Any owners chime in? About to start talking to a dealership and want to get some preliminary info going in. I've seen people with problems, but you see people with problems with lots of vehicles, so what's to believe?

Any general reviews?

 

First year reliability was very bad, so if you're looking at a 2015, be cautious. A quick search through the forum for threads with words like "issues" or "problems" in the title will help alert you to a few things. There was a serious problem with the wrist pins on all C300s made before April 2015, steer clear.

I think the jury is still out on whether or how much the 2016s are an improvement, but anecdotally there seem to be fewer problems reported with newer builds. Build quality is not as consistently good as it has been for other Mercedes models in the past, I think it's fair to say.

 

Wrist Pin repair or other similarly major operations would be on the car fax or maintenance report, right?

VIN will give me production date?

 

I think it should be. Search wrist pin on the archives to find out. VIN will give you production date. Since it was something like April 15, 2015, I would stay with 5/15 build dates and later.

 

Fleet/loaner 2016s don't go for much more past the 2015 model. I might just do that, depending if the 450 causes issues.

Would the C400 have similar problems?

 

I don't know if the 400 has the wrist pin problems, but it will have all the other problems. Lots of things wrong with the first year models, regardless of engine. Lots of electronics/tech and build quality problems.