Not The Cheap Option
by David Finlay (22 Aug 05)

My companion's opinion inclined towards incredulity when she discovered that the car she was sitting in cost £20,290. Even the realisation that around 10% of this was accounted for by optional extras did nothing to make her revise her initial assessment, summed up in the phrase, "How much?" Given that those extras included reach adjustment for the steering wheel - £110 for something I'd have thought should have been available as standard - I couldn't help agreeing with her.

Her view of the A 180 had in any case been coloured at an early stage. I've sat in other A-Class models before, but she hadn't, and she was therefore unprepared for the effect of the twin-floor arrangement. This is the same in the new A-Class as it was in the old, but familiarity has made it seem no less clever than it did right from the start. The essence of it is that if someone has the bad taste to have a head-on shunt with you, the engine and gearbox will slide underneath your seat rather than (as might be the case in almost any other car of this size) turning your lower portions to mince.

An excellent and laudable thing. I would have it no other way. But it does mean that a car which looks like an MPV from the outside feels more like a coupé from the inside. The headroom situation is very good, but not quite as very good as you might think it's going to be. Or as my companion thought it was going to be.

First time in, she bumped her head on the top of the door opening, and was still in a bad mood about this at the end of the trip when she got out, forgot that the interior is higher than it seems, and fell to earth like a stone. Soothing words were required, along with an assurance that the A-Class would be replaced by something else in a matter of days.

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