Elegant styling to banish the blues
If you’re feeling a bit glum as summer turns to fall, or if the candles on your birthday cake are so numerous they’re threatening to melt the icing, maybe it’s time to buy a new car. Let me suggest the smile-inducing all-new 2018 Mercedes-Benz E400 Coupe.
There are cheaper ways to lift your spirits, but few will be as satisfying.
The new E-Class Coupe uses the same vehicle architecture as its sedan sibling, something that wasn’t true of the previous generation, which actually used the C-Class platform. As a result, this year’s model is 12.2 centimetres longer, 7.4 cm wider and 3.8 cm taller, imparting the car with a presence it previously lacked. That’s good, because true luxury cars are never compact.
Then again, some of the presence is due its elegant styling. While the coupe’s arcing greenhouse will look familiar, the rest of the wardrobe has lost the chiselled character of earlier iterations for a softer sleekness that speaks of its sporting grand touring intentions. The only disappointment is the rear quarter window, a holdover from the previous version that ruins the purity of this car’s form.
For the time being in Canada, the E400, starting at $72,700, comes with 4Matic all-wheel drive. The coupe is powered by a twin-turbocharged 3.0-litre V-6 that generates 329 horsepower and 354 pound-feet of torque through a nine-speed automatic transmission. That’s enough stimuli to propel the E400 to 97 kph 5.2 seconds when all four wheels are employed.
Yet it can be driven with precision and comfort, an essential trait of any great MercedesBenz. The coupe’s reflexes prove incredibly adept and responsive, especially when the available air suspension is put in use. The mixture of bump absorption and well-controlled body motions make this option well worth ordering.
Of course, you’re buying this car as an extravagance, so it’s not surprising there are some dazzling interior trim choices. Those set the stage for the 12.3inch infotainment screen and optional digital instrument cluster, which, when paired, look like one solid flat screen. And the car possesses the world’s most noteworthy air vents — they resemble turbine engines.
But perhaps the biggest revelation inside the E400 is the rear seat. It’s habitable by adults, a rarity among luxury coupes. While some say that rear seat legroom has no place in a coupe, it’s helpful in comfortably transporting family and friends. You could so the same in the E-Class Sedan, but the E400 Coupe is better-looking and makes a statement to a world that takes itself too seriously.