Mercedes E350 does it right
It’s a small point and one that is arguably almost irrelevant in the larger scheme of things, the overall picture of reviewing cars, but there it is … something that catches the eye, a design feature or an engineering angle that makes the eyebrow (the left one, usually) rise up in appreciation. Well thought out. Bravo.
And so, yes, there it was, one rainy night, as I fired up the 2007 Mercedes-Benz E350 four-door sedan for another foray onto the freeway. At first, it was almost imperceptible. Then, as my eyes adjusted to the near darkness inside the car, it became apparent: surrounding the almond-shaped ceiling-mounted control panel for the interior lights and the sunroof are two banks of soft lighting. Just behind the front seats, again on the cabin ceiling, are another two banks of these dim lights.
They look just like the kind of lighting that is used to surround art deco accessories — the complementary clash (if that’s the correct, though tortured, image) of metal and lighting. Dim, cream-colored lighting. It’s soft, subdued and it stays on, entirely unnoticed, except in a subliminal sense, while you’re motoring along. (It even makes you want to write things like “motoring along,” instead of, say, driving the car.) How, then, does this have anything to do with the rest of this car? Hard to say, and that’s the end of the review. No, wait.
After a week driving the E350, including a 500-mile weekend tear down to San Luis Obispo and back, the subtle lighting example started to replicate itself all over the car. Actually, all over the car should be read this way: the whole car.
The E350 is Mercedes’ midline sedan and, in a sense, it is its bread-and-butter car. It competes in a luxury segment that includes BMW’s 5 series, Infiniti M45, Acura RL and Lexus GS430, among others. The dollar line, here, is in the high $40,000s to mid-$50,000s. The E350 we had stickered at $57,315, but that included a hefty $4,290 for the “Premium II” package, which comprises navigation, Sirius satellite radio, keyless ignition and several other can’t-live-withouts.
By contrast, Mercedes also throws in at no charge (hard to believe this upscale manufacturer “gives” a customer anything) a “sport package” of 18-inch tires on slick-looking alloy wheels and some wood trim and dual exhausts with distinctive tips.
On the road, my first and immediate reaction was to compare this with the S550, the firm’s flagship four-door, a big, heavy go-fast sedan that brooks little competition (and also costs over $100,000 with a few options). The S550 told you it was big and its power was like that of an express train — strong and inexorable. (The S550’s engine, by the way, can be had in the E350’s big brother, E550. Both sedans can also be equipped with 4MATIC, the Mercedes all-wheel-drive system, and there’s an even faster version called the E63 AMG — the Mercedes in-house hot rod shop — with its 507-horsepower V8. The E350 and E63 can also be had in station wagon models.)
Contrasted with the S550’s svelte, even stately state of speed, the E350’s 3.5-liter 268-horsepower V6 pushes the car right along, but the engine does seem to have its work cut out. In a sense, it’s almost comforting to hear it go to work when you floor it to get out of the way of a wayward pickup truck — it revs right up, but it’s definitely noisy (for a sound-deadened Mercedes). Do the same maneuver in the S550 and there is not a whisper of effort. It’s almost eerie, a little like encountering a too-perfect human being.
Here, though, we have the real beauty of the E350. It’s about as good an urban/suburban/highway destroyer escort (assuming the S550 is the destroyer itself) as you can get. At speeds we all love to go and probably shouldn’t, it is quiet and stable. At 20 mph, it is quiet and stable. The car itself is not that big (it’s one-tenth of an inch shorter than a Honda Accord and more than a foot shorter than the S550). It does fine in town, and is not a pain to park.
The real place to try it, however, is northbound on Highway 1. Yes, that Highway 1.
Just north of Morro Bay, Sunday morning surfers are paddling out to sea, a few hundred yards west of the highway. There are few cars on the road at 8 in the morning, and the ones who are out there are even more distinctive — a couple of Corvettes and a 1955 Chevy, possibly from the Cayucos car show of the day before. A clutch of motorcycles — some Harleys, a sprinkling of RT BMWs — courses southbound at a leisurely pace, clearly trying to digest breakfast.
This is perfect E350 weather. Further north, past Hearst Castle (a plug, there; if you haven’t seen it, go) and into the road that hugs the hills on one side and drops to the Pacific on the other, the Mercedes is in its element. For 94 miles, between San Simeon and Monterey, there are only a couple of things that will grab your attention: a road that has very few straightaways and drivers who, we hope, are paying attention.
The twisty road, sometimes slowing you down to 10 or 20, encourages you to use the E350’s “manumatic” (a made-up word) that allows real shifting between gears, occasionally returning to Drive. (Once, lolling along in Drive, the car slowed enough to make it shift down into first and when it did that there was a sudden BANG! as if the transmission had dropped onto Highway 1. The car jerked, as if kicked in the front, then kept going. It didn’t happen again.)
It was a fine reminder, however, that this is, after all, just a car and it can fall apart on a moment’s notice. And if it does break, out there on a Sunday afternoon, somewhere between Gorda and Carmel Highlands, where cell phone service is a figment of someone’s imagination, you will have a nice leisurely wait.
Then again, the view ain’t so bad.
Note: Consumer Reports, in its “New Car Preview 2007,” wrote that the E-class was one of eight Mercedes-Benz vehicles predicted to be least reliable, which the magazine said was “the most for any one brand.”
2007 Mercedes-Benz E350 4-door sedan
Price: Test model $57,315 (Base price $50,550)
Power train: 3.5-liter V6 268-horsepower engine, seven-speed automatic transmission
Curb weight: 3,740 pounds
Seating capacity: Five
Mileage: 19 city, 26 highway
Fuel capacity: 21.1 gallons
Dimensions: Length 191 inches; width 71.7 inches; height 58.4 inches; wheelbase 112.4 inches
Warranty: Four years/50,000 miles
Source: Mercedes-Benz USA; autos.yahoo.com; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (www.fueleconomy.gov).
