NOTE: This was a C class rental not an A class as in the title

I have rented many German cars from Sixt in the past 10 years, usually BMW 3, 5 or Audi A5 if available. I own 3 VW Wagons, Jetta, A6 TDI and a 23 BMW 530. I have never considered Mercedes as a buyer. My latest rental driving 2500 KM through Montenegro and Croatia had me scratching my head "This was a fun car to drive with lots of comfort". Here are my impressions

1) TDI engine was smooth and averaged 5.7L to 1000/KM. It seemed very fuel efficient but I hyper miles the down hills in Neutral (Easy to shift stalk) Sorry we don't get the TDI in the US. It was a fantastic engine with Mild Hybrid.
2) Blown away by how the car handled the tight mountain roads (Very responsive) but yet had a smooth comfortable ride (BMW's are definitely stiffer). 8 hour drives were painless. Seats fantastic (Cloth likely basic package).
3) Love the shifter on the wheel (So easy and fast).
4) Visibility with upright seating position was great.
5) Repeat- Comfort and handling were fantastic

Here are soe things I did not like

1) Steering wheel hepatic switches were horrible (Whoever designed this!). I never got used to where the cruise plus and minus was without looking. Other knobs I would hit accidentally. I also hated the non tactile scroll for adjusting cruise by 1KM versus the plus minue by 10. That finite adjustment on cruise was never good. This steering wheel non tactile buttons would prevent me from buying it.
2) Low ground clearance. I know you would say "It is a luxury car" but to me living in areas with decnt undulations in the road, and some dirt roads, plus front curbs parking the front end of the car kept grazing stuff on bumps or the slightest inclines. I measured the GC at the front bumper and sides which all seemed low compared to similar sized vehicles. This C class did not have an AMG package either. The overhang in the front seemed long also possibly making the issue worse. Am I the only person to notice this? Maybe for your KS, FL, or TX drivers it would make no difference.
3) Basic lane departure (Required in the EU) with the green lane lines worked horrible. Never really kept me in a lane aside from a steering wheel vibration and occasional nudge was one of the worst I have driven. To Merc credit, this car did not have driver assist package however my guess even with that package when simply driving (Not on cruise), the basic lane departure would still be worthless. I think the Driver Assist package works very well (I have driven them) but my point is if just driving normally (No cruise) I am not sure how well this car would keep you from crossing a line. Why not offer customers a better standard lane departure warning for cars without the $1900 package.

Aside from the 3 negatives listed above, I really enjoyed the car, never felt tired, and it handled fantastic. Has anyone noticed any of my negatives? I tend to be very critical of cars, drive lots of them, and like tech. ADAS is a hot point for me so I am more critical of semi autonomous features. Currently my favorite ADAS is Honda Pro Pilot, BMW Driver Assist Pro, Kia, Perhaps MERC with Driver assist package (Need to drive one more). Tesla FSD leads the industry now. The new CLA with DAP will raise the bar even more, but not sure it it will catch Tesla.

 

Why are you posting this in the C Class section? Title says A Class. FWIW, I have driven the CLA. They got much better since the addition of Mild Hybrid. Before that they were turds and I couldn't stand the small 4-banger in Comfort mode. Too laggy. Mild Hybrid fixes that. It was surprisingly willing to move. I'm generally not a fan of these small turbo charged engines, but I've rented a VW Golf last year in Europe. It also had Mild Hybrid, and it really makes a difference on these.

Anyway, you probably wanna post in the right section first. Some of your points are general Mercedes points of course. The lane keep is only a last resort. It only intervenes if you are about to depart your lane. It doesn't keep you centered. If you need assistance staying centered in your lane, then maybe you shouldn't drive. That VW Golf I rented in Europe had the kind of lane assist you are referring to where even when just driving normally it constantly interfered with the steering to keep the car center. Totally and utterly annoying. At first I thought the car was broken. It was very nervous driving at high speeds on the German Autobahn. Absolutely unnerving until I figured out it was lane assist, and I had to turn that damn thing off every time I started the car, because I guess it's now mandatory in Europe to automatically activate along with the stupid speed limit warning. Who makes these mandates? Seems everybody hates this stuff and it makes things more dangerous, IMHO, because sometimes I forgot to turn them off and only realized once I was already on the move, so then I had to fiddle with the touchscreen, taking my eyes off the road and try to hit the right area on the touchscreen while moving over uneven roads to turn those two things off.

 

Sorry, it was a C class. The title should have been "Just rented a C class" vs "Just rented A class". I updated the post with this. The title cant be changed. On the lane assist, my VW's with Travel Assist work great. They won't let you depart the lane if you have the "Travel assist on". The C class would not nudge you back into the lane in most cases vs steering wheel shake). Occasionally it nudged (Tested). While you don't like those features and turn them off, I still prefer them. I think I am in the minority.

So, based on the other issues with the C class do you agree? Mostly my impressions were fantastic with the car. Ground Clearance is a point most likely few would notice. It is another deal kill for me. I am not an SUV fan either. The steering wheel was a mess. Mercedes tries to design the safest cars in the industry yet some likely non driving engineer designed the hepatic wheel.

 

I see. That makes more sense. Mercedes has three systems that are relevant here. Lane Keep Assist, Active Lane Keep Assist and Active Steering Assist. The latter two require the car to be optioned with the Driver Assistance Package. Active Lane Keep Assist nudges you back into your lane, but the standard Lane Keep Assist pretty much only vibrates the steering wheel. Same goes for Blind Spot Assist BTW. There's Blind Spot Assist and Active Blind Spot Assist. The latter steers you back into your lane if you try to change lanes with another car in your blind spot, whereas the standard system only alerts. So it comes down to properly optioning these cars. The Active Steering Assist works in conjunction with DISTRONIC and actively steers the car in the lane. So Mercedes deliberately separated these and you can individually turn on/off one or the other. For example I have Active Lane Keep Assist permanently turned off in my C63, but I use Active Steering Assist whenever I engage DISTRONIC. I generally find any Lane Keep Assist total garbage and unnecessary. I occasionally deliberately need to get close to a lane marker to avoid debris, potholes or get away from another driver who can't seem to stay in their lane, and in most of these situations I end up fighting Lane Keep Assist. These systems exist because of distracted drivers and it's a sad affair that it takes so little to get a driver's license. Too many people do not belong behind the steering wheel of a car, IMHO.

As far as the current regular C Class goes (W206) it does drive pretty well. Much better than the previous generation. They improved the suspension. Not sure what suspension this TDI had, but here in the US the C300 has what Mercedes calls Selective Damping Suspension. You can't adjust it manually between Comfort and Sport by changing the Drive mode, but it has a Comfort and Sport setting and automatically switches between them depending on the amount of body movement. So if you enter a corner fast, then it switches to Sport and if you just casually cruise along it stays in Comfort. In the W205 this suspension left a lot to be desired. It felt very floaty, but the W206 is noticeably better. What I don't like about the W206 is the general cost cutting. There's lots of hard plastic now in places that you touch on a regular basis. The door grab handle is a brick of plastic for example, whereas in the prior generations it was wrapped in leather. Just feels cheap.

 

OP, next time if you have the opportunity, actually rent the A-Class like your title only because it is a huge improvement thanks to the pure ev drivetrain (talking specifically the C174 CLA EV)
https://mbworld.org/forums/cla-eq/92...new-forum.html
https://mbworld.org/forums/cla-eq/92...pressions.html
https://mbworld.org/forums/cla-eq/91...ew-cla-ev.html

 

Thanks so far for the great feedback. Geez, this lane assist stuff seems complicated with so many options. I am sure my rental from Sixt had the most basic options (No package) so that makes sense on the steering wheel only shake. Occasionally it nudged me back into the lane but rarely. Back to the nit picky point on Ground Clearance I was not wrong in noticing that front under pinnings hitting on every bump or undulations in the roads I was driving in Montenegro. Here is a reddit post I just found.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ItalyMotori...ì_bassa/?tl=en

 

Just to be clear here, this depends on the suspension. I forgot to mention, but optionally these can be had with a sport suspension, which is lower than the standard suspension. It's very common for European cars to have the sport suspension. so w/o knowing the specs of that rental car you won't know its actual ground clearance. I don't think these are that low, even with the sport suspension, but then I drive an AMG and have to go up my driveway diagonally in order to not scrape, so my baseline is a bit different.