Thursday, April 12, 2007

Mercedes C-sportcoupe

The next Mercedes sportcoupe follows a new trend in compact cars: upgrade to a new car without really making a new car. That is, keeping the most part of the platform unchanged and only making new panels and interior. This is rumoured to occur with the next Mercedes compact but also with the Peugeot 308 and VW Golf VI, for example. If one considers the level of sophistication that cars in this class achieved it seems rational to keep development cost low by keeping the most part of the underpinnings unchanged. Other key feature: compact cars have grown up a lot in recent years - there isn't much more margin to keep increasing width and length of cars in this class. This is another point for relaxing on the development of completely new platforms.

So the next SportcoupĂ© will be just a major restyling of the current model. The platform and underpinnings are kept the same but a new skin will appear with a front design more closer to the new C-class W204. This will keep development costs very low and Mercedes can sell it for less money. But they won’t cuz they are in this business for profit and this will make them earn a lot of money.

No comments: