A new Mercedes-Benz E-Class has just been launched. Andrew Hamilton takes a look
They are a somewhat eclectic crowd, the people who drive the Mercedes-Benz E-Class. How many of us knew it's the best-selling Mercedes model range, outselling the smaller C-Class and baby A-Class siblings? E-Class has a wide spread of customers. It is mostly the steed of Government ministers here, while virtually every taxi man or woman in Germany seems to drive one. Throw in businessmen, diplomats and plain ordinary folk who happen to be intelligent second-hand buyers, and we get some idea of the strength of this particular three-pointed star line.
A new E-Class has just been launched and we will see it in Ireland in late summer. Its predecessor, which has been around for nearly seven years, has created a huge visual presence on Irish roads and streets with its distinctive twin moon lamps. In the tradition of Mercedes-Benz, the new range pays a significant amount of styling homage to the old car, but of course, in shape and substance it's vastly different.
Mercedes-Benz here expects confidently that it will still have a winning way with the customers. Sales manager Bill Duffy is looking to 1,250 new registrations by the end of the year, in spite of its relatively late arrival.
We Irish are only mirroring the appeal of E-Class in a wider world, enjoying the reputation of being the most successful luxury saloon. One quarter of all luxury cars sold are E-Class: that's the power of its domination. Put another way, with annual production of over 200,000 cars a year, it accounts for one-fifth of all Mercedes-Benz sales. Here's the ultimate defining brand.
Mercedes-Benz hopes fervently that these impressive success statistics will be even further enhanced with the new range. Four years and nearly two billion euro have been invested in pursuit of that objective.
With a wider track and a longer wheelbase, the new car has had its wheels pushed further into its corners, with increases in interior accommodation and luggage space as a result. There's plenty of room, front and rear, and the boot is enormous with optional fold-down rear seats that allow a completely flat floor, 1.74 m in length from behind the front seats right into the boot.
Externally the E-Class cuts a fine figure that isn't totally evident from the photographs preceding the international launch. Take those moon-shaped lamps, for instance. They are still there in the new range, but much more bejewelled and exotic-looking. The new look doesn't show up at full frontal level. All in all, the surfaces are rounder, the looks are sleeker, and from the rear, the impression is of a bigger, more substantive car, created perhaps by bigger rear lamps.
The E-Class petrol range starts off with the E240 which, confusingly, comes with a 2,597 cc V6 engine developing 177 bhp followed by the E320, 3,199 cc V6 and 224 bhp, and the V8 E500, 4,966 cc and a massive 306 bhp. Initially the turbodiesel choice is limited to a much reworked E220 CDi with a four-cylinder 16-valve 2,148 cc engine developing 150 bhp and the E270 CDi, 2,685 cc five-cylinder 20-valve with 177 bhp. Before the end of the year the E200k - the Kompressor four with direct injection - and the E320 CDi will expand the range.
What of the driving? The 270 CDi was our only experience and on the well-cambered Spanish roads around Valencia that were also well carpeted with the smoothest of tarmacadam, there was little challenge to the ride and handling. Most of the driving was on motorway, a natural habitat for the E-Class, and here the big turbo diesel unit showed lively form, effortlessly gobbling up the kilometres.
There was a bit of tell-tale diesel clatter at lower speeds and passing through villages, but nothing that could cause too much offence. The 270 CDi, incidentally, has a top claimed speed of 142 mph, with a 0-62 mph time of just over nine seconds, so it's no slouch.
New E-Class uses more high strength steels and aluminium panels for the bonnet, front wings, boot lid and some inner cross members have been used for the first time. There's a more aerodynamically efficient shape too: this car has a Cd figure of 0.26 compared with 0.27 for the old model.
As before, there are three trim levels: Classic, Elegance and Avantgarde, accompanying all sorts of clever, innovative options that are, indeed, to numerous to detail. The press material devotes three pages to nearly 50 new ideas like a solar-powered gadget that picks up enough energy from the twin sunroofs to keep the cabin interior cool when the car is parked in a hot sunny place.
The seats can have active ventilation through five cooling fans embedded in their base and blowing through the punched leather trim. Airmatic is a suspension option, a development from the S-Class. For the first time it controls both springing and damping, automatically adjusting within a wide range of comfort and sports settings.
In this whole panoply of features, ideas and tricks, we musn't forget the all-round disc brakes which have electronics determining the hydraulic brake pressure applied to each wheel. It's a bit brutal, a gentle dab of the brake pedal gave us much more deceleration than intended. Certainly the speed is wiped away quickly.
New E-Class, with its smart new look, is all set now to maintain its enviable position as a leader among the luxury set, appealing to politicians, presidents, business people and of course, the taxi drivers.
No doubt in 2008 or 2009, when another E-class is due, the same sort of homage will be paid.