Last week, under Mercedes’ munificence, I drove the new Mercedes C-Class Cabriolet across several Italian highways and through a dozen Slovenian villages, and found it a perfect joy. Even amidst a whirlwind of excess—truffles in Trieste, duck in Dobrovo—the C offered fun without an existential hangover. I'll explain. Sometimes, driving the ultra-luxury set—Bentleys, Rolls-Royces, the upper Benzes—can tax the soul. It is a champagne problem that mostly hits the slender, offbrand-Cava class of people who now and again drive (but will never own) the highest-end luxury cars: participants in Miami exotic car rental programs, valets, and automotive journalists. A writer driving such a pleasurecraft can feel drowned in a river of global capitalism whose currents he has yet to harness. It’s seeing how the other, smaller percentile lives, and even as you thank your lucky tri-pointed stars, you do start to wonder if perhaps it wouldn't be worth the effort to assassinate some Russian oligarch, introduce yourself as his American love child, and claim an oil field or two. The things we do for love of money.

Mercedes-Benz

In their perverse generosity, luxury automakers like to play up this temporary experience, heightening “pain” as they provide more pleasures. On a press trip, you slip from business class flight to luxury hotel, then, after a night of drooling, through a breakfast buffet table piled with smoked salmon, the sweetest cherries, and butter with a higher cost-per-pound than wrought silver. Some, forgetting their guesthood, start acting like full-time inhabitants of such rarified surroundings, and begin demanding different rooms or special booze. Others never shake their deeply set American middle-class anxiety with service, terrifying waitstaff with the misplaced, obsequious "thank you!" and lingering chats that boil down to apologizing for being there. Few are well-adjusted.

Mercedes-Benz

Thankfully, Mercedes’ new C-Class Cabrio is bracing and real. There was solace to be found driving it. It’s pretty and expensive, but accessible enough that you feel reasonable indulging the lustful thoughts it provokes—instead of buying a poster, you might bookmark the online configurator. Snuggled in its red leather seat, you think: with a little work, I too might someday find a foothold on the vertiginous rock face of transcontinental wealth. Low, among the more cowardly mountain goats, but there all the same, with the wind in my hair and AirScarf warming my upper spine. Most dreamable is the C300 Cabriolet, coming to America with standard 18-inch wheels, a 9-speed transmission and a 245-horsepower, turbocharged four-cylinder engine. It’s pretty and lithe (for a car that hits the scales at 3,850 pounds), and by the standards of any previous era, quite quick. Like the coupe on which it’s based, the C300 Cabrio is graceful and cohesive, showing the BMW 428i to be a bit of a creased Bavarian plum, and the Audi A5 cabriolet an aging idol. Also like said coupe, the sounds it makes are a little disappointing. Why is the VW GTI the only sonorous turbocharged four-cylinder out there? Walking up to a gleaming white example with twenty-inch multi-spoke wheels ripped from the S-Class, the dominant impression is of opulence. Unlike more muscled models up-range, the C300 would choose a beach cruise over a mountain sprint every time; like the 280SL Pagoda of the early Seventies, it has a few trappings of athleticism, but the temperament of Louis XIV. Inside, leather, matte-finish wood, and brushed metal soothe like the interior of a fancy shrink’s office, and of the many buttons, I could already see the go-to choices. Those would be the auto climate toggle, plus the holy trinity on the center console: the roof button (hold for 20 seconds), the all-windows-up button, and the Aircap button. The last is a combination of mesh screen and roof-mounted spoiler that prevents buffering in the cabin, even at highway speeds. It works—the only strain in your voice will come from yelling epithets at the C63 Cabrio driver that just roared past you in a cloud of glee.

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