First drive: Mercedes E-Class 350 d Estate

Get past the necessarily conservative styling (for necessarily conservative German executives) and there is everything to like about Mercedes-Benz’s E 350 d, and the rest of the rang as well. The ride is sumptuous, the interior tech is overwhelmingly good and easy to use, and it covers ground with class and dignity. It’s the best Benz estate ever made, which is saying a lot.

If you were Mercedes-Benz and you'd just floated an E-Class saloon onto the market that was both critically acclaimed and a sales hit, you would have a long, hard think about it before you tampered with the formula too much.

The saloon is, after all, a step so far forward in interior design over its predecessor that it’s almost two generations ahead, just like the current C-Class was.

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“The front seats are remarkably comfortable and supportive, the cabin is near silent pretty much all the time, and the equipment levels are ridiculously high.”

The E-Class's chief engineer, Michael Kelz, aimed to build the best E-Class estate in the firm's history, but he had other hurdles to overcome first. There were established rivals to crush underfoot, such as the Audi A6 Avant and BMW's 5-Series Touring (both nearing the final phases of their production cycles), plus Sweden's luxuriously cabined, shiny new Volvo V90.

And, straight up, nice and early, we will tell you this: the seven-seat E 350 d Estate wipes the floor with all of them. BMW and Audi have new machinery in the pipeline, but whatever they do will need to be special to get on top of the E-Class Estate.

A sumptuous drive

It’s big, it’s refined, it drives sumptuously, it carries high cornering speeds with little apparent effort, and it still uses all that E-Class saloon tech. It looks a little conservative, but that’s always been an E-Class thing, after all.

The main reason people look at an estate in this class is for interior space and luggage capacity, and the E-Class has plenty of both.

The boot boasts 640 litres with the rear seats in their normal position (up 40 litres on the old car). There is another 30 litres with the top of the rear seats tilted forward 10 degrees, giving it a touch more space even with the rear seats still occupied. Ultimately, with the rear seats folded down flat, it can offer a cargo van equivalent of 1,820 litres.

Consider this: the first E-Class Estate – the 1978 W123 series – only had a then-impressive 523 litres of luggage space.

And it’s not just space, but usable space. The floor is flat, the loading lip is nonexistent, there is 1,100mm of width between the rear wheelarches, and the tailgate opening is broad enough to double as a rich man’s commercial van. There are electrical switches to drop the rear seats, both in the luggage area and alongside the seats themselves, and it’s all plonked atop a self-levelling, air-suspended rear end.

The car is rated to carry 750kg of stuff (and to tow 2,100kg) and engineer Kelz insists he has personally loaded one with 19 crates, each filled with 20 German half-litre beer bottles.

For this, a small price has been paid in the back seat: the backrest is flat and relatively unsupportive and footroom beneath the front seats is limited.

Engine range

The E350 d version we tested clearly won’t be the big seller of the E-Class Estate range. That will fall to the 200 d when it starts life later this year and the 220 d until then – especially when the Germans, who love four-cylinder diesels, snap up E-Class Estates at exactly the same rate as saloons. So it’s 1:1.

The 220 d has an output of 195bhp of power and 400Nm of torque (compared with the petrol four in the E250, with its 210bhp and 350Nm). You can’t argue with its 4.2 litres/100km (67mpg) official fuel economy.

However, with a time of 7.7 seconds from 0-100km/h, it doesn’t accelerate as well as the 350d. As well, it doesn’t have the 3.0-litre turbodiesel’s sophistication.

The biggest of the diesel range (so far), the E 350 d gets to 100km/h in only 6.0 seconds and feels utterly effortless in doingso. That’s partly because it has access to an enormous 620Nm of torque from as little as 1600rpm.

It pays a price at the pump, for sure, but it still tallies a respectable 5.9 litres/100km (48mpg) for 140gms of CO2/km.

All the E-Class Estates link the engines to the rest of the powertrain through nine-speed automatic transmissions, which is one of the cars unsung heroes in this E 350d guise. It is slick, barely noticeable most of the time and quick to decide on a gear when you want it to be.

Refined ride

While there are some refinement issues on full throttle with the 2.0-litre turbodiesel, there are no weak points in the 350d’s delivery and at no point does it become ill-mannered.

The car is at its best when it is being driven like you expect an E-Class Estate to be driven: in a relaxed, businesslike way.

It is happy to be hustled, which is something of a surprise given its predecessor, and it won’t put a sure-foot wrong, Still, there is bit too much roll and not enough steering to make it a total success. Nothing much there will get the blood pumping, which is exactly to be expected.

In every other circumstance, the car proved a remarkable mile eater on the smooth roads of northern Germany, up near Denmark. The standard air suspension soaked up every sought-out bump and imperfection we could locate and, at worst, delivered a slight thump through the cabin.

It drives with a remarkable dignity and seemingly pays no price whatsoever in cornering ability. It carries a disturbing amount of speed through faster bends when it’s asked to, but the ride quality never deteriorates no matter how many difficult questions you ask of the chassis.

The drive remains supple and comfortable and particularly quiet in all of its driving modes, even the sportiest of them, and it just seems like there’s no way to ruffle its composure.

Apple exception

Like the saloon, everything inside it feels high quality and beautifully crafted, though the full-width dash design won’t be for everyone. The vents are big and easy to operate, and the enormous configurable dashboard is clear and easy to fiddle with – with one massive exception.

Plug an iPhone in to the system, even if just to charge it, and the CarPlay overrides anything you and the satellite navigation have already agreed to and switches to Apple’s mapping. So you not only have to enter all the information again, but you have to enter in any and all waypoints.

Kelz says it’s an Apple problem and that Apple insisted using CarPlay meant all of CarPlay. Still, Audi doesn’t have a problem with the same setup. Kelz later admitted that a planned 2017 software upgrade will overcome the issue.

Other than that, the front seats are remarkably comfortable and supportive, the cabin is near silent pretty much all the time, and the equipment levels are ridiculously high. It carries over all the sedan’s semi-autonomous and driver-support electrical aids, and that already means class leading.

In short, this is a brilliant offering from Benz. Those who come to the E-Class for its conservative visuals won’t be put off by the dignity of everything else, and the design isn’t quite so conservative to put off those who comes for the rest of it.

This is not only the best E-Class Estate in Mercedes’s history, but quite possibly the best car Mercedes makes today.