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The five-speed automatic is the ace up the E’s sleeve. The gearbox responds to throttle inputs decisively, with quick downshifts and nearly imperceptible upshifts. No need for a “manual override” device to manage the shifting—in this case, just leave it in Drive, and you’re set. Still, the gated shifter, a Mercedes mainstay for more than 20 years, proved its worth when needing to manually shift down. I was in the passenger seat when a friend was driving a long downhill stretch to her house. As the descent became steeper, she snapped the gearlever to 4 then to 3. With a touch of the brakes she shifted to 2, then flicked the car into her garage, all without having to look down at the selector. Couldn’t have been more impressed with either car or driver. Also in Mercedes tradition, the go-faster pedal is firmly sprung and has a long travel distance, all the better to precisely regulate all that torque. Not that the chassis would blink even if you forced all of the engine’s torque onto it instantly. It always felt like it had much more grip in reserve, and it’s not surprising that it can handle even the 5.5-liter AMG engine’s 539 Nm (!). The E still takes the prize for solidity. The ride was magic-carpet smooth, and we didn’t hear any squeaks from body or interior from the nearly 15,000-km old car. Potholes and humps were filtered out by the suspension, and a soft thump was the only indication that the road surface had actually changed. The front suspension employs double-wishbone, the rear a multilink arrangement. Brakes are discs all around, actuated by a firm pedal. The chassis may already be one of the most stable around, but Mercedes added traction control and the Electronic Stability Program just to make sure it goes where it’s pointed. The E employs rack-and-pinion steering gear in place of the venerable recirculating ball. Steering reaction has improved quite a bit from the days of the 260E. The 260E was surprisingly agile at high speeds, but you could feel its mass when plodding along to the supermarket. The E by contrast is much more willing to accept steering input, and the sluggish feel is all but banished even when we were just pulling out from a parking space. Turn-in is quite neutral—hardly any understeer, and the cornering is quite flat, too. There’s not much in the way of road/grip feedback from the steering wheel, but every degree of turn is smooth and precise. Inside, the sedan lived up to the exterior’s solidly-screwed assembly. Fit and finish were faultless throughout the cabin. Our car came in the aptly-named “Elegance” trim level. With that option, wood covered the center dash and center console, as well as a strip around the doors. I don’t normally appreciate wood in a car, but admittedly this wood, which was indeed real, actually improved the interior’s ambiance. “Real reather” (as I once saw on the box for a replacement shift knob) covered the seats and door panels. |
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