Mercedes-Benz E-Class Saloon (2016 - 2023) E220d SE 4d 9G-Tronic Owner Review

This is my third e220. I tend to change every three years so have owned all three of the last models. As stated above, this car at entry level has some major draw backs over the previous entry level e220. It's a great car to drive in terms of comfort, seats are supportive and well sprung and padded. It's a shame there are no storage boxes in the front of the seats now. The suspension is great for riding out the lumpy roads in Norfolk. The engine, whilst smaller at 1950cc packs a good punch and is very free reving. An easy car to get to speed and probably an easy car to earn points on the licence! Even more so as the speedometer gauge needle sits slightly under the speed the sat Nav reports - only by a couple of miles per hour but that's enough in a 30 speed limit. That brings me on to the standard Garmin Map Pilot sat nav. It's junk compared to the previous models command system that was fitted as standard. Map routing can take up to three minutes to compute. If a wrong turn is taken or road has been altered, the system can once again take up to three minutes to recalculate a route. That is desperately poor and dangerous. I have deactivated some of the map layers in the hope of freeing up some of the system resources to help the processor cope but this has not helped speed this up. The only saving grace for this weak sat nav is the decent on screen images at motorway junctions. The previous model e class had a chilled glove box, the new model does not. Not even a shelf to separate the junk stored in it. Fuel economy is excellent for such a new engine especially when you consider the size of the car. The previous e class was regularly returning 52 mpg. This new model is reporting 62 mpg. Bear in mind the previous car had covered 46000 miles before it started returning 52, 62 on a brand new tight engine is not bad. The stereo system sounds good but is over complicated by the lack of physical buttons to change preset radio channels. Everything is now buried in menu systems. Crazily over complicated. Mercedes make a big deal of the 64 colours that can be selected for the dash illumination, it's a gimmick. The rear parking camera is a nice addition and thought has gone in to keeping the lens clean as the camera drops down when required and folds away again when not in use. The parking pilot system is farcical. The car should be able to park itself either in a space or parallel. It makes such a meal of the task in hand that anyone watching would think a toddler was at the wheel. The system is also not fool proof as proved when it tried to crash the car in to a metal barrier. This was at the dealership! So, the car looks great and certainly more than what it costs. It drives very nicely. But the previous model had more going for it unless you are willing to shell out on the command upgrade.