Cars & Bikes

E-xquisite

The new Mercedes Benz E-Class is so classy and advanced that you can run out of superlatives describing it. It’s easier to get into the driver seat to feel the difference!

The new Mercedes Benz E-Class is here. And even a short test drive in the new offering from the Sultan of Stuttgart tells you what a superbly engineered car sporting the famous three-pointed star is all about.

The overall look of the new E-Class proclaims class and status. The upright design is nicely complimented by the squared off lighting instruments and the sculptured details on the sides of the car.

Bridging the two worlds between the C-Class and the S-Class, the new E-Class offers some of the agility of the smaller car along with some of the comfort and convenience features of the flagship. Indeed, for the new 2010 model, several new technical features have been introduced to the Mercedes line-up with the E-Class platform, effectively making it the most technologically advanced car in the Mercedes Benz line-up.

The new E-Class has all the advanced safety tech of the S-Class clubbed into a more manageable package. The full list of advanced safety features is staggering: Attention Assist, Lane Keeping Assist, Adaptive Highbeam Assist, Parktronic Plus, Blind Spot Assist, Night View Assist Plus, Distronic Plus with Pre-Safe Brake, Brake Assist Plus, Sand Assist floor mats and Agility Assist. These increase your control of the vehicle.

For example, instead of just fitting the new E-Class with an infrared camera, the night vision system paints the area in front of the vehicle with infrared beams, like invisible headlights. The camera, as a
result, picks up a much sharper image.

The Pre-Safe Brake is also cool. For the first time, it’s capable of automatically applying 100 per cent of brake force if the forward-looking radar detects an imminent crash. It won’t avoid the impact, but instead acts like an electronic crumple zone, reducing the force of the impact. Since it activates only when you’re 0.6 of a second from collision, it won’t affect your ability to take evasive measures, but could save your life.

And the Attention Assist system uses the sensors that govern the stability control system to monitor driver behavior and evaluate it against pre-set parameters to make a determination about the
driver’s alertness. If the driver is deemed to be drowsy, the car displays a coffee cup icon to suggest the driver chill for a bit and take a break before continuing. The beauty of all these systems is the transparency of their operation.

Welcome Home, the slogan, can be taken literally. Just by getting in and closing the door, you find yourself in a totally different world. Noise, stress and the rush of everyday remain locked outside, replaced by an overriding feeling of comfort and relaxation.

Elegant forms, fine materials, attractive colours, comfortable seats and exquisitely designed details create an atmosphere in which you immediately feel at home. One of the key aspects the Mercedes engineers focussed on to create this exceptional level of comfort was the new dimensional concept for the body and the interior.

Comfort is all about highly individual preferences. Which is why it is important for cars to offer their occupants a wide range of personalisation options. The new E-Class meets this requirement, not
only in terms of suspension tuning and seat adjustability, but also when it comes to climate comfort.

Attractive design, a pleasant feel and perfect ergonomics are the three main attributes of the dashboard and the centre console in the new E-Class – a harmonious blend that is one of the main
factors behind the feeling of comfort and well-being experienced while riding on board the Mercedes saloon.

The centre console blends in harmoniously with the dashboard form and colour concept.

Beneath these, the buttons for seat heating, seat ventilation, rear window blind, rear head restraints and other optional extras are demarcated by a discreet chrome strip. The lower section of the centre console houses the controls for the standard-fit automatic climate control system.

Mercedes Benz, one of the inventors of modern voice-operated control systems, has continued to further develop the ‘Linguatronic’ system in recent years, meaning that the navigation system in
the new E-Class can now be controlled based on the principle of whole-word voice input: the driver no longer needs to spell out the names of countries, towns or streets, but is able to speak them as whole words. It is just as easy to use the voice-operated control to select a radio station or an entry in the phone/address book: all available or stored names can be called up without the need for prior
voice-input training.

In fact, the new E-Class is so classy and so advanced that you can run out of superlatives describing it. It is easier to get into the driver seat and feel the difference!