Stylish but a touch too much
EVEN a Mercedes-Benz salesperson would be challenged to spot the difference between this facelifted E-Class and the previous model. I certainly can’t and I regularly drive these cars.This generation of Merc’s bread and butter saloon, loved by German taxi drivers and quite a lot of British ones too, was launched four years ago.
To my eyes the styling hasn’t dated at all and there was no real reason to fiddle with it.
That’s not how car companies work, however.
There’s much new about this car under the skin and so Mercedes needed to flag it up as being different.At the front LED lamps are now standard, the grille has been redesigned and so has the bumper, while at the back there are new tail lights.
As I’ve no doubt explained before, I’m a big fan of estate cars (I owned an old E-Class estate for several years) and tend to choose that body style over a saloon when given the choice of which car to test.
This time I thought I’d be different and test a saloon.All the new E-Class test cars at Mercedes’ HQ in Milton Keynes are German registered left-hand drive cars and there isn’t a huge amount of choice anyway. One of each body style in fact, including a cabriolet.
This E300e is a plug-in hybrid which makes it more interesting (there are also mild hybrid powertrains available).
Because the car is in German specification it’s hard to give you an exact UK equivalent but we won’t be far out comparing this high specification to the UK’s extravagantly named AMG Line Night Edition Premium Plus, which costs £55,040.
A quick squint under the bonnet before we start on the complicated journey of explaining how all the controls and electrical architecture has changed. Our E-300e is powered by a 1,991cc petrol engine that drives through Merc’s super-smooth nine-speed automatic gearbox. Sandwiched