The C43 AMG – What’s Old is New Again
 
The C43 was a landmark AMG: the first V-8 in a compact car and the first AMG produced on a regular Mercedes-Benz production line. It finalized the recipe for the burbling compact Mercedes-AMG sedan.
 
Article Jason Cammisa
Photos Eric McCandless
 
Wasn’t it just yesterday that I was a wide-eyed 20-year-old behind the wheel of a brand-new (to me) 6.9? I swear it was. Its original owner had attempted to trade it in at a Chrysler dealership where the salesman offered him $2,000, probably thinking it was “just” a 450SEL. The poor owner was thrilled when I offered him twice that amount.

Boy, did I get a deal. The ultimate 1970s Q-ship was so stealthy that not even its owner knew what it was worth. The car felt ancient to me, with steering only vaguely connected to the front wheels and suspension that insisted on magnifying the big body’s motions. Still, I spent that summer picking fights with Camaros and Corvettes – usually winning. How I loved that magnificent, throbbing V-8.

I blinked. I swear it was only one blink. But here I am, pushing 40, picking stoplight fights from behind the wheel of a brand-new (to me) Mercedes V-8. The 6.9 is long gone – it died tragically in a fire on the side of I-95; but once again, I’ve purchased a Q-ship Benz for the automotive equivalent of couch-cushion money.

My C43 AMG, launched in 1998, is the same age as the 6.9 was when I bought it – 17. This time around, that doesn’t feel old. In fact, I bought this W202 because I needed a modern car. That may sound strange, calling it a modern car, but I needed something with an automatic, stability control and airbags so that I could loan it to houseguests. Somehow it never occurred to me that a W202 could be an old car. That’s probably because I remember when the C43 debuted.

Back then, C-Class styling seemed to me like a lazy facelift of Bruno Sacco’s timeless W201, and the Mercedes’s new cost-cut M113 V-8 was an insult to its M119 predecessor, dropping from four cams to two, 32 valves to 24, and losing variable valve timing in the process. Reading its specs in car magazines, I remember actually laughing at the C43 AMG. With “just” 302 horsepower from that 4.3-liter V-8, it was barely quicker than the 6-cylinder C36 it replaced and it couldn’t keep up with the high-tech monsters with the blue-and-white roundels on them. A total dud, I thought.

Funny how time can change your perceptions: Now the W202’s formal styling looks handsome, elegant and thoroughly modern. And that simple V-8 has proven to be not only bulletproof, but incredibly easy to maintain and repair. Most importantly, I failed to realize that cars would continue to get faster and faster – and when these cars get old, it’s not the 0-60 number that matters, but how the car feels.

Today’s slowest C-Class, the 4-cylinder C300 4Matic, will give this old AMG a good run when the traffic lights turn green. The experience, though, isn’t even close. The C43 reminds me a lot of the W116 6.9 – it’s got the same quiet-but-violent V-8 yowl that makes you feel like you’re in a Detroit muscle car wearing really good earplugs. No turbocharged 4-cylinder can go all NASCAR on you like this – it might throw you back in your seat, but it won’t raise the hairs on your neck with its noise or goad you with its smooth, effortless torque. And it’ll never make your unwitting passengers scratch their heads and wonder why your car looks like a Mercedes but sounds just like a Camaro.

The hot-rod surprise is part of this car’s magic – just like it was for the 6.9 and 6.3 that came before it. And though the C43’s engine owes nothing to racing, its very existence is the result of AMG’s successful partnership with Mercedes-Benz on the track. Think about it this way: AMG made its name in the 1970s by playing with Mercedes V-8s. In the 1980s, it became a worldwide force, campaigning compact Mercedes sedans in the DTM (Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft – German Touring Car Championship). At some point, AMG was going to put those two decades together and stuff a V-8 into the smallest car. Voila, the 1990s C43 AMG.

I mean no offense to the original W202 AMG – the C36 – because that was a righteous car, too. To me, its straight-6 begged for a manual transmission, which sadly wasn’t available. As such, it was a “tweener,” living in the shadow of the W201 190E 2.3-16 and a little too close to the contemporary C280 Sport. Throwing a big, hairy V-8 under the C-Class hood eliminated any ambiguity. This was no longer just a quick Mercedes, it was a full-on muscle car. Suddenly, an automatic was the appropriate gearbox and the 8-cylinder was so unexpected in a car of this size that it changed the game for good. The W203 followed the same pattern – 6-cylinder at first – with the supercharged C32, but it really hit its stride with the clinically insane C55 AMG. From then on, it’s been V-8 all the way for the berserk Baby Benz.

The C43 is in many ways different from modern C-Class AMGs. It was engineered before AMG was confident enough to put stock-car straight-pipe exhausts on its cars. It’s better for it – though deafening exhaust noise has become part of the AMG signature these days; the C43’s muted anger serves as proof that perhaps that’s all a bit unnecessary. Okay, I obviously wish the C43 sounded like a C63, so feel free to ignore that last sentence. The noise is as awesome as it is unnecessary.

Where the old car truly differs from the modern ones, however, is in the way its computers are programmed. This W202 was developed when gas was cheap and fuel-economy standards were lax. The engineers weren’t afraid to let the C43 know it was a muscle car. They acknowledged that someone silly enough to ask for a V-8 shoehorned into a compact sedan isn’t likely to be concerned with fuel economy. Customers had paid for the motor and they’d want to use it, so the 5-speed automatic helps the C43 burn fuel with wanton abandon. It revs the snot out of the engine just for the fun of it.

Keeping up with lumbering traffic up San Francisco’s hills, the C43’s mellifluous V-8 is frequently allowed to sing at 4,000 rpm before the transmission bothers to upshift. You never have to fight for a downshift – as you slow, it happens automatically. This car wants to pounce a Prius on a second’s notice. Modern cars, all concerned with fuel economy and emissions, seem confused in their mission. Either you have to fight with them to give you the power they boast in their brochures, or you have to press a sequence of buttons to engage a sport mode. The C43 starts up ready to go.

With the exception of the W201 – and now the W205 – the W202 pulls off something else that no other sedan has: It genuinely drives like a three-quarter scale S-Class. From behind the wheel of this car, you’d swear you’re in a W140. Granted, one with great seats and a bad attitude. The steering is old-school Benz-box heavy, with a steering wheel so thick it shrugs off anyone with small- or medium-size hands, and compared with today’s mute electrically power-assisted racks, the recirculating-ball system talks a mile a minute.

Those timeless AMG Monoblock wheels were huge back in the day – 17 inches – but are wrapped in tires that, by today’s standards, have large, cushy sidewalls. As a result, the C43 rides better than many modern cars. The staggered setup (7.5-inch-wide wheels in front, 8.5-inchers in the rear) looks aggressive, but doesn’t help the slightly nose-heavy, 3,450-pound C43’s tendency to understeer. Cornering grip levels are genuinely modern sport-sedan good, but the C43 could have benefited from a limited-slip differential to prevent the one-tire-fire on the way out of tight corners. Not that I would ever engage in such irresponsible behavior. Oh, no.
Indeed, the C43 AMG is such an all-around great car to drive that I had to go back to the period magazines to figure out why it didn’t win every comparison test. The reason that it wound up in last place against a Saab, a BMW and an Audi in Car and Driver Magazine’s September 1999 comparison test – other than the lack of a stick shift? It was too expensive.

I never met the article’s author, Don Schroeder, before he passed away – also tragically in a fire, following a top-speed crash testing an aftermarket-tuned Mercedes. I wish Don were here today, for both personal and professional reasons, but I wonder what he’d think about the C43 today – now that it costs less than just about any new car. But the money factor has become irrelevant.
It doesn’t matter whether it was zero-point-whatever seconds slower than whichever other car – the C43 was a landmark car for AMG: the first V-8 in a compact car and the first AMG produced on a regular Mercedes production line. It finalized the recipe for the burbling compact Mercedes-AMG sedans that came next.

We’ll blink again, and these C43 AMGs will be where the 6.9s are now – old enough to graduate from young timers to true collectibles. They’re already rare enough – MBUSA confirmed only 1,425 were sold in America. And mine? One of 14 painted in No. 189 Black Opal pearl-metallic paint, never officially available on the C43 AMG. No one knows why this particular car was painted this color – it wasn’t a special order; it was probably just a production mistake. Just like it was a mistake for me to think I was buying this car as a beater. Silly me.

It took no time at all for me to realize it’s my responsibility to preserve this special little hoodlum of a car, because before I know it, it’ll be time for it to steal the heart of someone younger. In fact, that’ll happen in just a blink of an eye.
 
Mercedes’s quickest little sedan burst to 60 mph in just 5.9 seconds, spraying the neighborhood with muscle-car noises and securing AMG’s position as the world’s baddest in-house tuner.
 
 
 
SPECIFICATIONS: 1998 C43 AMG W202
TYPE: Four-door sedan  CHASSIS: Steel unibody  PRODUCED 1998-2000
ENGINE: M113 4,266cc SOHC 24-valve all-aluminum V-8
TRANSMISSION: 5-speed electronically controlled automatic
 HORSEPOWER: 302 hp @ 5,850 rpm  TORQUE: 302 lb-ft @ 3,250-5,000 rpm
 LENGTH: 177.4 in. WIDTH: 67.7 in  HEIGHT: 56.1 in   CURB WEIGHT: 3,450 lb
FUEL EFFICIENCY: 16 mpg city, 21 mpg hwy (EPA)
 PERFORMANCE: Zero-60 mph 5.9 sec; Top speed 155 mph