jimm

LIKES:

* Power and Transmission - PLENTY of power. Silk smooth transmission.
* Agility & Handling - Just right. Surprisingly similar to my C6. Quick. Steering ratio
and steering wheel size just right. (Not huge diameter like caddy, etc.)
* Ride - Great.
* Quiet - Very.
* Size Matters - I had 3 MB back in the eighties. Since then, it’s been Caddies & Town
Cars. (BIG.) Which when I started thinking MB again, a few months ago, I first looked
only at the S-550. But, I was detoured by, (1) the 94,000 and, (2) the confusing
round knob and phone thing (that sticks up over it) which can’t be removed.

(The 94,000 was the biggest deterrent.) So I started looking at the E-350. But, had
qualms about it’s “small size.” The car’s size became somewhat obsessive with me,
primarily because of my enduring and shameless ego. I didn’t want to be driving a
“small” car. So, every day, on the road, as I saw E-350s, some days they would look
small. The next day “just right.”

But, after a few thousand “looks,“ I started leaning toward the E-350. And, little by
little, concluded that the E-350 had the “just right” look for today. And, that the big
“boats” are losing their style. (I believe this down-size TREND really started with
Cadillac, years ago. Remember the old Fleetwoods?) Those were boats! So, today,
I vote for the E-350 .. as being the perfect size!

* Cell phone integration - Really, really great.
* Voice command - works fine. Worth the money.
* Comfort, driving enjoyment and pride of ownership - A perfect 10.

DISLIKES:

* MB Electronics - On a scale of 1 to 10, I give MB electronics a 1.
* Nav - BADLY out-of-date. Should be touch screen .. and, much other. The map
shows that my home and entire surrounding area on the Intracoastal - developed
over 30 years ago - is still “vacant property.” Now, there’s out-of-date for you!
And, the Nav DVD that came with it says 2004-2007. So I doubt that ANY change
has been made for 08.

* Memory Seat. Pathetic! You “should” be able to set it so that when you open the door,
it automatically goes back and the steering wheel goes up. Then when you get in and
hit the starter, it “should” automatically return to your driving position. Instead, with
MB, you have to sit there - and HOLD - the button while it slowly moves to the “saved”
position! (Mercedes-Benz and Electronics .. Oil and Water.)
* Gas cap is on the wrong side.

HOWEVER .. none of my negatives overshadow my LIKES! Overall - I’m very happy
with my E-350. And made a good decision to get it.

jimm

==========

Now Driving - ‘08 E350 Sport, P2, Black/black,
Parktronic, Voice, Bluetooth, Burl Walnut, Split
rear seat, Wood/leather steering wheel soon.

Vik888

My dealer failed to show me how the voice command works, so I just ordered an 08 E-Class w/o it. I suppose I could change it. Do you need to train your voice to it or what?

I could still change my order.

cyclerider

It is really only useful when you want to show off to your passengers. It doesn't control satellite radio, climate control, or navigation. I have it, but rarely use it and wouldn't order it again.

Kar don

pretty sure you can do some navigation functions with it.

cyclerider

Nope. The only thing you can do is switch to "Map" from any other COMAND screen. The S550 will allow you to enter your destination via voice control, and I hope the W212 will include the hard drive based navigation system from the S-Class. We can only wait and see. The current W211 navigation system is pretty lame.

BudC

Great feedback Jim. Going from a Town Car to a Mercedes has to be one of the biggest changes I could imagine.

Mercedes did have something they called EZ-Exit. We have it on our 2004. It permitted you to set the seat for each key and when you removed the key, the seat would go back and the steering wheel would go up. The opposite occurred when you put the key in the ignition.

Unfortunately, it never worked correctly so Mercedes took it out. You would think that if BMW and Lexus could get it to work, Mercedes should be able to as well.

The curious thing is that it worked most of the time for my wife who has the seat up and forward but not for me. I suspect that I had the seat back about as far as was safe with passengers in the rear seat.

As for the location of the gas tank filler, it seems that all European cars have it on the passenger side for some reason. It might have something to do with safety. In any case, I've always thought the American and Japanese cars were wrong and that they inconvenienced me when I went to fill up with gas. I guess it all depends on where you are coming from.

Do you know if your Navigation DVD is 2006.2? I've heard there is a newer one but I can't prove it. I've emailed my salesman about it but haven't heard back.

Can Drive 55

My 2005 has the easy exit feature. I can select wheel or both seat and wheel to move when I open the door. It works perfectly.

Can Drive 55

If you are having difficulties with the easy exit when you drive and not when your wife drives, maybe you have the key dependent feature turned on. Maybe she has the easy exit selected and your key doesn't.

BudC

No, I'm sure I had things set up correctly. I probably should have had it looked at but the car is gone next week when my new car arrives. If I'm not mistaken, the 08's have only the tilt-up steering wheel and not the total EZ-Exit package of the past.

Can Drive 55

I think the wheel portion of the EZ exit is more important than the seat portion. I have always thought that it could be a problem if there was a package or something behind the seat when I opened the door. I suppose it could cause damage to the item if the seat moved back into it.

Can Drive 55

One other thing I forgot is the gas filler cap on the passenger side. I thought I was not going to like that before I bought the car. I actually prefer it on that side now. I like not having the gas pump right by the door when I get out of the car at the gas station.

jimm

My salesman demo’d the Voice to me and he did quite a few things with
it .. but, he showed me so much that I've forgotten 99% of it.

At the time, what he showed me tho, was impressive. I’m just going to
have to go back through it all and learn things one at a time.

However one thing Voice does that I really like is for the cell phone thing.

You just click the lever on the steering wheel and say “call David.” (This is
assuming that you have “David” and his number copied into your phone
memory bank .. the phone list in your current cell phone which easily
transfers into BlueTooth .. or whatever makes this work. (You can see that
I don’t know much about this stuff.) I did have to buy BlueTooth to make
the cell phone/car radio thing work.

I really like that you can just call out a NAME and it automatically dials
it. As I said, he showed me several other things Voice did but I can’t
remember them.

For me, Voice will be helpful. Maybe not for others. I seldom have a
passenger so I won’t be showing it off to anyone.

Should everyone get it? Since it’s a luxury car, I’d say definitely yes. The
extra cost, compared to the price of the car, won’t kill you and there’s a
good chance you’ll find it quite useful. Might help resale, too. Dealers will
tell you that if a used luxury car doesn’t have all the “goodies,” it’s hard
to sell. (I know; most of you lease so maybe that won’t matter.)

jimm

BudC

If Voice Control on my '08 did what Voice Control does on even an Acura RDX Cute Ute, I wouldn't have deleted it from my order but unless I used a phone a lot, it didn't do much.

I suppose in retrospect I coulda, shoulda got Voice Control and the iPod integration kit but we've got enough things on the car that we'll probably never use as it is.

Whenever I think about buying something, I think about what else I could buy with the money. I want to build a new computer and that $500 for Voice Control will pay to upgrade from a duo core processor to a quad core processor.

Do I need a quad core processor? Of course not but I want it more than I want Voice Control.

You pays your money and you takes your choice as the old saying goes.

Diesel Benz

Always interesting to here how other owners find their car. I guess the replies cover much of this, the gas cap to me is a personal preference, some like it on one side, others on the other, I know some cars having it on both sides but I assume most would not like that either.

This easy entry is on the W221, I see it also on the US manual. It does exist on my W211 (older), so I would conclude "it is not that MB did not know about electronics", I'm afraid it is the issue that MB decided to disable several features because they got so many calls to their call centre, the average drivers made you suffer when MB decided to adapt to the average. Several posts on this. The fact that you have to hold the memory button is a safety feature, I doubt anything else would be accepted by US lawyers.

The map issue seemed sever to me. Again I would like to defend MB, the map data base is not produced by MB, if it is outdated, MB cannot do a lot. But did you really have the latest disk? Would you be willing to post co-ordinates of that area, I would like to have a look if Navtec/Tele-Atlas really cover that area. Sounds amazing if a populated area of the US would not appear up-to-date on the MB navi. Finally, the touch-screen to me is also a personal view, I would not accept finger prints on my MB. How was it with the voice activation on a W211, does it not allow address input like on a W221, I would consider that a lot better than touch screen.

gotoschoolhere

Jimm,

Thank you for your insightful report on your new beauty, wouldn't have expected any less from you. I hope you received my response to your email.


The issue of purchasing more options (perhaps more than you'll need):
I am certain I only want the P02 and Bluetooth and perhaps if budget permits wood steering wheel. To each his own.

Thus Budc is right....
Philosopher, Henry David Thoreau says we literally pay for everything with our lives. For example if you are an attorney working for a relatively large firm and make roughly $250 an hour, it could be said that you trade in an hour of your life for $250.

Conversely if you purchase voice control for $510, then you are paying for that item with 2 hours and 4 minutes of your life. It is difficult to live you life thinking this way but the philosophical conundrum is simply just jaw dropping.

gotoschoolhere

Wow...

You must be kidding. It is absolutely their fault!!! I understand that MB does not make navigation systems... But also MB is not a captive buyer nor is the navigation system company supplying systems to MB a captive supplier. This would mean, i would assume that MB could purchase a more sophisticated system to put in these cars.

Ghetto2315

The seating return is a setting in your steering wheel. On the left side of the steering wheel, you'll see 2 buttons that look like "pages". Click one of those buttons until your dash displays setting. Once it says setting, use the up arrow button on the steering wheel to get into your settings. Now use the plus or minus buttons (used for audio volume) to switch between the different settings. Find the convenience setting, press up to get into it, then switch on the "Easy Entry" Feature and viola. In the 08's however, the steering wheel only moves up and down. The seat does not move back. Also, they got rid of the mirror adjustment parking aid. I believe they got rid of it in 04

As for the gas door... its on the passenger side. The same side as it is for every year of the 211 and currently on every MB model

BudC

And for every European car I can remember seeing. It's certainly on the same side as all the German cars I've owned since 1957. Germans seldom do something without a good reason but it might simply be a carryover from the past.

In my case it works out perfectly. When we travel and I'm filling up the car my wife is sitting in the passenger seat writing down the details of the purchase. Don't ask me why she does this

starbrite

Now let's see some pics !!

Diesel Benz

I assume you did not understand my point (which may have been my fault if I was not clear). There is no other navigator device that would have better map data than that Navteq and Tele-Atlas can provide. If a street is not in their data base, you cannot assume MB would do their business (this is outsourced by all car manufacturers, basically by all navigator device manufacturers). Of course MB always could put pressure on their subcontractors, they actually do, they have a map error report option, don't assume it is used a lot though.

This is why I wanted to have coordinates of that specific area, if another map application shows roads on that area, then the MB navi on a new car with an up-to-date navi should also do it (give or take half a year delay, depending which service we compare).

There is no way a more sophisticated system would do streets that are not on the map data base. Of course the MB navi could read the data on-line like my cell phone, but this is not common and I don't think all would like to pay the phone bill for map data downloading.

Please clarify if I misunderstood your point.

parkums

Uh.....must be your first with a German. I assure you it's on the right side per assembly instructions for this car.

Now whether you prefer passenger or driver side is another discussion. I think American cars have it on the wrong side. It's part of their "great" design!

Diesel Benz

Perhaps this gas cap forces Europeans walk, at least from one side to the other of the car, and then you don't need the easy entry get in and out from the car

Seriously, this was Jimm's list of dislikes, he is the only one who can decide what he dislikes and is right on each point in that sense, I'm just trying to defend MB against this being considered generally wrong.

Barry45RPM

The only thing you can do is say "MAP", from another application and the map will appear.

You don't have to train the VCA to understand you, it just does. There is however a button to press to enter training mode. I've never trained mine.

It controls the Phone beautifully once you enter "voice dial names" thru the Comand & on screen phone book.... Pull the lever and say "Call Home"... it replies "calling Home" in your voice.

It controls every AM/FM/CD/CDC function beautifully, too.

Barry45RPM

Perhaps as a hidden safety feature, they don't want you on the traffic side of the car if you ever have to pour gas into the tank from a can. Also, it keeps you off the road on old rural stations with pumps close to the road. (Not all countries have Laws on the books for every concieveable idiotic act which can be done by a litigious citizen.)

Just out of curiosity... how can there be a WRONG side for a filler pipe? Pull up to Full Serve, and its right where it needs to be.

RE; The Nav System. OK, Its clunky... It will get you there. Ther biggest fault with the thing is the map display colors. You have NEVER seen a map in such terrible colors. If land was sand color or yellow, it would make a substantial difference to most people. Its certainly no Honda Nav! But still... nothing drives like a Benz.

AsianML

Plus, I hate it when the filler is on the driver's side because sometimes I don't pull ahead enough or too close and the door doesn't open very far (without risking hitting the cement thing near the edges of the pump.