Hi,

Thinking seriously about purchasing an E400 for my wife. Would like to hear from others that have gone forward with purchasing this car. General thoughts, thoughts about the new 3.0 liter engine, LED headlights, Distronics, the good the bad and the ugly...

Look forward to your responses, and thanks.

 

Sedan, coupe or cabriolet. The new 3L twin turbo sounds like a terrific engine, nice upgrade from the normally aspirated V6, May even make the V8 Twin Turbo a bit redundant for this class of car. My dad has an E350 sedan and loves it. I've just bought an E550 cabriolet. its a little early for me to review the whole car, but the drop top function is absolutely the best. Nice cabin comfort with the top down, neck heaters are first rate.

 

I drove a e550, not a 350. The car is a little mundane. Its not a bad car, its fine But its not a real sports car or a performance car. The seats are alittle hard. Theres plenty of room etc. All the features are great. But the real outstanding aspect is the engine. It is smooth and has great torque. The engine and transmission would sell you on the car if you drove it.

 

I traded my 2013 C250 for a 2015 E400, and I'm extremely happy with the car. The E400 gets many things that bugged me about the C250, right.


I commute 54 miles to work each day (2000 miles on the car, already), and now that winter is here, most of my time in the car is spent in darkness. The LED headlights are great. They provide a very clear and wide field of view. I haven't had the need to use the high-beams, yet.


My C250 was outfitted with the 215 H.P. 4-cylinder engine, so the 3.0 liter V6 is a huge difference. It can really move when needed, and is silky smooth when driving normally. I'll be purchasing the Kleemann KBox 400 ECU, after Christmas, though. Can't pass up 413 H.P. with 428 lb-ft of torque. I was considering replacing the resonators with an X-Pipe, but I'm really enjoying how dead silent the car is when cruising. When I've put my foot to the floor, the exhaust note sounds like it's coming from a much more sporty exhaust system, so I'm not sure that I want to mess with the duality that the current exhaust system provides. I'm currently averaging 26.4 to 27.2 mpg.


Although the ECO function is very responsive, it can be annoying when inching along in heavy traffic.


I'm in Western NY. I picked my car up the night that the record breaking snowfall began a month ago (7' in 48 hours). The 4Matic all-wheel drive and the stock Michelin tires got me through some tough driving conditions. I was effortlessly cruising by all kinds of so-called sport utility vehicles, while listening to DVD-Audio discs. That put a big smile on my face.


Contact me with any questions!

 

~ can you please tell me more?

 

All I can tell you, Andrew, is that after playing email tag with Kleemann USA, I gave up on the purchase. They asked for my shipping address, and claimed that they would get me an invoice. I never heard from them.


Here's the last message that I received from the US Kleemann office...


Our K-Box is available for purchase directly through our USA headquarters. Unfortunately, I don’t have one in stock at the moment, but I can get it here in about a weeks time. We require a 50% non-refundable deposit and the remaining balance due when the K-Box is ready to send to you. If you’d like to move forward with the purchase, please send me your billing and shipping information, and I will generate an invoice and send it to you along with a credit card form to fill out and send back. Once your card is run, we’ll place the order and get the K-Box coming from KLEEMANN HQ.


I'll try again, because the cost has come down, but I'm not expecting much.

 

Hi Cobalt -

Traded my '03 E500 (170,000 miles) for a new 2015 E400. Although it took a little bit to get used to the new 400, I am happy so far. Not only is the 3.0TT quite peppy, I've been able to achieve 28.5mpg when driving conservatively.

The adaptive LED headlights are very bright with very good road coverage. The curve illumination is great and it's a little fun to watch the headlights move while changing directions.

The E400 is much lighter than my old E500. Combined with the electromechanical steering, the E400 is quite nimble with a bit of understeer.

Although I do not have the driver assistance package, mine does have the standard lane assist, blind spot and collision prevention features. Getting used to the beeps and warnings didn't take much time and I've run into a few situations where the car didn't like my driving habits; subsequently activating the collision prevention system. The CP activation really gets your attention as it will apply the brakes in a rather aggressive manner. The lane assist feature will vibrate the steering wheel when it detects something it doesn't like and is sometimes overly sensitive. Easy to get used too.

I and another MBWorld member have detected a slight surge a second after accelerating from a stop in E mode. Annoying slightly, but that's about all.

Another minor issue I've noticed is aggressive downshifting during more than average braking. I've heard there may be a service bulletin that addresses this issue. At this time I cannot locate where I read that.

Overall impression? Despite a few minor items such as the inability to easily deactivate stability controls and no "rest" feature (I loved that in the winter months!) the new E400 is comfortable, fun and typical MB.

Hope this helps!

-chuck.