Hi,

Greetings from Finland. After several audis (rs2, s4) and BMW's ( m5 touring 3.8l) and current Alpina b3 touring 3.2l I'm looking to get a c43 for the wife who prefers an automatic. The c36 didn't come as a touring/estate, or wagon as you call it. So I'm looking at a silver ( surprise surprise) 1999 C43.

My other option is a e39 bmw 540 4.4l. The advantage with the beemer is that it has switchtronic which I find great fun.

The question is whether the c43 ever came with a switchtronic auto option?

 

Only on 2000 models, at least in the U.S., and there were only 25 of them brought here total.

 

I believe only 2000 models in europe as well, but very rare indeed!

 

switchtronic is an alpina feature, how the hell can you find it on a merc ??

 

.....and the advantage with the 99 C43 is the beemer is always in your rear view!

 

 

Somebody ???

 

In this case I meant switchtronic, as in steptronic...my humblest of apologies but shouldn't have been that hard to have figured out, surely...

Ok what it boils down to is that it took MB 4 years to fit something that bmw already had in 1996. Enough said...

 

In 1998 MB had the steptronic in the 1998 Mercedes-Benz SLK. I love beamers I had a 95 740il and the int/ext looked like the car was much newer than a 95! But the car was to long and the 540 is to small,wished I had purchased a 2000-1 740I which is 6 inches shorter than the IL. But when I test drove a 2001 bmw 740 and the 99 C43 the same day I liked the C43 way more. The bmw looked way sportier than C43 and had more options and so forth. But test driving both cars minutes apart it was easy for ME to choose the C43 AMG!

As far as "enough said" I doubt that.