2010 Mercedes-Benz E-Class for First Drive
May 8th, 2009 - Posted in AutomotiveWith eight generations and 12 million units sold over the last 62 years, the Mercedes-Benz E-Class’ longevity represents a profound run of intelligent bets for a premium sedan sold in premium quantities. That makes Las Vegas an appropriate background for last week’s introduction of the E-Class sedan, Sin City being home to numerous examples of remarkable endurance. Having been outsold by the BMW 5 Series for the last couple of years in the U.S., Mercedes went all-in on the new E, from design to fabrication to luxury to – of course – technology. To find out what we thought of the gamble, hit the jump.
Exemplifying how serious Mercedes is about the 2010 E-Class, the car’s presentation began with this line from Mercedes’ G.M. of product management, Bernhard Glaser: “Everything we know, everything we are went into this car.”
We can begin, though, with what’s gone on outside the car. To our eyes, the redesign joins the queue of vehicle forms that aren’t accurately translated in photos. Unless caught at just the right angle, the car appears shorter in press shots, rendering its conspicuous design features into a somewhat stubby mass that dramatically ascends from front to rear. In person, however, the car gets properly lengthened: the shoulder line and lower door filet rise gradually, the tail doesn’t come off as truncated and the E consumes the proper space of a mid-range sedan. Although an inch lower in height (yet with the same ground clearance) than the outgoing model, the new E is nearly an inch longer and four inches wider. It also has a lower Cd than the slinkier 2009 model.
The E-Class’ interpretation of the now common form language introduced on the 2006 S-Class is accentuated by four things: the angular cast of the headlamps, which follow the contour of the new SL headlights but are vertically sliced in two; the upper door-line tied thematically around the front helping to break the side into three discretely angled surfaces, working with the prominent, chrome-trimmed lower door line that spans the full distance between the wheel wells, then continues much more subtly around the rear of the car; and the flared haunches that begin toward the back of the rear doors and take their inspiration from the pontoon detail that breezed in on the 180 sedan in 1953.
