My dealer is telling me they can no longer do a new build of the 2016 c450 sedan. Guess we're closer to the c43 sedan than I thought. I'm still tempted to grab an existing c450, but it wouldn't be the exact features I want...

 

Orders in March was for May builds as Apr build was closed in late Feb. I think they will pump out as much as they can until June and retools for C43. I had the same warning from my dealer to get my custom order C450 in ASAP a few weeks back.

 

And now it appears that it's too late I was leaning towards just pulling the trigger, but it's a much tougher decision knowing that I can't get exactly what I want. Balancing that vs. waiting for however long it takes for the c43 sedan to become available.

 

I'm pretty sure it will open for order in June/July for Oct/Nov delivery.

So it will be a painful 6 months but you'll get 9G transmission, a proper AMG and possible PL access.

 

It's still not a "proper AMG" by any means...it's no more or less an AMG than the C450, really. Badges don't make it an AMG, being built and engineered 100% in Affalterbach does.

 

I don't care about the badging. I just want the ability to customize my car, and MB isn't giving us that option at the moment.

 

I just got off the phone with my dealer. I ordered my car on 1/28 with an expected delivery of May. He was surprised to see the vehicle was en route to the dealership for an expected delivery at the end of this month. I am very aroused!

 

Post wasn't referenced to you, I understand your logic completely. Just calling out that neither the C450 or C43 is really a "proper AMG"; they are just a tuned Mercedes (with a few parts stolen from proper AMG) that have the AMG name being whored out on them to drive sales.

Don't get me wrong, the car is significantly better than a regular Mercedes IMO, but it's not a "proper AMG".

Makes sense, as I just ordered mine two weeks ago also for a May build...glad you'll be getting yours ahead of schedule!

 

I know it's not "official" information, but my dealer in NY just told me that he suspected orders wouldn't open on the C43 sedan until late fall given the lack of info from MB on the sedan to date. Obviously can't rely on it, but it's another data point.

 

Has anyone lowered their car? H&R is the only option I can find.http://www.hrsprings.com/application...s/25/1778/2016

 

Thanks for passing on the information, always good to hear the word on the streets.

I'm not putting much weight (or wait if you like puns) in the dealer's thoughts though - it is hard to imagine you won't be able to order the 450/C43 for a 6-7 month gap. Then again, the whole marketing of this car doesn't seem well thought-out by MB, so maybe the dealer nails it.

 

My trip to meet with the MBFS guy was largely worthless. He wouldn't budge on giving me the .00129 MF instead of the marked up .00169 MF (.0004 markup for dealer profit). As I was told before, the markup is to support the salary of the MBFS associates (aka to generate a dealership revenue stream). So I asked him, on average, how long he would say it took him to complete his job for a client leasing a vehicle. He was too stupid to see where this was going and proceeded to tell me it could take as little as 15 minutes, or as much as 60 minutes, depending on the number of questions the client had. He said on average he would estimate the process took about 30 minutes. Going into this I knew the markup would cost me $1450 over the term of a 3 year lease, so I told him "I'm sure you're paid well, but assuming you spend 30 minutes completing your job with me, I would be paying you an effective hourly rate of $2900 per hour...so you can see why I have an issue with this." He got uncomfortable but agreed that this wasn't his hourly rate and proceeded to talk himself in circles...something he did pretty much the entire meeting.

Eventually I said "Look I don't want to waste any more of your time or mine, is there any way I leave here today having the markup removed?" Naturally he said there wasn't. I asked if he's ever given anyone the .00129 "buy rate from MBFS", and he said no...so I just called it a loss and moved on. Prior to point blank asking him, I asked if there was a way we could remove the markup and but still ensure the dealership made their profit off of me by me adding the 3 year PPM and 3 year Tire/Wheel Plus package...to which he proceeded to tell me if I leased, it was a "great deal because I could capitalize it", to which I cut him off and told him I understood this fully and that I was only trying to estimate my total cost of ownership over 3 years of leasing versus buying.

In the end I asked if I could lock the MF in today to guard against the rates inflating before my delivery and he said I wouldn't be able to lock a rate, and that I would be given the effective rate at the time of delivery. I asked if the rates are volatile and if he expected they would go up by the end of May (my time of delivery), and he said he wasn't sure but expected that they would be higher by then. So, that sucked and fingers crossed that the rates hold steady until the end of May...

I also asked for pricing on PPM and Tire/Wheel Plus and he tried to give me the monthly cost on a lease after being capitalized, until I again was able to explain to him that I didn't care about the monthly cost because I could calculate that myself, that I just wanted to gross cost for the 3 year plans if I purchased. As he did many times during the meeting, he flipped aimlessly through his book and then quoted me wildly large ranges for both. One odd thing was that he told me my PPM would be based on the E/GLA-Class rate rather than the C-Class (given the C450 is in a different bracket than a traditional C), and then tried to tell me the dealerships only makes ~$100 on each via this markup. I have a guy that is going to pull the dealer costs for me, so in time I'll be able to prove that was a lie. He also told me my rims costs about $2000 each when talking about the wheel package, to which I just laughed...

There are many more idiotic things he said, eventually I just got tired of wasting my time with him and thanked him for his time and left. Huge waste of time, besides the fact that I know that when I go in to actually pick the car up and sign paperwork I'm going to ask to work with the other MBFS lady they have there...can't stand to listen to this guy stutter, sound clueless, or lie through his teeth any more than I already have.

 

AMG Exhaust question: I am curious how the exhaust note gets louder in Sport+ - how is that physically happening? It seems to me like the exhaust is much louder at say, 3500rpm in Sports+ than it is at 3500rpm in Comfort... Are there flaps or valves in the exhaust or is there another way?

 

There are no flaps or valves that I am aware of. Seems to me that all of the changes in sound are 100% controlled by the remapping of the ECU when sport+ is pressed. To my knowledge, the car in sport+ makes changes to the torque control, boost control, fuel control, camshaft timing, ignition timing, transmission shift interaction etc

 

I could be wrong but I thought I read when the C450 was announced that it has a computer controlled flap somewhere in the middle of the exhaust system, also thought I saw the flap in the initial press photos of the exhaust

 

If there is a flap then both my mechanic and I, could not find it anywhere when we had my car up on the lift doing my muffler delete. We searched for a good 5 minutes and there was no sign of any flaps/valves or electronics to control such a thing.

If there is, and people wanted to drive with sport+ exhaust all the time, could be as easy as turning on sport+, finding the fuse that controls the flaps and pulling it. Voila, full-time sport+ exhaust notes. My buddies with Maseraties do this to their cars.

Curious to see if anyone has any more input on the matter. Would love to get to the bottom of it

 

Just read this one more time and realized you did not specify which type of AMG exhaust you were asking about. My comments above still stand for the C450, however, if asking about the C63, that is a different story.

There is a $1250 AMG Dynamic Performance Exhaust option that uses Computer-controlled vanes near the tailpipes of the AMG C63 exhaust system which also let the driver escalate its sound at the push of a button on the center console.

To my knowledge, this option is only available on the c63 and c63s

 

I was probably thinking of C63 then where the valve is in the X-pipe because I just looked and c450 doesn't have an X-pipe. so I was wrong

 

MY original question was for C450... Hard to imagine that the ECU can make the tone louder... I get that the startup roar and the snap/crackle/pop is ECU controlled, but the constant tone?

 

My dealer say late Oct/early Nov but again, nothing official.

I think MB will consult with dealers to see how many C450 are stuck in the lots before releasing info and take order of C43. I don't think they want to repeat the whole C400 all becoming service loaners again before they couldn't move them as C450 is confirmed.

 

European ordering should be starting about now, so we should be getting some clarity into standard options for the C43 Sedan soon enough.

 

Here's my exchange with my sales rep about MF. They don't touch it. They also don't touch residual percentages. Both are set by MBFS. I drove 5 hours each way to do business with them because they dealt so straight. I asked for 10% off MSRP on the build, $25k for my trade, MF was .00152 in March, residual was 60%. No upselling by the finance guy, no games with up front money. Nothing. Perfectly straight deal start to finish.

Store is Jack Ingram Mercedes in Montgomery Alabama, sales rep is Melissa Wilcox. She gave me her personal cell and would answer questions off hours, nights, weekends, etc.

 

What would your advice be to someone who is in the market for a c450?

Is the c43 sedan going to be any different than the current c450 besides the badging? Is this similar to how Infiniti changed the g37 to the Q series just by badging?

I assume lease options will be attractive once the c43 comes out cause they'll want to get rid of the existing c450 stock.

Any advice on how i should proceed? I am looking to lease not finance.

 

The lease options in terms of residual and money factor won't likely change much vs any other 2016 W205 but I'd expect decent discounts off MSRP for dealer inventory C450. North of 15% I'd think.

 

Thanks, Mike. The sales people and the head of the dealership have been awesome, the finance guy was just a trailer park inbred who didn't have a clue what he was doing. Going to request to work with the other Finance person when I go in to take delivery, maybe I'll have better luck with her. I honestly think the guy I dealt with was just too stupid to have the conversation with.

If it comes down to it, I can always just refuse delivery if they don't take it off. If they won't, and I don't get over it I can just order a C43 instead haha...but I'm pretty much over it already. I also may just ask for a bunch of free stuff too (all weather mats, cargo mat, etc)