Mercedes-Benz E 300 Coupe 2017 Review

Filling as many market niches as you can while still turning a profit is not exactly a novel marketing strategy but Mercedes-Benz is this week wedging another coupe into a crowded luxury two-door market with its new E-Class Coupe.

At least the new two-door Benz has a body that not only looks stand-out sexy but also won’t so easily be mistaken for one of its brethren; it appears a step removed from recent cookie-cutter Mercedes-Benz designs.

The E-Class Coupe might look better than the sedan but it’s just slightly more bluff in a wind tunnel: the E 220d Coupe has an aerodynamic co-efficient of 0.27Cd compared with the sedan’s 0.26Cd.

Aussie cars are treated to an AMG body kit as standard, and wheels are 19-inch on the E 220 d and 20-inch for E 300 (tested here) and the E 400 4MATIC. On the E 300s and E 400s we drove at the launch, the run-flat tyres featured a sidewall lip that removes any chance for all but the most flagrant of efforts to kerb wheels.

There are fixed rear quarter windows that allow the rear side glass to fully recede into the body but also might have your rear-seat passengers fumbling for a rear door-handle. Otherwise the Coupe is a resolved design.

Getting comfortable
Speaking of rear seats, this coupe is one of the easier two-door cars to get in and out of. The front seat bases slide forward automatically once you’ve reclined to seatback, and diving in doesn’t then involve the sort of awkward manoeuvres you might expect.

Once settled in the back, there’s plenty of leg and shoulder room – but anyone measuring more than about 170cm tall is going to find headroom tight. There’s storage and cup holders between the seats and two air-vents in the rear of the centre console.

Clever dash design
Up front, the dash shares the E-Class sedan’s enormous LCD instrument screen. It looks a bit like an iPad, only that if an iPad is the length of a lunch roll, the Coupe’s dash is the full French stick. Its squared-off shape is at odds with the rest of the car’s smooth styling, but the important bit is that it works.

While driver distraction seems to be a growing problem, there’s no excuse for spending too long reading the Coupe’s screen displays: they are clear, large and very easy to read. The key instruments in front of the driver can be configured in a number of different ways while in the middle of the dash there’s the infotainment display.

With the head-up display (packaged in the Vision Package option at $4990 for E 220d and E300 but standard in the E 400 4MATIC) there’s little chance of driver distraction. Benz’s console-mounted controller and simple menus makes diving into the infotainment system easy from the get-go.

The front seats offer plenty of support and have good range of adjustment to keep occupants happy.

Getting a boot full
Getting big stuff into a coupe’s boot – thanks to sweeping rear glass that erodes boot opening space – can seem like you’re trying to feed a suitcase into a letterbox, but the E-Class Coupe doesn’t suffer any of that.

There’s a low loading lip, the compartment is quite long and the split rear seat backs drop to near-vertical to provide a fairly large opening for carrying long stuff.

While the exterior and interior finish oozes quality as you’d hope for in a premium German product, the E 300 we drove suffered wind noise at the seal between the left-side windows and there was a resonance coming from the opened centre console lid on rough road surfaces.

Smooth and refined engines
Both the E 300’s 2.0-litre four and the E 400 4MATIC’s V6 are smooth, refined engines, but in the E 300 in particular initial throttle response appeared muted.

The 2.0-litre four developed a pleasant, distant snarl as revs rose, but neither engine felt as though they were offering the sort of acceleration the claimed figures suggest. The nine-speed auto, standard in all E-Class Coupes, offered up either lush or decisive gearshifts as required.

Going on trip computer figures, the E 300 achieved an average of 8.6L/100km and the E 400 4MATIC 9.7L/100km, mostly during highway driving for both.

The big coupe corners and grips well, although with little flair or feedback. The E 300’s steering had an odd, slight loading up sensation when turned in during easy cornering. Perhaps this was a result of the Active Lane Keeping Assist component of Drive Pilot trying to suggest a better cornering line, but the E 400 4MATIC didn’t do it with the same system engaged.

The Drive Pilot assist features seemed to work well, except for Active Lane Keeping Assist during cornering. Driving on a straight piece of road, you’re reminded that you’re veering close to the road’s centre or side markings with a gentle tug at the wheel. I wasn’t game to let the car veer over the centre line on a corner but the system didn’t seem to ‘see’ the centre line coming.

The E-Class Coupe’s ride is well contained and smooth on most bumps, but the 40 aspect ratio run-flat tyres don’t seem to help when trying to absorb even mild potholes, which were met with a resounding thump.

The Benz coupe’s air suspension has a certain springiness to it, especially when riding over a series of bumps. It’s a bit like the sensation you get when sitting on a thin air mattress or tyre inner tube on a hard floor.

Mercedes-Benz Australia expects that the E 300 will account for the bulk of E-Coupe sales at 50 per cent, the E 400 4MATIC to take 35 per cent and the E 220d the remainder (15 per cent).

While the company won’t reveal its sales expectations directly, it has in a round-about manner. PR manager Jerry Stamoulis said the company expects at least a 10 per cent increase on the previous C207 model’s 1114 sales in 2013, when it was facelifted.

You might think the new E-Class Coupe’s bigger size, fresh looks and superior technology would go some way to lure buyers away from the luxury coupe segment’s most popular model, the similar – but cheaper – C-Class Coupe.

It’s a hard call though, because for $5000 less than the E 300, buyers can nab a C 43 AMG Coupe, but for more than $25K less, the C 300 Coupe looks like an even more savvy buy.

While it isn’t as quick as you might expect, or have the overall ride refinement you’d hope for, the new E-Class Coupe does offer an attractive, more differentiated design than before, a refined powertrain and excellent in-cabin technology.

2017 Mercedes-Benz E 300 Coupe pricing and specifications:
Price: $110,900 (plus on-road costs)
Engine: 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo-petrol
Output: 180kW/370Nm
Transmission: Nine-speed automatic
Fuel: 7.1L/100km (ADR Combined)
CO2: 163g/km (ADR Combined)
Safety rating: N/A