Mercedes-Benz E-Class long-term test

It’s been repeated so many times it has become gospel for India’s car business. India buys SUVs. And by extension – sedans are dead. It’s backed up by sales numbers. Between the top four car manufacturers in India, accounting for nearly 80 per cent of market share, there is precisely one sedan; two if you count compact sedans. And against that grain is the best-selling luxury car in India.

Strike that. The E-Class is not just India’s best-selling luxury car, it is India’s best-selling luxury vehicle. Full stop. Cars, SUVs, all combined. And it is not just this year, or the year before, but has been the case forever. And with good reason as I shall now proceed to enlighten you, having lived with the E-Class since the start of this year.

To start with, we made a determined effort to be more customer centric. To that effect we resisted the urge to pick the E 450 and stuck with meat of the market for our long-term test – the E 220d. And the first time I filled her up I thought the car had glitched. I’d forgotten the greatest joy of running a diesel car – the incredible range. 950km on a full tank. And diesel being diesel, it isn’t sensitive to your driving style in the way turbo-petrols are.

All Merc diesels now get the 48-volt Integrated Starter Generator and that means they don’t start in the diesel-like chug-chug-chug fashion. There’s no shudder or judder from the drivetrain. There’s an instant catch when the engine fires up, so much so that I never once switched off the auto start-stop, something that is very irritating in most cars. And the engine even switches off while coasting to save fuel and cut emissions. Refinement is incredible and the 9-speed automatic is a peach. 

 194bhp and 440Nm isn’t going to light the fires of the enthusiast and so, doing what most actual E-Class buyers would do, I began life with the E-Class by climbing into the back seat. Wait for the flush door handle to pop out, wait some more, tap it in irritation until it finally pops out and then give it a firm tug. It feels unnecessarily hefty and over-engineered in a way only Merc does, and then you discover how large the rear doors are what with the extra 133mm added to create the long wheelbase V214 from the W214. Step in and, if I had a Jeeves, he wouldn’t have to slam the door shut. This gets soft-close doors that are as beautifully damped as the door handles aren’t.

The back seat is where the E-Class does its business. Wonderful seats that recline to an equally wonderful angle. Headrest cushions. Blinds for everything – the rear windshield, side windows, even the tiny little C-pillar quarter glass. You also operate the sunroof via the door switches; switches which are of exquisite quality. And of course there’s ridiculous legroom. This is the E’s single biggest asset, which I sweated to the hilt. Three up and down trips from Pune to take red-eye flights out of Mumbai, the return trips always in horrendous dead-of-the-night expressway traffic jams. I rolled up the blinds, cranked up the Burmester, reclined the seat and watched a movie. Or I would have watched a movie if the E-Class had rear screens, which it does not. Instead, I went off to sleep. I rarely sleep in cars but I slept every single time when being chauffeured in the E.

It’s not just the space. The damping is excellent. Soft enough to soak up the roads and round-off sharp edges, but not so soft that it heaves, wallows, churns up your insides and ejects your dinner in a fusillade. But wait, no massagers? Or coolers? Let’s step into the front and try it out. Except, shock. Forget massagers, there is no seat cooling anywhere in the E. Instead you get ‘exciters’ in the front seats for the Burmester 4-D sound system which is a waste of money.

While in the front, let’s take the ’wheel. A large steering wheel, in keeping with the E’s character. Mercedes aren’t attempting any sporty pretence and the E 220d is all the better for it. There are no compromises effected to anchor in tenuous sporty claims. This is a luxury car and it does luxury beautifully. The mood lighting, which many think is over the top, appeals to the 8-year-old in me. On the night Mercedes celebrated their 140th birthday, they pushed an OTA message to the third screen on the passenger side, a cool touch I thought. Another India-specific feature is now when you switch off ADAS it stays switched off. And, if the updated S-Class is anything to go by, Mercedes have listened to our feedback of the touch pads on the steering wheel and next iterations will get physical knobs.

Now the engine, which I’ve already mentioned, isn’t a paragon of sportiness. Find an interesting road and you’ll have to keep the engine on a perpetual boil at the rev limiter to make enthusiastic progress. At which point you will find there are limits to the body control on a luxury car, as advertised by fairly generous body roll. But knock it back two-tenths and the E-Class delivers very capable road manners. It can be fast and unflustered, calmly isolating you from the rapidly passing world outside. More importantly your passengers aren’t hassled when you’re hustling. Steering feel is surprisingly good and same goes for brake feel. Gone are the days when you wouldn’t take the ’wheel of a luxury car. And you don’t have to worry about speed breakers – too much.

A complement of four and Pune’s speed breakers do ask questions which the E’s long wheelbase struggles to answer. Those inconsistently and unscientifically designed speed humps necessitate a crawl and, traffic permitting, a crab walk. That’s the only – and I mean only – reason you’d even look at an SUV over this sedan.

We only tend to look at centre-of-gravity from a handling perspective, but it plays an equally important role in comfort. A lower C-of-G means better suspension compliance can be engineered without sacrificing body control. And it is good body control that ultimately keeps your dinner where it belongs. In the E-Class you can cross your legs and read the papers, work on the laptop, doom scroll on Instagram, all without hurling up your dinner. Not something that can be said of an SUV; any SUV.

The E-Class is Mercedes at its peak. The best luxury vehicle you can buy, this side of an S.