Thanks for your concern. I have to admit that it was a bit weird writing a $1000 deposit on a car where I only knew a discount off list, not the final price!

Looks as if I'll be ok this time. Last night I was surfing around on mbworld.org's fourm and found a few threads from customers who had actually seen '03's on the lot with window stickers. Also a dealer salesmen scanned in the new price sheet for the '03 c-class.

For the sport coupe the base price stays the same at $24,950. Only major changes were to option prices, but they really weren't
major, like $15 more for the automatic and a few bucks extra for metalic paint (neither of which I ordered). The largest change was the engine switch from 2.3l to 1.8. Still a Kompressor with 'similar' performance, but I'll still have to drive it before I'm convinced. I like the smaller displacement's net result of 10% increase in fuel econ, but there is something to be said about displacement for raw torque. Time (and a test drive) will tell.