350.

Thanks for pointing that out. Mercedes does put extremely ugly wheels as standard. I have seen plenty of new S350 on the road, and none of them has the standard wheels on them. The optional wheels are pricy but you should check out the price for a set of AMG wheels, $10k a set of rims is just too much, and I am not sure if the tyres are included or not.

I think the standard Elegance wheels for pre-facelift E-class are even uglier than those on the S350. Those rims are one of the worst wheel design ever. MB charged us $500 for the optional wheels, and we had no choice but to get them. $500 isn't that much, but this is another example of MB getting as much as they can out of their customers.

Hey Monster,

You say that the C280 is $98k drive away. R u able to tell me what options that was put on to get to that price?

The C280 is $85k in either trim and already comes with COMMAND and electric seats and factoring in govt duties and dealer charges, say $6k, I think there's still room for some options. Just curious, that's all.

Personally, I would prefer the C280. I get no where close to the performance of the 335 but the C280's performance is adequate for me and subjectively, it looks a hell lot better than the BMW.

From what I can remember, Bi-Xenon headlights (cannot believe it is optional on a C280), Harman Kardon sound system, Metallic Paint (yet again, cannot believe it is optional), Sun-roof, and Rear windscreen roller blind. So all of this add up to a mighty $98k.


As you can see, MB Australia's new pricing structure isn't that much different to the old one, things like Metallic Paint and sun-roof should be standard for the top of the line C-class. However I do notice the price for the optional items are a bit cheaper. For example the COMMAND APS cost a more reasonable $3900 instead of $7000 (that is the price for the older COMMAND in the E-class), and metallic paint used to cost $2100 I think, now it is $1900.

Yeah, a lot of the options are cheaper which was a welcome surprise for me, especially the Vision package which costs $4500, a saving of $2300 (cost of the Bi-Xenon lights) if you were to add on separately.