2009 Mercedes-Benz E320 Bluetec Sedan Review

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SEE ALSO: Mercedes-Benz Pics, Specs and Prices Mercedes-Benz Buyers Guide
MERCEDES-BENZ E320 BLUETEC DIESEL REVIEW By Steve Purdy TheAutoChannel.com Detroit Bureau Imagine the chagrin of this poor, depressed fellow who carefully plans his own demise. He goes out into his garage with the ove runs a hose from the exhaust pipe of his brand-new, expensive Mercedes through the barely lowered rear window then gets in and back in the luxurious leather drivers seat and waits for the end. He slowly falls asleep. An hour later his wife comes home, opens the garage door and finds him there with the engine of his Mercedes still running. She s startles him awake. He feels refreshed, renewed and. surprised. His is the new E-Class with the ultra-clean Bluetec diesel engine. While browsing the Society of Automotive Engineers show in Detroit a couple of years ago I happened upon one of the Bluetec that the air coming out of the tailpipe of a Bluetec equipped diesel is cleaner than the air entering the engines intake. In fact, he insi one of these in a shop they dont even need to vent the exhaust. Now, I didnt get down and sniff the tailpipe of our classy black test car this week its winter here, after all, with too much c experiment so Ill not attest to the pleasantness of the cars exhaled breath. I guess Ill take the engineers word for it. But it is a car otherwise. To that I will attest. In stark black our no-nonsense, E320 is not an eye catcher but has an understated elegance to the focused eye. The fresh Merc exemplified by the low nose and tail with arched center lines so evident in the big S-Class cars and now even in the small C-Class, the E-Class yet. The rearward sloping nose with oval lights looks a bit last-generation. All the lines and details, though, are clean an simple rear treatment. Interior details are more striking as we slide into the abovementioned luxurious leather seats. Burled wood trim on the dash flo
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2/25/2009

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doors and decorates the console with just enough chrome trim to dress it all up a bit. Seat controls are conveniently located on the d down on the base of the seat where we can barely reach them on most cars. Controls are mostly attractive and intuitive, though computer functions stymied me. For example, the message that comes up about resetting the values listed by pushing the reset b reset button. This E-Class cockpit imparts a distinctively luxurious feel. The E-Class is a 5-passenger, mid-size, rear-wheel drive sedan with plenty of room in the rear seat. I had a full contingent of pas my rear seat passengers raved about the comfort, ride and style back there. Even the center-rear passenger thought her position w drive into the city of well over and hour. Now, back to that clean diesel engine it exhibits none of the diesel drawbacks that soured us on compression-ignition engines in t Only a knowledgeable and attentive ear will know it by its sound just a well-dampened tickishness at idle. Its not slow. M-B cl time of 6.6 seconds respectable even for a sports car - accomplished with 3-liters of displacement in the V6 engine that makes a m but an awesome 400 lb-ft of torque. It is torque, of course, not horsepower, that gets us moving so quickly. And, as we described turbocharging, direct injection and the sophisticated Bluetec exhaust cleaning system that features urea injection, a couple of cat high-tech filtering systems. In spite of that amazing cleanliness and winning the 2007 World Green Car Award this E320 Bluetec is 9 states. (Check your states requirements.) The power is managed through a new, smart, 7-speed automatic transmission that has a manual mode, driver adaptive capability thought it shifted a bit slowly for the first few miles as we left home a couple times with the outside temperature around 15-degres smooth, efficient and quick. While the EPA estimates fuel mileage to range from 23-to 32-mpg we managed nearly 34-mpg on trips and consistently high 20s on our around-town jaunts. With over 21 gallons of capacity in the fuel tank we have an impressiv Diesel fuel at the moment is just about 35% higher than gasoline in price here so the purely cost-per-mile fuel equation is not gasoline-powered C-Class. Safety features are equal to anything in its class with plenty of airbags, four and five-star government crash ratings and advanced c of opportunities presented themselves this week to explore some of the chassis controls due to repeated snow storms and bad ro impressed with the E320s skid avoidance capabilities. I tried to push it into slides around corners but it would only allow a fe motion before computer-controlled braking applications and power restrictions brought it under control. Our test cars shows a base price of $54,200. TheNew Car Buyers Guide Web site also shows $54,200. We have a Premium Packa and includes a 40G hard-drive with GPS navigation, Sirius Satellite radio, compatibility for iPod and other media, heated front sunshade. We also have a $570 wood and leather steering wheel and an $875 delivery charge to bring the price up to $58,345. Full warranty coverage on the M-B lasts 4 years or 50,000 miles. This is a car that any mid-size luxury buyer would be happy with, I would guess. While there are a multitude of great cars in this ca diesel. Just dont try to asphyxiate yourself in it. Get help. Steve Purdy, Shunpiker Productions, All Rights Reserved

My Personal Mercedes-Benz E320 Experience
Mercedes-Benz, E320, E-Class, Experience, Total Cost of Ownership, fuel milage, economy, maintenance This page describes my Mercedes-Benz E320 experience. It documents the total cost of ownership, as well as my maintenance experience. Mercedes-Benz, E320, E-Class Bryce Alcock global USA index, follow Table of contents
1 Running Fuel Milage Totals.... 2
Copyright 2009 Bryce Alcock, and BryceAlcock.com All rights reserved.
1 Running Fuel Milage Totals
Milage: 445.2 Gallons: 17.892 Price: 56.16 MPG: 24.88 $/Mile: 0.126 NOTES: Mostly Highway. 1 Long trip
Table 1: Running Total of Fule Milage

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