2010 Mercedes-Benz E550 First Drive

During the presentation of the new 2010 Mercedes-Benz E-Class Sedan, we could have sworn that the Mercedes spokesperson said the car had a "eunuch personality."

Now that was a bit harsh, we thought. But, if true, we weren't so sure that we wanted to make the car's acquaintance. That description certainly jibed with the presenter's early characterization of the new E-Class' design as being a "reflection of its inner values without aggressiveness." Indeed, lack of aggressiveness is something of a job requirement for eunuchs.

Perhaps it was the dazzling 3-D film of the new E-Class the company had just played for us that had us misinterpreting the speaker's German-accented English. Or maybe it was the jet-lag haze that was floating around in our cranium. Or the big honkin' magnum of 1970 Rothschild we had helped empty the night before. What he'd said was "unique," as in the car has a unique personality. Right. Of course.

Anyway, we thought, we had just driven the 382-horsepower, 2010 Mercedes-Benz E550 to the presentation and it was certainly no eunuch. To the contrary, it had more than its fair share of equipment and potentially troublesome systems.

Adaptive Automatic Assist-Tronic
For this launch of the 2010 Mercedes-Benz E-Class, we were presented with the opportunity to drive a 2010 Mercedes-Benz E550, which like every other 2010 Mercedes-Benz E550 provided for this event had been loaded to the rooftops with cameras (three of them) and radar systems (one long-range and two short-range) and infrared this and swiveling that and human-form recognition software and a vibrating steering wheel and seats that bulged in concert to the car's g-load and also mechanical eyelids.

It's a bewildering array of sensors, detectors and emitters. Hearing this, you expect the thing to look like some project from the Department of Defense, bristling with antennae and unidentifiable domes and cones and cylinders. In fact, however, the E-Class looks remarkably like a car, as evidenced by the attached pictures.

We shall now dive right in and describe all these sensors, detectors and emitters for you. First, the coolest, most effective one of the bunch is Adaptive Highbeam Assist. Because headlights that self-leveled and swiveled sideways in curves were not complex enough, Mercedes has given the new E-Class mechanical eyelids. A nose-mounted camera detects the headlights and taillights of other cars on the road and lowers the eyelids sufficiently to keep from dazzling traffic. If you're closing on the car in front of you, the Highbeam Assist will progressively lower its lids, keeping the beams from blasting the rearview mirror. So, depending on conditions, the headlamps can light between about 215 feet and 985 feet of the road ahead. Amazingly, this actually works.

The other system that counts as a technological success and even a potentially useful thing is the Nightview Assist Plus. This system uses an infrared camera mounted behind the rearview mirror to provide a crystal-clear image of the road ahead and its immediate surroundings. It's pretty effective at lifting the shadows that conceal pedestrians, goats and javelinas at night. This system is an evolution of the same infrared unit introduced by the S-Class. The E-Class adds software that recognizes the human form and highlights any examples it detects right on the center stack display. The thing works. But the screen really should be straight ahead of the driver, as in the S-Class, and not on the navigation screen where an attentive driver should not be staring during night driving.

More Sensors and Stuff
Speaking of attentive, Mercedes has also added a system called Attention Assist, intended to warn sleepy drivers to pay some attention to the road. Primarily this is done by monitoring steering wheel inputs. If, after a time, the system records an increasing number of steering corrections, it will give an audible warning and display the old cup-of-coffee warning light in the middle of the speedometer. (No word on whether Mercedes is getting kickbacks from Starbucks.) Apparently we were never sleeping enough to activate the system, so we can only take it on good faith that it works.

OK, one more. The charmingly named PreSafe Brake and BAS Plus is another evolution of an existing Mercedes system. Using the radar from the adaptive cruise control system, the system gets progressively more insistent in trying to prevent you from ramming the car in front of you. At what the system determines to be 2.6 seconds before impact, the system flashes a warning triangle in the instrument panel and beeps. If the driver doesn't hop on the brakes within a second, the system commands the car to apply the brakes automatically at a little less than half power. If, after another second, the driver doesn't respond appropriately and a collision is unavoidable, the system commands full braking force to at least reduce the speed at which your E-Class impacts its victim.

These doodads are in addition to the raft of more familiar doodads available on the car, including Parktronic, blind-spot assist and lane-keeping assist. Sadly, Mercedes hasn't yet figured out how to do you're-about-to-say-something-stupid-to-your-wife assist.

The Non-Electric Things
Clearly a large part of the focus for development of the new E-Class centered on new safety and convenience systems. But there's still a car underneath all of those minor electronic miracles — you know, that metal thing powered by a series of explosions to which these systems are attached.

And that part of the E-Class experience is pretty pleasant. The car is new enough to warrant a fresh code name, W212. Its structure is said to be stiffer than that of the current E-Class (naturally), and 72 percent of it is built with high-strength steel. But the 2010 Mercedes-Benz E-Class casts the same size shadow as the outgoing car. Of course, the W212's wheelbase is stretched by 0.7 inch to give rear-seat passengers a smidge more legroom. But fundamentally the car occupies the same spot in the automotive universe as the '09. The E-Class has been a mainstay in the Mercedes lineup for good reason and it wasn't broken.

The W212 E-Class still rides on the same independent suspension front and rear and comes standard as a rear-driver. All-wheel drive will be a late addition to the E-Class lineup this time. It will be offered in the fall, while the rear-drive E-Class goes on sale in the summer. And, unlike the outgoing 4Matic model, the '10 all-wheel-drive E-Class comes with the same seven-speed automatic transmission as all the rest of the E-Class line.

Here in the W212, the familiar Mercedes-Benz Airmatic suspension, which uses air springs, is matched with a set of electronically adjustable dampers. One of the major objectives of the retuned suspension has been to improve the E's already admirable ride quality. And in Comfort mode, the E550 is a very smooth and silky operator indeed. There's noticeably more freeway hop in Sport mode, but even then, the E represents the softer side of the class.

On the whole, this is not, strictly speaking, a sport sedan. It's a long-distance bomber. It just sort of glides along effortlessly. The 2010 Mercedes-Benz E550 is admirably agile and trusty through curves, but there's no escaping the car's heft, as its nose always searches for the outside of a corner. Further, the steering system — which is so composed and accurate during highway runs — requires corrections more frequently than, say, a BMW 5 Series does. But the E-Class nevertheless brings a commendably broad spectrum of competence to the proverbial table.

Motah
The V6 and V8 engine choices for the E-Class have not changed. And why would they? The V8 is one of the smoothest engines on this planet, while pumping out 382 hp at 6,000 rpm and 391 pound-feet of torque at 2,800-4,800 rpm. Mercedes hasn't released fuel economy figures for the new car yet, but expect that they'll be very near the 13 mpg city/23 mpg highway of the outgoing car.

And the seven-speed automatic transmission? Well, we have no recollection of it shifting at all, which we offer as high praise of its smoothness.

When you order up the 2010 Mercedes-Benz E350 with its 268-hp 3.5-liter V6, you're promised pretty much the same experience. But if this isn't enough for you, you could always wait for the E63 AMG, which arrives near the end of the year and should be amply motivated by more than 500 hp from its 6.2-liter V8. A diesel model with 50-state certification will also arrive in 2010.

There's a New Chief Designer in Town
Now that Gorden Wagener has come from his former position at Mercedes' advanced studio in California to direct the company's worldwide design efforts, the look of the E-Class is as different from its predecessor as its powertrains are similar. Gone is the soft, curvy thing with its oval peepers. It's been replaced by a modern, if not pretty, thing cast in the company's new rectilinear style. The rhomboid headlights give the nose of the new E a distressingly Lexus GS-style look. There's a lot of surface excitement going on elsewhere on the body, with various creases and lines applied in historically un-Mercedes-like fashion.

The interior of the new car follows the same crisply folded approach. But instead of coming off as aggressively modern like the exterior, the rectilinear cabin is supposed to evoke the look of previous-generation Mercedes-Benz cars, from a time when Mercedes was the unparalleled master of quality. It's a sober place, as a result. A very sober place. But the quality of the materials and generally agreeable ergonomics make it a perfectly pleasant place to operate the machinery.

You-Nick
Peel the layers of safety and convenience gadgetry and the distracting styling away from the 2010 Mercedes-Benz E550 (and the whole line of 2010 Mercedes-Benz E-Class models), and what you're left with is not radical or gimmicky in the least.

What you're left with is fundamentally the same experience as the E-Class has provided for a whole bunch of years now. It's smooth and measured and stable, and a really very pleasant thing.

Edmunds attended a manufacturer-sponsored event, to which selected members of the press were invited, to facilitate this report.