Mercedes-Benz E-Class Estate review
The best premium estate car you can buy
At a glance |
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| New price | £44,050 - £104,150 |
| Used price | £16,515 - £83,505 |
| Fuel Economy | 22.6 - 201.8 mpg |
| Road tax cost | £20 - £520 |
| Insurance group | 28 - 50 How much is it to insure? |
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PROS
- Spacious interior
- Wow factor cabin
- Comfort levels
CONS
- Can be pricey to buy
- Handling doesn’t excite
- Facelifted range is more limited
Mercedes-Benz E-Class Estate rivals
Following a comprehensive facelift in 2020, the Mercedes-Benz E-Class Estate continues to set the standard for premium wagons. It combines remarkable levels of space with excellent luxury and comfort.
It’s based on the E-Class saloon, but gracefully transitions into an estate with a curvaceous rear end. It has one of the largest load areas you can get in a modern car – excepting those that started out life as a van. That means the E-Class offers significantly greater practicality than its main rivals – the Audi A6 Avant, BMW 5 Series Touring, Jaguar XF Sportbrake and Volvo V90.
While you may no longer be able to specify two rear-facing child seats to turn the E-Class Estate into a seven-seater, the five passengers you can still carry will enjoy sumptuous comfort, masses of space and one of the most impressive-looking interiors fitted to any car this side of an S-Class.
Luxurious interior
The E-Class Estate really does look like a luxury product. It’s like a mini limo inside – every surface is covered in soft leather or quality materials, and with loads of sound deadening to make even high-speed journeys a hushed affair. Only the odd creaky trim lets it down a little.
Top-end cars come with adaptive suspension while the plug-in hybrid gets softer suspension, but even the more basic models are still very comfortable. There’s loads of space, too, with rear-seat passengers enjoying enough head and legroom to really spread out. No wonder E-Classes are so popular with taxi drivers the world over.
Laden with technology
Even at launch in 2016, the E-Class Estate featured some of the most sophisticated driving and interior tech you could get at the time. The 2020 facelift pushed that even further, with advancements ranging from a dual-screen dashboard setup for all models to 48V mild-hybrid tech on almost every engine.
The E-Class Estate features advanced cruise control and lane-keeping aids that can semi-autonomously drive the car on motorways and in traffic jams. There’s more safety kit than you can shake a stick at – active speed limiters that adjust based on the route in the sat-nav, augmented-reality navigation to ensure you never miss a junction, and blind-spot monitors that stay on even while the car’s turned off to prevent you from ‘dooring’ a pedestrian or cyclist.
Meanwhile, the two screens inside are high-quality, ultra-configurable and give the dashboard a real cinematic effect. They’re controlled via a central touchpad – an update over the previous scrollwheel – and a touch-sensitive steering wheel.
Wide engine range
The majority of E-Class Estates will be diesel-powered, with four- and six-cylinder units available to give buyers the choice of everything from an efficient cruiser to a torque-filled beast.
But diesel doesn’t have to be the de facto choice, with a range of impressive petrol engines also available. They range from basic four-cylinder units right up to the AMG-tuned E 63 Estate, which uses a twin-turbocharged V8.
The majority of these pure-combustion units feature what Mercedes calls ‘EQ Boost’ technology – a mild-hybrid system aimed at improving response and fuel economy while reducing CO2 emissions.
The really interesting engine option comes in the form of the E 300de plug-in hybrid. The E-Class is the only car on sale today to offer a diesel plug-in hybrid option, and it makes a really interesting choice – especially for company car drivers, who can make the most of its super-low CO2 figures and excellent long-distance economy.
