I recently test drove a dark green metallic 1999 C280 Sport with perforated tan leather hides that hardly seemed worn. The same went for the entire interior. While the odometer had just ticked over 39,000 km everything looked in excellent condition. This C280's condition also reflects a 150 point inspection performed on each and every pre-owned vehicle in the mbeXperience inventory, a good place to find a pre-owned C-Class - more on this in a minute.
Being a C280, its inline 6-cylinder made plenty of power and ample torque, preferable when mated to an automatic transmission. Its stepped manual-type automatic worked seamlessly holding gears through corners or simply staying in drive through traffic. Safety features on this particular car include ASR traction control, dual front and side-impact airbags and ABS. While anti-lock brakes can help to avoid an accident in a crisis, the C280 Sport's performance-tuned suspension helped to ensure the crisis never occur in the first place. All in all, it was an impressive car in excellent condition.
The 1994/95 models saw the C-class' only official safety recall and it was a minor one. Basically if the area surrounding the hood latch gets bumped in a frontal impact it possibly will stop working properly - annoying but not critical.
Despite the stellar recall record the cars biggest complaints come from overly expensive maintenance and repair costs and in some cases frequent reliability problems. From the reports I read it seemed people either bought a perfect example or a lemon, not much in between. Incidentally, the online bulletin boards where I derive my reliability conclusions seemed to be dead even between amorous praise and dubious disdain for the C-Class.