New Mercedes-Benz C-Class Estate revealed

What do you do when you’ve invested huge sums in one of your perennial favourites and you’re caught up in critical acclaim for it? You stretch it out as far as you can.

In this case, Mercedes-Benz has released a new C-Class Estate that is longer, wider and boasts more legroom than its predecessor, as well as being the debut vehicle for the company's new Connect Me software.

While Benz hopes Connect Me will be the star of the show, it comes in a wagon that carries over all of the C-Class’s acclaimed interior trim quality and combines it with more of everything, except weight.

Aluminium makes up almost half of the C-Class Estate’s core chassis and though Benz is oddly quiet about it (when others trumpet far lower aluminium levels), it results in a wagon that’s up to 65kg lighter than its predecessor, depending on the spec and the engine choice.

That weight reduction is even more significant when it’s coupled to a wheelbase that’s 80mm longer at 2480mm. It’s also longer overall (96mm more metal, at 4702mm) and 40mm wider (now 1810mm).

Most of the advantages from these larger dimensions will be found in the rear, where there is greater leg, head and shoulder room and about 45mm more elbow room.

Oddly, it doesn’t translate to a huge improvement in cargo capacity, with all that extra real estate translating into only five litres more storage capacity (up to 490 litres) in the normal mode. Even with the rear seats folded flat, it’s still only a 10-litre advantage over the old car, with a maximum of 1510 litres of storage room.

It does bring in the added flexibility of a 40:20:40-split folding rear seat and there is a one-touch button to unlock the rear seats electronically, rather than climbing around the back and reaching for buttons.

Due on sale in Europe in September and in Australia in the final quarter of this year, the C-Class Estate will mirror the sedan by delivering fuel savings of around 20 per cent across the board.

There will be a choice of two different four-cylinder diesel engines, three four-cylinder petrol motors, a V6 petrol engine and a diesel-electric hybrid version, the C 300 BlueTEC Hybrid.

The leanest of the diesels delivers 85kW of power while the strongest is a 150kW proposition and the petrol engines range from 115kW to 245kW of power (in the C 400).

The C 300 hybrid runs a combination of the 150kW version of the diesel four-cylinder motor along with a 20kW electric motor to deliver a C-Class that emits just 99g/km of CO2 and sips a Toyota Prius-matching 3.8L/100km on the NEDC cycle.

There is also a petrol-electric plug-in hybrid version of the C-Class Estate in the works, with the upcoming C 350 Hybrid combining a 155kW version of the four-cylinder, turbocharged petrol engine and a stronger, 50kW electric motor. It will be capable of travelling around 50km as a pure electric car, but it won’t be on sale until deep into 2015.

There are plans for AMG to deliver a C 63 AMG version of the Estate, while a C 450 -- with enough added power and bodywork to sit between the C 400 and the C 63 -- will arrive towards the middle of next year.

Like the sedans, the C-Class Estate will ride on either steel springs and dampers or an Airmatic air suspension system which gives drivers the choice of Comfort, Eco, Sport or Sport Plus modes, and allows them to mix and match between all the modes with an Individual set-up.

While it retains a five-link rear suspension, it picks up the sedan’s sophisticated four-link front suspension system, its electronic parking brake and there is the option of all-wheel drive on higher-end models.

The new C-wagon also has more hidden electrical gadgetry than most cars out there, even in the super luxury class. The E-Class Estate will debut the Connect Me system, which Mercedes-Benz launched extravagantly at the Geneva motor show in March.

The system has its own SIM card and allows the car to do things like automatically contact emergency services after an accident and allow drivers to monitor fuel or electrical charge levels from their home or office computer.

But there’s more. It uses the GPS from its satellite-navigation to automatically switch the climate-control air-conditioning to recirculate the air whenever it approaches a tunnel, and then switch it back to fresh air at the exit. It also has an optional head-up display, which can include speed, navigation, speed limit and safety warnings.

It adopts Collision Brake Assist Plus as standard, which activates above 7km/h and up to 105km/h (or 200km/h with radar cruise control) and, if the driver fails to act, it will stop the car to prevent a crash. It also has the ability to prevent a crash into a parked car at up to 50km/h and prevent a rear-end collision at up to 40km/h.