Here’s one of the biggest boots you can buy, if that’s not too vulgar a way to begin. Sure, the Mercedes-Benz E-Class Wagon has plenty of technical and engineering talent to entice you toward it and away from the likes of BMW and Volvo, but chances are what will woo you first (okay, after the badge) is the sheer size of that cargo bay. It’d have been cheaper for NASA to strap rockets onto one of these than to commission the Space Shuttle.
With a 670-liter cargo space awaiting behind the electric tailgate—expanding to 1,820 liters with the rear seats folded down—it’s unlikely the E-Class Wagon will be too pokey for your needs. And with a fleet of turbocharged four- and six-cylinder gasoline and diesel engines—along with the deliciously crazy V8 E63—plus all of Merc’s latest and greatest passenger entertainment and driver-assistance features, you should hardly want for power, frugality, or toys. This is one of the automotive world’s great Swiss Army knives.
As you can read a complete test of the AMG E63 by tapping here, we’ll be concentrating on the more sensible wagons. They begin at just over £41,000 (P2.75 million) with the E220d, a fabulous humble 2.0-liter diesel, and stretch past various mild- and plug-in hybrids to the AMG E53, with its 462hp 3.0-liter gasoline turbo straight-six and ‘EQ’ 48V boost, yours for just over £71,000 (P4.77 million).
As of 2021, Mercedes-Benz has comprehensively overhauled the E-Class family. Redrawn lights and bumpers have a slightly softer, friendlier look to them, while inside the multiplex screen layout has been overhauled to feature the latest MBUX interface. And it now responds to your finger tap, too, as the middle display has become a touchscreen. However, it’s still controllable by other means—like a touch-sensitive steering-wheel spoke or the touchpad behind the cupholders.
Just about the only thing that hasn’t been altered is that enormous boot, which comfortably offers more space than a BMW 5-Series Touring, a Jaguar XF Sportbrake, or an Audi A6 Avant.
On the road
Given that the E-Class sedan doesn’t quite have the handling smarts of the 5-Series or the XF, it’s no great loss to discover that the E-Class Wagon gives away a bit of cornering prowess in the name of carrying a garden shed on its back.
Yes, if you’re concentrating, you can sense there’s a bit more weight out back, and perhaps a slightly taller center of gravity. But the other 99.9% of the time, you simply won’t give a damn. As per usual, the wagon’s boomier cabin isolates highway road noise a mite less successfully than the sedan, but this is still a gorgeously refined long-distance GT.
The E220d is the engine of choice for long-distance work. Good for 27.6km/L and over 1,200km on a tank—says us, not Merc—this is a stupendous piece of humble turbodiesel engineering. However, diesels are of course rather tricky to market of late, which is why Merc has introduced a pair of plug-in hybrids so you can have your eco-cake and eat it, whether you prefer fueling from the green pump or the black one.
The gasoline E300e offers 316hp and a claim of 37g/km CO2 emissions. The E300de (hardly a badging masterclass, is it?) beats its classmate’s raw figures, and may well offer the best of both worlds.
Then there’s the AMG E53—a curate’s egg of a performance car. The raw spec looks very appealing: a turbocharged straight-six churning out a creamy-smooth 430hp and 520Nm, augmented by a 48V electric boost that erases turbo lag as you accelerate and then kills off the engine entirely when coasting, so you cruise with a lower carbon footprint than a sailboat. It’s all-wheel-drive, too, and looks merely ‘mildly perturbed’ next to the full-fat E63’s ‘bloody furious’ expression.
In practice, the E53 falls between the stools it’s set out for itself. Merc only claims 12.8km/L, but we struggled to make it to 10km/L, while a similarly engined BMW M340i is good for up to 15km/L in our testing. It’s also a curious powertrain to use, managing to sound angrier than the performance it actually delivers—like a Jaguar F-Type shouting through a rolled-up newspaper.
It also seems to lack the outright insta-torque you’d expect from a six-pot that’s being boosted with a turbo and an e-motor. AMG’s future is surely electric, but at the present, it feels more like a semi-reluctant experiment than a shot across the bows of Porsche’s hybrid lineup. We’d sell everything that was needed to upgrade to an E63.
On the inside
Since we’ve already covered that the boot can substitute for the Royal Albert Hall when it undergoes a refurb and the back seats could act as the dressing rooms, we’ll crack on up front. The current E-Class is dominated inside by its twin-screen setup, which was inherited from the last-gen S-Class.
The new S-Class, meanwhile, has a much more Tesla-esque portrait display front and center, so it’s clear this horizontal multiplex is consigned to Merc’s history books. Pity, really—though it takes some getting used to, it’s a really impressive interface.
The latest MBUX operating system includes voice control (activated by a cheery ‘Hey Mercedes’ prompt) and allows touchscreen operation of the central display. That’s handy with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto now most likely dominating how you interact with your car—though the touchpad (now sans clickwheel) and the steering-wheel controls remain as alternative means of command.
On AMG-line models, the steering wheel comes over all 22nd-century with a coating of touch-sensitive spokes. Hmm. Not sure that one was straight out of the common-sense drawer, really. Happily, tactile metal buttons remain for working the climate control, while a head-up display is optional, and very good.
Now that there’s no CLS Shooting Brake (more’s the pity), the E-Class is the flagship wagon in the Mercedes-Benz lineup. Sadly, it appears the German carmaker has quietly dropped the E-Class All Terrain, which rivaled the Audi A6 Allroad and the Volvo V90 Cross Country with its mildly taller ‘you don’t really need an SUV after all’ attitude. Shame.
Final thoughts
We suspect that, once we’d finished fawning over classic hot hatchbacks and gold-plated Singers, pretty much any member of the Top Gear team would find space—quite a large space, admittedly—for an E-Class Wagon in its dream lottery garage.
It’s by no means an entertaining, corner-hungry piece of kit—AMGs aside—but the regular E-Class Wagon is a delightfully refined, comfortable, spacious, and mature way of moving a lot of stuff around luxuriously. It now has an oddly old-school charm to it, too, derived from the very fact that it’s not a bolshy, out-of-my-way SUV.
NOTE: This article first appeared on TopGear.com. Minor edits have been made.
