SA Roadtests
South Africa
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This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. We drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under South African conditions. It also just happens that most of the vehicles we drive are world cars as well, so what you read here probably applies to the models you can get at home.
*To read one of our archived road tests, just select from the alphabetical menu of manufacturers' names on the left. Hover your cursor over the manufacturer's name, then choose from the drop-down menu that appears.
*Please remember too, that prices quoted were those ruling on the days I wrote the reports.
It looks sexy, but why pay R37 811 more for a Mercedes-Benz E400 coupé than for its sedan counterpart? It’s classic with long bonnet, elongated profile, flat roof line, powerful tail end and fully retractable side windows without B-pillars; but losing two doors, 90 litres of boot space and 14 litres of tank capacity seems unwise. Okay, if you want it, you want it and nobody will convince you otherwise, but the question remains: Why?
A brain-numbing couple of hours’ poring over M-B’s intricate price and specification sheets provided the short answer: It’s worth it. Equipment fitted to the E400 coupé, but not to the equivalent sedan, includes a reversing camera, Comand Online navigation and entertainment, intelligent lights that let you stay on high beam for safety without dazzling other road users, heated front seats, door sill trims, a dynamic handling package and Harmon-Kardon surround sound. Added to the sedan, these would set you back R79 654. There’s a further perk: the coupé has ventilated discs at the rear rather than solid units. Learn and be wise – get all the facts before rushing to judgment.
Having established that this is actually rather delectable, let’s look deeper. Thrust comes from a three-litre, biturbo V6 that develops 245 kW and 480 Nm, so it does the benchmark sprint in 5,2 seconds and keeps going until the legislators cut off its rush at 250 km/h. That means it can charge like a storm trooper in automatic or eat up winding roads with gusto when you select manual mode, put the suspension on Sport, play nicely with the paddles and hoof it.
For some time, Mercedes’ have been fitted with reactive dampers that analyse road conditions and your driving style hundreds of times per second and adjust themselves accordingly. The dynamic handling package takes that a step further. It provides sportier accelerator pedal characteristics and gearshift points, as well as electronic damping control. This allows drivers to adjust damping to their requirements at the touch of a button, depending on whether they want a comfortable or sporty ride.
You don’t need to drive aggressively all the time, obviously. A three-way switch provides a choice of three driving styles – economy, sport or manual. A second button tames things down to a relaxed ECO mode and a third lets you choose between comfort and sport suspension settings.
Always responsible, the car is fitted with nine airbags; ABS brakes with braking assistance and ESP; acceleration skid control; pre-safe braking readiness; attention assist; adaptive brakes with holding function, brake disc drying and hill start assist, and steer control. This helps to keep you from wandering out of your lane and assists while crawling along in traffic jams. Park Assist, another feature of this car, helps with both parallel and angled parking. In essence, you control the brakes and gears while the car steers itself into parking slots you couldn’t face on your own.
The 450-litre boot remains substantial despite being smaller than the sedan’s huge cave. It’s nicely shaped with only small intrusions from the wheel arches and is fitted with two lashing rings, a pair of bag hooks, a light, a netted box on the left and a small recess with a Velcro strap, on the right. For peace of mind, there is a spacesaver spare and for bigger loads, the rear seatback splits 60:40 to lie almost flat. A pair of release levers in the boot makes this easier. It opens at mid-thigh and is only about 12 centimetres deep, so unloading is easy.
Unfortunately, despite being gorgeous, the sexy coupé styling has its price. The shaped-for-two rear seats can accommodate only very short passengers because head room is severely tight. Those who can fit will appreciate the cup holders and oddments tray in the fold-down armrest, and repeater vents for the air conditioner – with digital temperature control, naturally.
Driver and front passenger luxuriate in body-hugging chairs with a host of electrical adjusters and three memory settings each; and in keeping with the aura of opulence, the steering wheel adjusts electrically too. Concert hall sound, almost zero road and wind noise, as much power as any sane person could need, an almost intuitive gearbox and rock-solid stability, all remind one that this truly is an E-Class Mercedes - and a special one at that.
Test car from MBSA press fleet
The numbers
Basic price: R780 400
Engine: 2996 cc, quad-cam, 24-valve, V6
Power: 245 kW at 5500 rpm
Torque: 480 Nm between 1400 and 4000 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 5,2 seconds
Maximum speed: 250 km/h
Real life fuel consumption: About 11,4 l/100 km
Tank: 66 litres
Warranty and maintenance: 6 years/100 000 km Premium Drive contract
This is a one-man show, which means that every car reviewed is given my personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every test car goes through real world driving; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.
I do my best to include relevant information like real life fuel economy or a close mathematical calculation, boot size or luggage space, whether the space is both usable and accessible, whether life-sized people can use the back seat (where that applies), basic specs of the vehicle and performance figures if they are published. In the case of clearly identified launch reports, fuel figures are of necessity the laboratory numbers provided with the release material. If I ever place an article that doesn't cover most things, it's probably because I have dealt with that vehicle at least once already, so you will be able to find what you want in another report under the same manufacturer's heading in the menu on the left.
My reviews and launch reports appear on Thursdays in the Wheels supplement to The Witness, South Africa's oldest continuously running newspaper, and occasionally on Saturdays in Weekend Witness as well. I drive eight to ten vehicles each month, most months of the year (except over the festive season) so not everything gets published in the paper. Those that are, get a tagline but the rest is virgin, unpublished and unedited by the political-correctness police.
Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so they can see I do actually exist.
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SA Roadtests
South Africa
ctjag8