On the road

There’s a noticeable dent above the offside rear passenger door, which may be difficult to pull out, but we’ll ask a dent specialist to work their magic here. There’s a deep scratch on this door as well, and lots of noticeable scratches down the nearside of the bodywork, possibly caused by driving too close to hedges and bushes. The corners of the front bumper are also scuffed.

Fortunately, there’s none of the usual rust around the front wheelarches,

This E-class is very civilised to drive, but the suspension feels harsh over rough surfaces. At times, it crashes over potholes and sunken manhole covers, suggesting the aforementioned bushes that were raised as advisories on previous MOTS may need renewing. This vehicle also appears to have Mercedes’ Airmatic suspension system, judging by the fact that there’s a Schrader valve on the nearside front suspension turret. With self-levelling suspension and a button on the centre console to switch between ‘C’ for comfort and ‘S’ for sport, the Airmatic suspension hasn’t raised any faults on the dashboard, so maybe the harsh ride quality is down to worn suspension components.

At times, this harshness is quite alarming, especially under hard cornering, when the car seems to skip, particularly at the front. We checked the tyre pressures and found the new rear tyres had been filled to 40psi, which is the recommended setting when fully laden. We dropped the rear pressures to the recommended 32psi (a low 29 for the fronts), but the handling was still occasionally skittish under hard cornering. which was common on earlier Mercs, but seemingly rectified by 2007. However, there is some deep corrosion around the base of the rear windscreen wiper, where a metal surround sits inside the rear glass of the tailgate.

Inside there’s a similar story of light wear-and-tear. The leather stitching on the driver’s door has split, but it looks feasible to repair it and we’ve already spoken with a specialist. The seating hasn’t worn excessively, but we’ll have it

Other ride quality problems may be easier to fix. The steering appears to veer to the left, which will hopefully be easy to resolve with four-wheel alignment.

The seven-speed 7G-tronic gearbox includes manual selection of gears by flicking the gearstick to the left to change down or right to change up when in Drive. This gearbox first appeared in 2003 in the V8 models, making it the world’s first sevenspeed auto fitted to passenger cars. It was mated with the V6 engine around the time our project car was manufactured, offering gains in fuel economy and gearshift comfort over the previous 5-speed.

We’ve not checked whether 60mph can definitely be achieved from standing in a fraction over seven seconds, but the acceleration from the torquey V6 is nothing short of exhilarating. With such a large and heavy vehicle, the performance is controllable and refined, but still jawdropping. Manual operation of the gears makes for slower acceleration times because you need to be quick with flicking the gearstick. Instead, leaving the ’box in ‘D’ is a lot easier and quicker, with next to no time cleaned and treated to help preserve it. Plus, we’ll need to thoroughly clean the interior as it smells very strongly of dogs, although most of the dog hairs have been removed. The small rear-facing seats in the boot appear to have never been used, but unfortunately the removable headrests are missing. delay between gear changes. The only noticeable delay is on kickdown – floor the throttle when moving and the response isn’t instant. Instead, there seems to be a one-second delay before the gearbox switches down a gear, the engine revs rise and you’re off like a scalded cat. This delay may be deliberate, although we spotted this as a common problem at one online Mercedes forum.

Mercedes appear to have thought of everything on this E-class. For instance, if you accidentally leave the electronic handbrake on (easy to do with a foot-operated lever in the footwell and a release lever on the right of the dashboard), the dashboard will beep and display a warning message a few seconds after setting off. Similarly, there are the usual alarms and alerts should you forget to put on your seatbelt.

We appear to have bought a great project vehicle with a reassuring service history, yet requiring lots of little jobs to ensure it looks and drives as well as its reputation suggests.

Febi will be supplying the majority of the parts we need. Next month we’ll make a start by continuing with the twice-yearly servicing.