jeremytaylor
MB Enthusiast
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2005
- Messages
- 2,414
- Location
- Surrey Hills
- Car
- E280CDI Sport Est., CLK 200k Cab., VW T5 174, Citroen C8, and a 2CV!
Autocar this week bade farewell to their long-term C55 Estate this week with high praise indeed, from people who drive more cars than most of us have hot diners. The true test of any car is of course only over time which makes their comments all the more valid. Hopefully there will be others of us out there who think similarly of our cars. For those who didn't see it:
"They came and took the C55 back yesterday, and today for the first time in ages I feel desolate. Empty. Bereft.
I've been scratching around to understand why the loss of a small black estate car could turn someone into a miserable, self-pitying twerp. There are a few possibilities. The first being fairly obvious: if you have a woofer and a child and enjoy antagonising kindergarten supercoupes then the C55 estate is perfect. I grew to love the relationship between torque and chassis, but then that's fairly understandable in a small wagon whose motor displaces so much cubic capacity.
But the C55 worked supremely well as a device, too. And this wasn't so much because it was the bling AMG version, but because Mercedes still make great estate cars. The boot is a better shape than any of its rivals. The Comand system should make the inventor of BMW's I-Drive cry into his overstuffed pillow every night. The boot latch is just the right size for clipping a dog lead on. There can be no greater compliment to the everyday usability of a car than to say that it became seamless: I, or we, never truly appreciated how much it had done for us until it had gone.
But removing usefullness from one's life doesn't induce wistful, melancholy strolls around the garden. I mean we're talking about an inanimate object here. A bloody car. A few thousand shapes of metal and plastic fashioned into a device.
Or are we? You see, sitting here, I think I've happened across the basic ingredient of all car enthusiasm: some form of emotional relationship with your wheels. For many people, the car is just a necessary evil, an unwanted expense. But the rest of us - and I think it's a much larger slice of the population than any government department would ever want to acknowledge - form some kind of emotional bond with our car. If you're reading this, then there's a strong possibility that you cast your own anthropomorphic spell over every car in you care. You wouldn't admit as much in public, but you probably talk to it in darker or lighter times, and you derive great satisfaction from tending to its every need. You treat your car as a member of the family.
And so I've just lost a member of my family. In fact, as a family we've probably spent as much time in the C55 together as we have anywhere else. Yesterday when it left I just felt guilty for neglecting to fix the cracked windscreen. Now, looking at pictures, I remember it as the car I rushed my wife to hospital in. That's trust for you: ambulance or C55? She chose the Merc.
It was the first car my son ever travelled in. It was the car that never once left me stranded. It was the car with bum heaters that could scald your rear in the coldest of snaps: the general workhorse that preferred lurking in the background and just doing its job with no fuss, but immense underlying competence and conviction.
I have never cared where cars go when they leave my care. I regularly laugh at 'must go to a good home' ads. But, rank hypocrisy aside, I must ask this for the sake of a cherished family member recently departed: if you buy it, be good to it."
"They came and took the C55 back yesterday, and today for the first time in ages I feel desolate. Empty. Bereft.
I've been scratching around to understand why the loss of a small black estate car could turn someone into a miserable, self-pitying twerp. There are a few possibilities. The first being fairly obvious: if you have a woofer and a child and enjoy antagonising kindergarten supercoupes then the C55 estate is perfect. I grew to love the relationship between torque and chassis, but then that's fairly understandable in a small wagon whose motor displaces so much cubic capacity.
But the C55 worked supremely well as a device, too. And this wasn't so much because it was the bling AMG version, but because Mercedes still make great estate cars. The boot is a better shape than any of its rivals. The Comand system should make the inventor of BMW's I-Drive cry into his overstuffed pillow every night. The boot latch is just the right size for clipping a dog lead on. There can be no greater compliment to the everyday usability of a car than to say that it became seamless: I, or we, never truly appreciated how much it had done for us until it had gone.
But removing usefullness from one's life doesn't induce wistful, melancholy strolls around the garden. I mean we're talking about an inanimate object here. A bloody car. A few thousand shapes of metal and plastic fashioned into a device.
Or are we? You see, sitting here, I think I've happened across the basic ingredient of all car enthusiasm: some form of emotional relationship with your wheels. For many people, the car is just a necessary evil, an unwanted expense. But the rest of us - and I think it's a much larger slice of the population than any government department would ever want to acknowledge - form some kind of emotional bond with our car. If you're reading this, then there's a strong possibility that you cast your own anthropomorphic spell over every car in you care. You wouldn't admit as much in public, but you probably talk to it in darker or lighter times, and you derive great satisfaction from tending to its every need. You treat your car as a member of the family.
And so I've just lost a member of my family. In fact, as a family we've probably spent as much time in the C55 together as we have anywhere else. Yesterday when it left I just felt guilty for neglecting to fix the cracked windscreen. Now, looking at pictures, I remember it as the car I rushed my wife to hospital in. That's trust for you: ambulance or C55? She chose the Merc.
It was the first car my son ever travelled in. It was the car that never once left me stranded. It was the car with bum heaters that could scald your rear in the coldest of snaps: the general workhorse that preferred lurking in the background and just doing its job with no fuss, but immense underlying competence and conviction.
I have never cared where cars go when they leave my care. I regularly laugh at 'must go to a good home' ads. But, rank hypocrisy aside, I must ask this for the sake of a cherished family member recently departed: if you buy it, be good to it."
