On the first day of my acquaintance with the Mercedes C 200 CDI I noted that its list price was just under £31,000, and my world was not shaken. I'm not quite sure that I would pay that sort of money for this sort of car, but it's not drastically more than you'd be asked for a top-line Mondeo diesel automatic (admittedly a more powerful one, though it wouldn't give you the same bragging rights as the Mercedes does) so fair enough.A little later, I started to pay more attention to the press material supplied with the car and discovered that it had a lot of optional extras. So many optional extras, in fact, that the real price of what I was driving was on the far side of £41,000. This, as Hilaire Belloc would have said, made me gasp and stretch my eyes.You don't have to spend upwards of ten grand on top of the basic price, of course, but you'll probably go for the metallic paint at £645 and the leather upholstery at £1350 (phew - but can you imagine anyone not wanting this in a C-Class?) and the heated front seats at £330 and quite possibly the seven-speed automatic transmission with cruise control and start/stop at £1500.While you're at it you may as well tick the boxes for the reversing camera at £390 and the telephone pre-wiring at £290 and the DAB digital radio at £335. £2245 seems rather a lot for the COMAND information system, but not buying it might cause problems at resale time. That might not apply to the £1350 panoramic sunroof, though.Before I go any further - and partly to demonstrate that this review isn't simply going to be the list of prices you might by now have suspected it would be - I'm not happy about that sunroof because one edge of it is right above my head, and I could imagine unhelpful things happening to my skull in the event of a rollover. And no, I couldn't make this less likely by sitting lower, because there I had the seat as low as it would go. There's surprisingly little headroom in this car.There's even less room in the back. I tried the "sitting behind myself" test, leaving the driver's seat in the position that suited me and attempting to get into the back seat. It was almost impossible, and I managed to do it only by subjecting my legs and feet to considerable pain. Why is a Mercedes C-Class so spectacularly cramped in the rear compared with a typical small Japanese hatchback?Other retail opportunities include a memory function for the front seats, steering wheel and door mirrors, which comes as part of a package including fully electric front-seat adjustment and four-way lumbar support. Nice, but £1095? Really?And you can divest yourself of a further £500 by opting for the Dynamic Handling Package, which gives the accelerator and gearshift a sport mode and also includes what Mercedes describes as "continuously variable damping for improved ride".That last bit sounds good, but the ride has already been ruined beyond hope of redemption by the fitment - as standard on the Sport, so for once you don't have to spend any more money - of 18" wheels with low-profile tyres (40 section at the front, 35 at the rear). It doesn't matter how clever the damping is, you're not going to get decent ride quality with that rubber.As you'll have realised by now, I found this C-Class rather tiresome in several ways. Other things I didn't like include the rather jerky gearchanges (perhaps fixable with some adjustment) and the very obvious sound effects from the 170bhp diesel engine at low speeds (though the noise levels are more acceptable in out-of-town motoring).The engine is good, though, providing sturdy acceleration when you need it and officially using fuel at the rate of 58.9mpg on the combined EU cycle. I didn't get anywhere near that, but a real-world average of around 45mpg seemed quite acceptable.I also quite like the styling. It very much in the long-standing tradition of Mercedes saloons, but that does at least mean there are no stupidly-shaped windows to ruin the visibility, and for the 2011 model year there have been enough up-to-date tweaks to ensure that it doesn't look old-fashioned.Even so, I would expect a better car for £41,000, and the badge isn't enough for me to think differently about that. Engine 2143 cc, 4 cylinders Power 170 bhp @3000 rpm Torque 295 ib/ft @1400 rpm Transmission 6 speed manual Fuel/CO2 64.2 mpg / 133 g/km Acceleration 0-62mph: 8.4sec Top speed 144 mph Price From £30221.00 approx Release date 01/03/2011