Could you tell me how you like your A Class. I am bujying one off the lot and am interested in the experience of others with the car. Thank you. Joe

 

Hi Joe,

Like you I ordered and waited so long that I bought off the lot. Been very happy with the car, it has good acceleration for passing, handles incredibly and visibility at night is excellent. The dash looks really neat especially at night, feel like I'm in a plane when I have the navigation on.
Only complaint is a front passenger door rattle, other then that all has been well.

One more thing I can get amazing mileage on it, have been able to do 48 mpg highway (driving in comfort mode), and easily average 32 mpg city/highway, city driving I can push to 30 mpg but I like to go into sport mode sometimes.
Don't forget not to use sport mode or hard acceleration your first 1,000 miles.

 

Hi joe.

I love the A class interior and experience. I would however make sure it has everything you have as it’s nearly impossible to add anything to it unless it’s expensive after the fact.

My complaints is that there are a few fit and finish quality they need to work on. Very minor, but just want to point it out.

Dont settle for one off the lot if you can’t get everything you want. The drive is pretty nice, not as nice or comfortable as a C300. But it’s more sporty though.

If I were you, I would honestly just wait for the new CLAs as they have a slight bit more features and power in a sportier look.

 

Thank you for your response. I hope mine works out to be as good as yours. I will get it by the end of this month. Why do you recommend that the first 1000 miles be driven in sports mode? Hope you continue to be please with your vehicle. Thank you. Joe

 

Do NOT drive it in sport mode for at least a 1000 miles. The engine need to be broken in before you stress it like that. Sport mode runs at higher RPM than standard comfort mode. Let's hope yours is problem free. Enjoy.

 

I took delivery of mine on May 30, so I've had it for 6 weeks today. I ordered it with the Premium, Multimedia, Driver Assistance, and Parking Assistance packages. I seem to have had the best luck with build quality based on complaints that others have made here. I haven't noticed any loose panels, rattles, squeaks, or anything else wrong with the car. I also haven't experienced any check engine light conditions or faults. I have done a full map/voice control files update for the navigation system, but there have been no general software updates as far as I know.

Everything about the interior is great. Everything that looks like metal is metal, and hard plastics are mostly out of the way. The material I like the least is the gloss black plastic, but that can always be changed with vinyl wrapping or aftermarket parts when they become available. (There are already carbon fiber-look panels available for the euro-spec cars with the sliding cover in the center console.) The ambient lighting is fantastic and is all over the car, including the rear door arm rests and under the seats where rear passengers' feet go. A nice touch with the windshield wiper stalk and the headlight controls is that they are both designed so the "auto" setting looks like the default setting you should set the dial to when you're not using a different setting. All the driver controls seem to work reliably and as expected. The kick-to-open trunk works all the time without me having to try putting my foot in different places (unlike the Volvo XC40). The only problem I've noticed so far is that sometimes touching the door lock "buttons" on the door handles after exiting the car does nothing and I have to lock the car with the smartkey instead. This has happened maybe 4 or 5 times, so I'm guessing it's a glitch. I haven't had any trouble unlocking the car, or any issues with the smartkey or push button start in general.

I'm happy with the driving experience. I'm still in break-in, so I haven't been able to push the car yet, but it feels perfectly responsive in comfort mode. The turning radius is unreal and makes it so easy to maneuver through tight spaces and make quick u-turns. For any 30+ min trip, I've used the Distronic Active Distance Assist (adaptive cruise control) feature quite a lot and it works as well as I had hoped. I don't take my hands off the wheel, but I let it work the accelerator and brake for me, and it makes traffic congestion much nicer. One interesting feature I didn't know about going in is that it can automatically increase or decrease the set speed based on speed limit signs. If you have this enabled, and you go from a 60 MPH area to 30 MPH area, once the car sees the 30 MPH sign, it will lower the set speed and start slowing the car down. It's handy if you miss a speed limit change. You can still bump the set speed up manually with the switch on the left side of the steering wheel of course.

Parking works very well too and the cameras have great visibility and resolution, even at night. I've tested parallel and perpendicular parking a bunch and it's amazing that it just works. The only caveat is it needs other cars to position itself between--it can't use columns or posts. Once you start the parking maneuver, it works the gear selector, accelerator, and brake for you, and just tells you to keep your foot over the brake in case something unexpected happens. It can also unpark the car, and if you are parked perpendicular, you can choose which way you want to leave the parking space.

Multimedia observations: phone calls work well and sound very good over Bluetooth. Playing music over Bluetooth (Android phone) sounds fine, but doesn't work very well. The track skip function works maybe once or twice then stops working, and if I'm using navigation, sometimes after lowering the media volume to give a turn instruction, the music playback will stop and I can't start it again without going to the phone to resume it. Also the volume mute button functions as play/pause, which is good I guess since there's no dedicated button anywhere else for this. If I use Android Auto with my phone and play music through that, all controls work as expected. In fact, Android Auto integration works much better than I had anticipated. If I play music from Spotify on Android Auto and use MBUX navigation to provide trip directions, the physical buttons NAVI and MEDIA/RADIO will toggle between MBUX navigation and Android Auto media! If I use Google Maps on Android Auto to do navigation, the NAVI button will go there instead. If you say "Hey Mercedes" or "OK Google," both work as expected. If you quick press the Voice Control System button on the steering wheel, it activates the MBUX VCS. If you long press the button, it activates the Google Assistant. Neat!

Voice Control works alright. For navigation, it's great with addresses, but very spotty with place names. I find that it helps to specify a city when saying a business name, otherwise it could decide to send you to another state. For answering trivia questions a la Siri or Google Assistant, it works well with conversion questions (what's 1 mile in kilometers) and simple questions like "what is the capitol of …?" "who is the president of …?" etc. There's a question I saw demonstrated in a pre-production review video where the reviewers asked "Who's the prime minister of the country of birth of Justin Bieber?" and it responds "Justin Bieber was born in Canada. The prime minister of Canada is Justin Trudeau." If I ask this same question, it doesn't respond at all. Also, changing the ambient lighting by voice control works well if it knows the color you want. If it doesn't know the color, nothing happens, or sometimes it turns the lights off.

Sorry this is so long. The TL;DR is: great car, would buy again, but maybe in denim blue

 

Thank you for your great response. It was very helpful and appreciated. Joe

 

I just picked up my car today at the dealership. So for anyone thinking about ordering or is also waiting for theirs, mine took 140 days from the day I ordered.

 

You were extremely lucky. I order 1/23/19 still have no vehicle. I order one off the lot which should be coming within 10 days. MB is really dropping the ball on their customer service and communication. My SA was great but MB is not. Joe