The 2010 Mercedes-Benz E-Class may be the first production car designed to dazzle you more with doodads than dynamism. Welcome to the 21st century.
We live in an age of Twitter and Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and PVR, of iPhone, Blackberrys, broadband, WiFi and all the rest. In the car business, this means we've reached the point where electronic toys and gizmos have become more important than how a car feels and behaves from behind the wheel.
So you can understand why Mercedes kicked off an explanation of its new E-Class not with a PowerPoint presentation but a dazzling 3-D film. It employed whiz-bang magic from some high-end supplier in Stuttgart, Mercedes' home town.
The film spent very little time on boring old things like horsepower and torque, handling, braking and cornering. That is just so-o-o last century. So what if this new E-Class, the one coming in the summer, has a honking 382-horsepower V-8 under the hood?
Who cares about that when the E550 we'd briefly driven to the movie theatre was loaded to the rooftops with cameras (three of them) and radar systems (one long-range and two short-range) and infrared gadgets and swiveling headlamps with mechanical eyelids and a vibrating steering wheel to shake drowsy drivers awake.
Not even the seats have been left out of it. They bulge, all on their own, into your kidneys like the knees of that irritating kid sitting behind you on the airplane. This, apparently, is to snug you in so that you don't slide around when cornering. Yes, this pretty car can turn a corner quite well, but memo to Mercedes: I don't need a poke in the kidneys in parking-lot manoeuvres.
But cornering prowess does not really seem to be the point here, even though the 2010 E-Class does just fine on that front. What seems more to the point is this: Is this astonishing array of sensors, detectors and emitters, the processors and the LED displays built to last? What will still be working in 15 years' time? The Mercedes types seem confident in all of it.
Certainly the whole package performed as advertised during what amounted to about a day's worth of driving in and around Spain's lovely, clean and heavily policed capital city.
Here's one conclusion: the new E has a drowsy driver alert at least in part because the car does so many things automatically. As odd and ironic as it sounds, paying full attention requires your full attention or some help. Thus, the vibrating steering wheel.
We even had time at night to test Adaptive Highbeam Assist. Forget about those mundane headlights that self-level and swivel sideways in curves. How pedestrian — almost everyone has that. No, the new, new thing is mechanical eyelids.
I am not kidding. In this new E, a nose-mounted camera detects the headlights and taillights of other cars on the road and lowers the eyelids sufficiently to prevent you from blinding fellow drivers — both oncoming and when approaching cars from behind.
If you're nearing the car in front, Highbeam Assist will progressively lower its lids. The guy ahead will thank you for not spotlighting his rear-view mirror and the guy in the opposing lane will think you're one of those oddball drivers, the courteous type. Depending on conditions, the headlamps can, and do, light the road ahead for distances as close as about 65 metres and as far away as 300 metres.
Then we have Nightview Assist Plus — the Plus, I suppose, refers to the fact this is an evolution of the infrared unit introduced in the current S-Class a couple of years ago.
For the record, General Motors was the first mainstream manufacturer to try this, calling it Night Vision, and it flopped spectacularly for a number of reasons, none of which had anything to do with its effectiveness. GM's Night Vision worked, but it was so stunningly expensive that no one bought in. And even those willing to pay the tab were turned off by the grille-mounted camera that made it look like you had a hole in the front of your Caddy.
Mercedes hasn't tagged a price on Nightview in the E and won't for a couple of months, but it does work and even better than GM's system — and this system does not mar the grille. In the Mercedes, an infrared camera mounted behind the rearview mirror provides a crystal-clear image of the road ahead and the general surroundings.
You will no longer be startled by shadowed pedestrians at the side of the road. Instead, software that recognizes human beings highlights their shapes on the centre stack display.
No doubt you've spotted the problem here. You can't see the people unless you're looking away from the road, at the navigation screen. A heads-up display right in front of the driver would be better.
If none of this is exciting enough to keep you awake, there is Attention Assist to startle sleepy drivers. It warns them to wake up and pay attention to the road.
This, again, is an interesting and potentially useful gizmo. But not perfect. Ideally, I'd like it to use the stereo system to shout out in a huge and ominous voice, "WAKE UP. WAKE UP. YOU'RE GETTING DROWSY AND YOU'RE GOING TO KILL SOMEONE!"
But that's not quite how the Mercedes system works. What does happen is perfectly sensible, though restrained. The car monitors how the driver manages the steering wheel and if you're putting in an unusual, excessive number of steering corrections, you get a gentle warning and up pops a cup-of-coffee warning light in the middle of the speedometer.
This subtle warning system is there to keep you from ever experiencing PreSafe Brake and BAS Plus, which use radar from the adaptive cruise control system to decide if you are about to ram the car in front.
At 2.6 seconds before impact, the system flashes a warning triangle in the instrument panel and beeps. Ignore it and, within a second, the car puts on the brakes all by itself, half-braking at first. Keep ignoring the warnings for another second and the car hits the binders for all it's worth. You may not entirely avoid a crash, but the impact will be minimized.
In light of these amazing doodads, the more mundane odds and sods are hardly worth mentioning. So I'll hardly mention Parktronic, blind-spot assist and lane-keeping assist — systems that use beeps and flashing lights to guide you at the mall and in traffic. There, hardly mentioned.
So what's left? Well, how about the car beyond the electronic gadgets? What's there to say about the chassis, the engine, the transmission, the sheet metal, the brakes and all that?
Three words: they're all new.
Or at least new enough. The basic structure is stiffer than the '09 car and 72 per cent of it is built with high-strength steel. So it's got a solid base and that's always good.
Also good is the fact that the 2010 E is about the same size as the outgoing car. It's big enough, in other words. There is a bit more leg room in the rear, thanks to a wheelbase stretched by 18 mm. But this E is as easy to manage and park as the last. It is no behemoth, just big enough.
Mercedes tinkered with the independent suspension front and rear, but you won't find dramatic changes in its road manners. The ride is as smooth and controlled as before, only more so.
And the standard car remains rear-drive with the all-wheel-drive variant coming later in the fall. One bit of good news is that the 2010 all-wheel-drive E-Class will have the same seven-speed automatic transmission as all the rest of the E-Class line.
Finally, the Airmatic suspension. It uses air springs and is matched with a set of electronically adjustable dampers. This option gives you some choices in terms of managing ride quality. In Comfort mode, the E550 is a silky machine and this is the setting you want for boulevard cruising. In Sport, things tighten up and I'd use it for the autobahn.
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Regardless, if you know your Es, you know the idea here is to tune the car more for comfort than for bombing down the back roads or carving up snaky pavement.
The chassis bits, the suspension, brakes and steering, are trusty enough, but if you want a truly sporting ride, then the BMW 5-Series might be a better choice, or the Audi A6.
As for power, the V-6 and V-8 engines are the same as in '09. The V-8 is deliciously smooth, yet muscular at 382 hp. Mercedes hasn't released fuel economy figures for the new car yet, but expect them to be about the same. As for the seven-speed automatic transmission, the shifts are so smooth, you'll barely notice them at all.
Then there is the E350 with its 268-hp, 3.5-litre V-6. It's the same reliable powerplant as sold today. Coming near the end of the year is the E63 AMG with some 500 horsepower, and next year Mercedes is planning a new diesel version. Pricing will be announced closer to launch dates, but don't expect any substantial increases, not in this market.
The E-Class, of course, is the heart and soul of the Mercedes brand. It's the Mercedes that defines Mercedes and it is the brand's single most important model.
By putting a huge emphasis on safety and convenience features while going basically with the status quo for the powertrain, Mercedes is making a statement about what today's premium buyer values most.
