2002 Mercedes-Benz C-Class Interior Review at Automotive.com
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2002 Mercedes-Benz C-Class Review: Interior

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2002 Mercedes-Benz C-Class Review

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Interior
The indoor parts of the C-Class family are at least as appealing as the outdoor parts. The instrument panel design, with its new graphics and deep hood, is shared among the coupe, sedan and wagon, with minor changes, and it's extremely easy to use and understand. The stalk controls all have a nice, beefy feel with positive detents. We like what they've done with the layout and the dTcor of the center stack, where the vents, secondary controls, climate control system, and audio system are mounted, with its wood or aluminum trim and largish, easy-to-grab controls. The glovebox is quite a good size, too, unless you order the CD player, in which case you lose most of the glovebox storage (you'll have to use the center console and the big door pockets).

While the Coupe has standard cloth manual seats with individual adjusters for fore/aft, height, and seatback rake, the more expensive sedans use leather interior trim, and the C32 AMG has its own special sports seats and seat upholstery design, with special AMG gauges. The coupe seats feature a release system that automatically slides the seat forward when the seatback is pulled forward, opening up the rear compartment for entry. The sedan and wagon versions have conventional reclining seats that don't need to fold forward.

Rear seats in the C-Class are far more generous in space and comfort than the previous C-Class seats (we know; we owned two of them), and the interior in general has larger dimensions in almost every area. The seats in the hatchback coupe should be perfectly fine and comfortable for most of the population, but the rear roof slopes down quite a bit, restricting headroom 2.2 inches less than the front seats. That said, the 60/40 rear seat folds down effortlessly, either with the bottom sections folded forward or left in place, depending on how much cargo room you need, opening up from a 10 cubic-foot trunk to a 38 cubic-foot cargo bay that can hold some ridiculously large cargoes. The trunk/cargo bay is as nicely detailed as the rest of the interior.

The station wagon version has exactly the same interior and exterior dimensions save for that wonderful extra space behind the second seat, which opens out from 16.6 cubic feet of flat-floor load space to nearly 49 cubic feet, with tie-downs, cupholders and lights to ease cargo-carrying duty. Next Page



2002 Mercedes-Benz C-Class