A safe way to live is to assume a brand owes you nothing. Unless you are a large shareholder of the automaker that owns said brand, you are a convenient cheerleader at best, or a nuisance at worst.
Brands owe you nothing. But, but, but. Some car brands trade on their history. The meaning imbued with certain marques is as valuable as any patent, factory, or executive. This is why any Ferrari is worth more than any comparable McLaren. This is why the default car in America is a Toyota or a Honda crossover.
If reputation has value, that reputation cannot be given by objects. The inert cannot express love. Desire cannot be wrought from stones. If you believe this to be true, then your feelings about a car company, if those feelings be true and strong, are a store of treasure.
The first car I ever owned was a 1978 creamy mustard yellow diesel Mercedes sedan with a cranky transmission, unresponsive A/C, and a diesel engine that gave it all the speed of a wild gazelle with one hoof stuck in a bear trap and the other stuck deep in the mud. It was great.
For car enthusiasts, it’s sometimes the cars you love that prejudice you against a brand the most. Not in this case. My affection for Mercedes endured the many new cars I drove. While not everything was for me, exactly, the cars usually felt a part of that company’s incredible lineage.
That lineage is gone. Replaced with an aesthetic that wants to be more Shanghai than Stuttgart, more Abu Dhabi than Affalterbach. It is an aesthetic not without meaning, it’s just that the meaning is so vapid and tacky as to overwhelm any devout sense of reverence.
Am I Anne Hathaway’s snort from The Devil Wears Prada? Am I missing the point? Is this high fashion? Are the bezzeled knobs, the bright colors, the incomprehensible mix of textures the future? Does China get it, and I don’t? Do I need Lewis Hamilton to explain it to me? Is this avant-garde?
Maybe. But that’s not what bothers me most. I will actually take a car that’s doing everything over a car that’s doing nothing. Too much of modern car design is influenced by Tesla’s Stockholm-by-way-of-Steve Jobs hyper minimalism. Driving a modern Mercedes can sometimes feel like living inside a casino, which I don’t love, but too many new cars make you feel nothing at all.
What bothers me isn’t that it may or may not work visually. Taste is taste. The big letdown is that the cars may not work at all, which is unforgivable in a Mercedes. Dress it up however you like, but superior engineering was the expectation of every Mercedes driver from Bertha Benz to Edi Amin.
And I’m saying this after having spent a week in what’s probably the best non-G-wagen Mercedes, the new AMG E 53 wagon. In spite of everything, I like this Mercedes. The fact that I have to struggle to enjoy a high-horsepower wagon bodes ill for the carmaker and is another reminder that this particular era of Mercedes, which arguably started with the EQS, needs to very quickly evolve into something else.
Mercedes, like pretty much every other German automaker, has been caught flat-footed by a Chinese car industry that was once seen as a little brother. A little brother who went off to sleepaway camp one summer and came back 50 feet tall.
In trying to find a new path while retaining its old customers, I fear that Mercedes has lost itself.
The Basics
Engine: 3.0-liter inline-six turbo plug-in hybrid
Battery pack: 21 kWh battery
Transmission: nine-speed automatic
Drive: all-wheel drive
Output: 577 horsepower (combined), 553 lb-ft of torque (combined)
Fuel Economy: 56 MPGe, 41 miles of range, 22 MPG gas only
Base Price: $93,350
Price As-Tested: $117,630 (including $1,250 destination charge and $1,750 for white paint)
Why Does It Exist?
I grew up with not that much money in a place where most people I knew had more than enough. Because this was suburban, oil-land Houston, nearly all of these people were new money. If you had generational wealth, you lived in a place like River Oaks. If you were a mid-level manager at Enron, I probably went to school with your kid.
These people loved buying as much Mercedes as they could afford (the Benz I had was third-hand off an older German lady who swam with my grandma). There were quite a number of leased S-Classes mixed in with the sudden explosion of MLs. If you had an E-Class, it meant that you couldn’t justify the expense of an S-Class yet.
Then I moved to suburban New York. I had no idea that real rich people didn’t think that way. If your great-grandfather was the first person to sneak a bawdy poem into The Exonian, your parents probably have an E-Class wagon. Hell, if you get that joke, your parents might still have one.
While I don’t see quite as many as I used to, the Hamptons and Westchester used to be absolutely lousy with them. I once asked an owner of the appeal, and they said something about antiques and a fancy type of dog I wasn’t even wealthy enough to visualize. These were just practical cars for very wealthy people who had always bought a car from the Mercedes dealer.
These days, there are only two ways to get a Mercedes wagon in the United States. There’s the E 450 All-Terrain, which is the “off-road” version that just looks like a normal wagon. And there’s this, the AMG E 53 Hybrid wagon. That’s fine by me. I’ve spent a lot of this review already second-guessing Mercedes. I support the two-wagon lineup.
How Does It Look
The EQ sedans and SUVs represent Mercedes embracing all the wrong ideas at once, including the concept that there should be a separate branding for the electric cars, and that the flagship EV shouldn’t look like the flagship car. The SUVs are somehow worse, and may represent the only time a car has been modeled after a butt plug. That’s my assumption at least. After all that work and all that money, Mercedes ended up with a car that was both objectively and subjectively worse than the Model S that had knocked the S-Class off the top of Luxury Sedan Mtn. It was also more expensive.
This isn’t one of those! Perhaps merely out of comparison to the worst of what Mercedes has, aesthetically, I think this is the most attractive new Benz you can buy. The proportions are exactly right, with a long slooping hood that curves seamlessly into a geometrically perfect greenhouse. The d-pillar is so severely raked that it feels like it’s stretching the rear window into another zip code.
So much of the aesthetic here is about restrained beauty that I don’t even mind the light-up grille. At least it’s not just a flat piece of plastic meant to hide a sensor. The way that the taillights protrude over the trunk is also such a clever touch that it almost makes me ignore the interior.
What Is Happening On The Inside?
If Scion came back from the dead, I’d love all of this in a new Scion. Let me say that. I like fun. I don’t mind the playfulness of the interior of this wagon so much as I’m just a little overwhelmed by it. My kid and her friends enjoyed it, and that’s worth something. Am I just old? it’s possible I’m just old.
Let me start with what I genuinely like. The AMG Neva Gray over Black Nappa Leather seats feel right for this car, offering enough support when driving energetically without being too hard or overly bolstered. Do I like the color combination?
It does feel a bit like you’re about to sit in a Stormtrooper’s lap, but some people might pay extra for that! No judgement. The steering wheel also has buttons and dials for adjusting all the various drive modes, traction control, et cetera. These are satisfying dials:
It’s a nice steering wheel, even if the cruise control controls are an annoying piano black.
The main gauge cluster is almost infinitely adjustable, and, for $990, you can make it 3D. Not fake 3D. No glasses required. This isn’t skeuomorphism. It’s actually 3D. It looks blurry if you look at it from an angle or, in my case, if you’re photographing it. You can sort of see how it works in this Instagram reel I shot.
View this post on Instagram
You’ll also get a sense of the color scheme my daughter picked out, which, with its bright teal and pink, is very Spurs a la 1996 or Miami Sound Machine a la forever.
Then there’s the (optional) 14.4-inch center screen, which leaves a lot of room for various displays. Mercedes does not waste space on this display, giving you more data than you’d ever need:
If you ever wanted to know how much torque you were generating by just sitting there, then this is the car for you!
This is all very Tron in a way, and I’m mostly ok with it. Then there’s the passenger screen. Why is this a thing? There’s a huge touchscreen in the middle. Does my passenger really need to adjust the music from over here? It’s a total waste. Don’t do it!
This Stuff Doesn’t Always Work
If you think that looking at all of this is overwhelming, try using it. In theory, Mercedes offers a “zero layer” that allows you to access the key stuff on the screen. In practice, as with all screen-based controls, it’s not intuitive and clunky. Everything involves too many screens, too many options, too many sliders.
It’s also buggy as hell. Trying to make a call with CarPlay using a fairly new iPhone, it would just spit back my request without ever calling anyone. And that’s if I could get CarPlay to launch at all. I frequently had to restart the car just to get it to recognize my phone. The first three or four times I drove the car, it wouldn’t pair at all.
The one antidote to screens is that most cars have redundant controls on the steering wheel. The Mercedes has these, too, and it would be cool if they worked all the time. Am I too cold? Are my fingers too smooth? Does this German car not recognize my Bavarian blood? Why does this car never want to do what I ask it to do?
And it’s not just all this unnecessary technology that intermittently. The car itself is awkward.
Who Is This Car For, Exactly?
I absolutely adored the old E63 AMG Wagon, with its big V8, loud noises, and brash attitude. Other than the lack of a manual gearbox, just about everything about the car was perfect. This car feels just a little less than that car.
There are just weird choices. The brakes are too aggressive and super grabby in a way that makes it not ideal as a commuter. On city streets roughed up by cold temperatures, the ride is just a little too harsh in a way the E63 wasn’t. It’s also slower on paper. It doesn’t feel that way, because the hybrid system gives you a rush of electrical torque to help push you back in, but it’s not as satisfying. I also miss the V8’s roar. The inline-six is fine. This is too much money for fine.
In full fairness to the car, I didn’t take it to the track and was therefore mostly pushing it on the few slower twisty roads I have nearby. On smooth roads with any kind of bend, the Mercedes was just as good as the outgoing E63. I bet this is a great car in Napa. If you’re into that sort of thing, it’s also a PHEV that’s capable of a decent 41 miles of all-electric range.
If I had my druthers, I’d have the old E63 with the AMG V8 and also have this in a slightly lower tune with a softer suspension. In terms of actual performance, it’s just a little too close to the other Benz wagon you can buy, without being as brutish and fast as the Audi RS6 Avant or the BMW M5 Touring Competition.
It sort of makes me wonder who this is for? If you need a fast track car, and also a wagon, but you don’t mind having the slowest of the fast wagons, I guess it’s for you? It’s strange.
Mercedes Is A Brand That Could Benefit From Subtraction
This is a fast wagon that looks better than just about any hybrid you can buy. It’ll haul your groceries and embarrass most sports cars. It feels almost sacrilegious for me to complain about this car. I can’t help it, though; there’s too much going on here. Mercedes needs an editor, so it can focus on what works and cut what doesn’t. This is true of all its products.
Is something going to change? The company parted ways with Gordon Wagener, the designer ostensibly responsible for a lot of these problems. Then I look at interior photos of the new four-door AMG interior and gulp.
Maybe Marc Antony was right: “The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.”
Top photo: Matt Hardigree
If I don’t even fantasize about it as a CPO option three-five years down the road, then that’s a bad sign.
The E-class wagons always held their value a lot better than the sedans, making the CPO ones still very unaffordable. Maybe this one will buck that trend….
Call me a purist but to me a wagon needs a straight long roof this enabling it to do wagon things. What Mercedes Benz has done is create a longer hatchback and called it a wagon. They also built their reputation on quality and reliability but you had to pay the price. They then looked at Rolls Royce and figured out we can charge more give less and make a fortune. Because the more expensive it is after you get the reputation the more you will sell so the nouveau riche can say it don’t matter, because they aren’t aristocrats, I can afford it new and the repairs.
The exterior doesn’t look that bad, I mean, it isn’t great, I don’t like the grill lights, but overall looks decent enough.
I don’t understand that interior though.
Way too gaudy, I don’t think anyone would find this elegant or sporty or appropriate for a six-figure price tag.
It will also age horribly.
Aging horribly is a problem for the poors who buy these off lease.
Aging horribly sounds like a personal issue of mine 😉
It doesn’t look like a casino, most casinos are a slight notch classier than that. It looks like a mall food court ca 1992, which is maybe perfect for inexplicably wealthy influencers who film themselves eating fast food in their cars
Sorry casinos are not that classy. Visit one at 9am when no one is playing. It still smells like a crowded group of people is smoking. Even if smoking has been prohibited for a decade. The carpets are worn out but you don’t notice in the bright lights that don’t light the floor. You notice despite the fact no one is here the machines are blinking and beeping like everyone is a winner. But alas now that the buffet costs $89 no one is a winner
I dunno. I only got a brief glance at that dashboard image before I had to look away but now my ears are ringing with faint discordant chimes and I could swear I smell ashtrays.
More like a dirt cheap stripclub?
I don’t know man, have you ever been to a casino in Indiana?
I really want to like this. It’s on the short list for the next car (to replace my e550). But honestly, I’ll probably get one of the v8s used. So much of the new MB design is straight up garish and absurd. Logos everywhere, in the lights, in the grille, on the interior (if the mondoscreen or whatever they call it isnt there). This wagon is right on the edge….could do without the logos in the rear tails and stupid lit up grille but at least the overall shape and look is reasonably clean.
The new S seems classy at least, but the rest of the range is just awful. Keep the novelty chintsy looks to the CLAs and badge leasers, keep the nice stuff classy.
You have a point. Influencers can have their stupid status, the rest pay for class
If only someone could make a solid feeling fastish car, maybe with a light pressure turbocharger and a button that turns off all the distracting lights at night, just leaving the speedometer illuminated. Maybe put a few quirky bits here and there, possibly a key start that, when removed, locks the gear lever in neutral. Or wheels that look like weird Scandinavian ziggurats.
The turning off the annoying lights button for night driving idea? someone really should do that.
I can’t staap thinking about these great ideas.
There are still a few well-kept 9-5s out there if you’re brave enough to reckon with owning one.
Good idea. Then you can see the møøse before it bites you
Unpimp My Ride would make a great Autopian branded reality show.
It’s not so much the expense of all that crap as it is the unadulterated tackiness to start with combined with it becoming obsolete and even more tacky until it impedes functionality.
If you look at a Rolls Royce from before RR sold it to the Germans the interior was very plain with a steering wheel that made the wheel on a John Deere look flashy. It was luxurious for sure, but looked like a very fine condition antique sideboard, not a pinball machine.
The Paul Bracq era was peak Mercedes. I’d love a new car airbag s etc. that was a w114 lookalike except with working AC.
I think it’s cheapness after thinking about it more because I’ve had roughly the same thought re your older rolls comment. My reaction the last couple years to the increasing gaudiness of most luxury car marques has been why don’t they invest in true luxury like premium materials, more thoughtful innovative space design etc, and I think it’s because all that stuff costs a lot and is hard to figure out? Adding a bunch of lights and chrome is relatively cheap and easy way to add glitz?
I remember when I was a kid waiting for something at the Mercedes dealership, they were showing films of strapped a rocket to the car an launching into a wall, pushing one off a five story building, and showing how many tons it took to break a spot weld.
There was some sort of seat testing machine too.
They were also very proud of their cone door latches, which were impressive. Now they have regular flimsy latches. I wonder why.
That interior is like a teenager’s shitty gaming PC
Absolutely awful
Hey now, I’m not a teenager but it looks like my shitty gaming PC. Let’s not lump all shitty gaming PCs in the same bucket.
But all PC IS shitty gaming. Move out of your parents basement. J/K But really grow up quit playing video games and get a real hobby like working on cars
Bro, don’t shit on other people’s harmless hobbies.
My uncle built his gaming pc in a old beige case he bought off a bank. Best gaming pc ever
I’ve read the sentiment of “embarrass most sports cars” before and wondered in what ways? The following is anecdotal, but I think applies to a fair number of people. Most sports cars aren’t about pure numbers but about how the car feels while driving.
How responsive is the engine? How do the brakes feel? What are the sight lines from the driver’s seat? How’s the suspension? Is the car playful?
But it seems that with a lot of media, it all boils down to one thing. Car A is faster than Car B. Therefore Car A, embarrasses Car B. I realize the media in some ways reflects the market, but is there any room for nuance.
How does the driving experience of this car embarrass the driving experience of sports cars in general, let alone sports cars in a similar price range?
I’ve probably mentioned this a few times in the past couple years but IMO M-B has indeed lost the plot. AFAICT it started with the gaudy illuminated logo on the grille on the low-end A-class whatevers.
It’s just… tacky, and that is something no M-B should ever be.
The first Benzes I saw with that lit-up grille badge were overwhelmingly A-class cars that had just been released, so the prominence of literal flash over presumed substance felt offputting. For all I know those were great cars, but they screamed “Hey I got a Mercedes!” in the same way that plastering fashion accessories with logos says “outlet mall” instead of “luxury boutique.”
I was reflecting on this this past weekend while on the road – that for most of my life, “luxury” cars were primarily about durability and quality (I wasn’t around in the 50s/60s, so I missed that era of shiny chrome = luxury), the same way sports cars used to be about the driving experience. You used to be able buy a 911 with cloth seats b/c of course to Porsche, leather had little to do with performance.
But I guess in our social media age, those are qualities that really can’t be readily observed by others, so those foci had to go, to be replaced with stuff like this.
The interior looks like a room that Han Solo would be tortured in.
WOW 3D gauges!!!! who could possibly have thought to make the dash 3d? Wait….. you mean like every car ever before a few years ago….
This looks like some kind of RGB streamer nightmare dressed in a cheap suit. You know, like a vape store on a rainy night just making the whole block look like trash.
Whole lotta “so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should” going on here
“This Era Of Mercedes Cars Can’t Die Fast Enough”
Is this really a challenge to lay down to some German Engineers?
I’ve heard that outside of the diesels, Mercedes has been exceeding expectations in making cars die quickly for years.
Decades, even.
Never owned one but always loved those big 70’s-80’s sedans.When I would work on one I was always amazed at how simple but elegant they were inside.I guess less really is more sometimes.
When all the switchgear gets moved to the touchscreen you know “less” has gone too far.
Light up grilles are starting to become one of my most disliked new-car-isms (still too bright like the headlights), but the interior lights are pretty neat. I hope there’s a way to crank down the brightness so it doesn’t end up reflecting onto the windows at night (I see some of that in the images but hope it isn’t an issue actually driving it). I’m not in the tax bracket for this anyway but still an interesting read 🙂
Ugh I hate them both. No more light up gimmicks.
Lighting gimmicks will continue until morale improves 😛
I hope so too, but I’ve actually run across one in person, at night, and it was garishly bright. So much so it startled me when it first pulled alongside.
Light up grills are jus the new “lightbar” design to let people know your car is new and maybe EVish or something. Lazy design.
The one I kind of like is the grill of one of the BMW CUVs. Maybe it’s the X2, or the X3?
It sort of feels like car manufacturers have decided that the size of certain things (screens, wheels, grilles) symbolize the size of the driver’s….wallet….and so must be as large as possible. But the marginal returns on such things really starts to plummet and eventually goes negative. Like huge wheels on top trims that make ride worse and cut range/mileage. Mercedes-Benz seems to be way down that curve these days.
I think its an issue of people buying (financing) these cars not to own them, but to be seen having one. It’s about attention more than about the money. If you just had a normal Merc, you couldn’t post all about it. You need to one with all the stuffs to show how great YOU are.
It’s striking to me that in the past era that Matt references, Mercedes was the anti-style car, plain and almost dowdy compared with the competition.
I had a ’05 W211 E55 AMG Estate in Designo Jade Green Metallic.
It’s the one car I should have never sold. All my friends make fun of me to this day for selling it.
Yet more proof that cars peaked in 2005 (plus or minus 5 years)
Maybe not so much at GM…
GM from 2000 to 2010 was peak.
I would say 1960-1970 was Peak GM.
I saw that interior shot and literally said “Oh my God” out loud. The 1980’s arcade called and would like it’s decor back.
The tech stinks, the car is a porker and it’s just not fun to hoon. Ugh.
You and I pine for the Mercedes that were built to a standard, not to a price point. Your ’78 scarred you, as my ’83 240D scarred me. It was bog slow but everything about it was solid and stout. I thought the body was like a bank fault. Then I got a ’91 300D. That W124 body made the W123 feel almost flimsy. Everything in that car was just solid and rigid and felt incredible. But creature comfort? You have AC, power windows, and power steering. Anything more will make you soft. Cup holders? Do you think we’re savages?
I miss both those cars. Mercedes hasn’t made anything that vaguely resembles that type of quality in decades.
The interesting thing is that throughout my life I always saw the Mercedes demographic as primarily older WASP’s. Which this vehicle could fit, except that with all that tech crammed in there (and how poorly it works), I can only imagine they would be returning it quickly, since they are often not the most tech savvy.
So your question is spot on. Who is this for?
The AMG is for people who want the AMG sticker.
But if they don’t want to drive it because it’s unpleasant – then they’ll just opt for the SUV instead.
Self-fuelling death spiral of the car-based wagons
I’m waiting for all new Mercedes to just be wall to wall screens. Who needs a panoramic sunroof when it can just be a giant screen? Center console? Screen. Armrests? Screens. Tailpipes? Screens. Golvebox? A screen inside a screen, with a screen for a lid.
And the air filter?
a visual screen, instead of a literal screen.
Factory sex spec.