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It would be easy to just dismiss the Mercedes MGC 43 here as just the budget version of the more established the 63 a sort of watered down my first day mg for the new money enthusiasts.
Which it kinda is.
It's less powerful, it's less expensive and for some that means less prestigious.
But I think that it earns its AMG badge and your respect matching excellent performance with fellas build quality while still being really good value, relatively speaking.
Dr. Shaka let me and I'll explain [SOUND] Now what we have here is a performance variant of the C class Sedan.
The lowest one.
There is the 43, the 63 and 63s.
Now the 43 at the end of this model number means that it's powered by a three leader Biturbo V6 engine.
Making 385 horsepower and 384 pound feet of torque because model numbers don't mean anything, it's just marketing people.
Now that engine is going to be mated with a nine speed automatic transmission and the AMG 4matic all wheel drive system which is a slightly more rear biased version of Mercedes is all wheel drive system.
That power train feels fantastic going from zero to 60 in just four and a half seconds.
And it sounds amazing thanks to our AMG performance exhaust.
Now that's a $1250 option which seems expensive but if you're like me it means that you can skip the 850 bucks for the burmester audio system and just crack the windows in Floor whenever you want to hear some sweet music.
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The handling is also very good.
It's got really tight steering.
It's got a really agile response, and there's just so much grip.
Chucking this thing into a corner is just a joy.
The steering wheel falls nicely into the hand and feels good while it's there.
And the seating position And it's good but made better by these optional AMG performance seats.
There are $2500 option but it's kind of a must get if you wanna take full advantage of all the grip that vehicle has available to you.
I can't use these in my seat though they're a bit tighten the hip for me, keeping things suspended while you're checking, In the corners is the AMG right control sport suspension, which means electronically controlled dampers with sports brings it all four corners.
You got three settings to choose from, and all three of them are needlessly firm.
Comfort mode in this car feels like sport and pretty much everything I've driven Even this year and I can't see why you never go all the way up a Sport+ unless you were on a class smooth a race track.
Now if you can deal with a little bit of punishment, you are rewarded with probably more seat of the pants feel that you've ever needed.
Now are optional 19 inch wheels probably aren't helping comfort all that much but they are probably adding something Thing to the responsiveness.
And they do look dope, showing off our AMG brakes, while we roll along.
Now, the firm suspension is pretty much my only performance nitpick for this vehicle.
It's just a ton of fun to drive, and it sounds amazing, as I've mentioned.
[SOUND] And no, the performance Doesn't match that of the C 63.
Which you probably won't notice that when you're pulling teeth or corner and then listening to the screen with the exhausted you accelerate out of it.
But what might be singing a different tune if you throw a couple more hundred horsepower in my direction.
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If you do most of your driving on the street with the occasional track day or auto cross, I'd say this is probably actually a better value for your buck 63.
In fact, I think I might take this Over its big brother.
[SOUND] Now the car surrounding all of that performance is a slightly more premium version of the C class sedan, which means that in the dashboard, we've got the old command infotainment system.
It doesn't quite feel out Outdated just yet but it is starting to show its age and I am a little bit annoyed that we've got $4,000 of technology upgrades in the dashboard from the head up display to the digital instrument cluster and navigation upgrades, when I'm pretty much just going to spend the whole time plugging into the standard Android Auto or Apple Carplay every day anyway.
Now on the safety side of things, it is nice to have access to a full suite of driver eight feature Things like adaptive cruise control and Lane Departure prevention.
Though I think with a car like this I'd probably steer towards a more pure driving experience and hesitate to check those really expensive option boxes.
That said if you do get it it does add Mercedes Benz his car to excommunication which doesn't do a whole lot now but it's a bit of Future proofing for down the road.
When cars and infrastructure start talking to each other.
This is going to be your daily driver just plan accordingly.
Now there are also coupe and cabriolet variants of the C43.
But the sedan is the least expensive of the three, which is one reason why I like it the best, but it's still a fairly expensive proposition starting at 55,250 bucks.
Before destination charges.
On the other hand, that's 12 grand less than a C 63.
And you get to 60 miles per hour, just half a second slower.
That's a pretty good bargain in my book until you consider the options.
And we've got like 18 grand worth of options on this thing, many of which are just appearance and style upgrades, which brings us to an estimated price of around $73,000 each Stick to just the performance upgrades though and you can find the sweet spot at around the $60,000 mark and you can find out how we spend hours as part of our full review over on the road.
Show.com.
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