levind

I just arrived home after picking up my E320CDI at the factory. The experience was remarkable. Everything was well organized and efficient. I got to the factory at 8:15, had the paperwork signed by 8:30, and got tickets for the 9:00 tour. It started with a short movie (available for sale in the MB boutique), and continued on a bus. Then we walked a short distance through the C-class final assembly line. It was very impressive. All I could think of, however, was getting back to the customer center to take posession of my new car!

That occurred at 11:00. Recipients stand in front of large plate glass windows looking for their car in the room on the other side like an expectant father. A technician calls your name, and you are escorted to your car. Mine looked perfect. The tech spent a lot of time with me, answering all my questions, testing all the features for correct operation, and even programming my navigation. Then you are on your own; driving through the big sliding doors to the photo spot in front of the delivery center. I took some pictures; then parked the car and went back inside for lunch and shopping in the boutique.

I opted to go on the black forest tour. The hotels are truly first class. The service, rooms, settings, and cuisine were some of the finest I've experienced. The best part of the tour was that you see a part of Germany that very few people have. The roads were mostly uncongested, the scenery was spectacular, and the best part was I felt like I was the only tourist in the area. I took over a thousand digital photos, and will post some after they are downloaded. I modified the tour slightly by eliminating the final night in Munich, opting to stay in Austria a second night. That was a good move. The Interalpen hotel was by far my favorite, situated in the heart of the Alps with breathtaking views from every window. I then followed the romantic road back to Augsburg, and then back to Stuttgart.

The car performed perfectly. I experienced no malfunctions, warnings, squeeks or rattles. I put over a thousand miles on the car while there. Some comments: The car was built the third week of July. It has the REST feature, but not the tunnel mode. The center consol IS air conditioned, but the center wheel on the dash is gone. The threshold to get into the car is covered by a plastic strip (no dirty carpet).

The diesel engine is amazing. I got almost 35mpg over the duration of the trip. After breaking in the engine for 1000 miles, I drove at 120mph on the autobahn as comfortably as 55. It was quiet, stable, and felt like it had power to spare.

I enjoyed all the options I ordered, but wish I had gotten Parktronic because of all the tight parking garages. My favorite features were the Keyless Go and the trunk closer. I will post photos soon.

saffrontiger

Congratulations on a truly amazing car. I purchased the CDI three months ago and have had nothing but excellent things to say about the car. I do envy you for doing the ED. I could not take off enough time from work to make the trip work with my circumstances. Happy motoring and post your pics soon.

BklynBenz

thanks for sharing now lets see some pics!

Apollo

Congrats

Nothing like the experience of picking up the car from the factory. I went in April with wife and 2 children and was shown around the E Class assembly lines, but never saw the shells being made or the paintshop. The robot fitting the 60kg dash in the car is amazing. Did they say that there is 20 kilometres of wiring in these cars?. One car roles off every 30 seconds. Great experience.

DavidNJ

How did you get a 1000 miles on the car doing the Alps tour? And, were the rooms regular rooms or suites? Our one MB night at the Zür Tenne in Kitzbühl was a suite.

Sounds like you had more luck then we are having. Also better mileage. Did you get a mileage figure for just your 120mph Autobahn run?

Good luck and happy motoring,

David

P.S.
We have been closer to 25 in the city and 30-33 on the highway, except for the run back to Munich after putting on the space saver spare. I will post a picture of that latter.

levind

David: We did the Alps tour plus additional day trips through the Phalz wine region and up the Mosel and Rhine river. We got suites in all hotels except Buelerhoehe (the castle). My mileage was an average of very slow driving, and very fast driving. Yes, it sounds like we had better luck than you did. I still need to post some pictures.

khaug

Thanks for the great post. We leave in c. 2 weeks, and I'm beginning to get excited. Did you find diesel fuel readily available in Germany?

Looking forward to your pictures.

levind

Diesel fuel was everywhere, and much cheaper than regular unleaded. The diesel was .95EU/liter vs 1.19EU/liter unleaded. Your car will come with a full tank (80 liters) which should last your whole trip. You want to return the car to Harms with as little gas as possible. They will empty the tank prior to it going on the ship.

You will be surprised at how many cars run on diesel.

levind

Here are a few pictures...

BklynBenz

nice pics! do you get to take the euro plates back with you?

khaug

Too bad we don't have the tax breaks for diesel fuel that Europe confers. Their price for unleaded regular gasoline, BTW, works out to $5.49/gallon! Makes me feel lots better about the $1.879 our local Shell station is currently getting.

Great pictures. Thanks

DWP

Are the plates on the car similar to the kind that German drivers get, or is the red area on the right side of the plate the "I'm a tourist, be very afraid" giveaway? The one time we did a European delivery, twenty years ago, we got big oval plates that flagged our auslander status from 100 meters away. Said big oval plates are still nailed to our garage wall.

BudC

levind,

How did you capture or save 1,000 digital images? Did you download them to a laptop or did you just take a lot of storage media with you?

DWP

The single 512 Mb CF card in my Canon Powershot S1 IS digicam will theoretically hold 1,524 1024x768 images, or 868 1600x1200 images, at the "Fine" (medium) compression setting. Get a 2GB minidrive and you can quadruple those image storage numbers, or store everything at the highest resolution and quality levels your digicam provides.

levind

I took 3 gigs worth of CF cards with me for use in my Canon S400. I shot the photos with the highest resolution, which would have given me a capacity of about 1500 pics.

levind

I tried to take the plates when I dropped the car off at Harms, but they would not let me. Hopefully they will still be attached when the car arrives at the dealer. They are similar the the standard EU plates, but not exactly the same. You do stand out as a tourist with them.

TPAbnz

Beautiful car!

Did Harms tell you which port your car is shipped from? How long are they estimating to US port delivery?

levind

I forgot to ask them where it is being shipped from. The car is being sent to Long Beach, and they estimate 4-6 weeks.

MB-JIM

Answers to a couple items:

The cars are shipped from Bremerhaven which in near Bremen where many MB's are built.

You definitely can remove the front tourist plate from your car unless they have changed their policy. In fact, Harms will lend you a screwdriver to take it off. You can't remove the rear plate. I removed my front plate from
my CDI this past May at Harms in Sindelfingen.

DavidNJ

We have a Sony DSC-T1, a small 5M pixel camera. Each of our 4 256MB Sony Duo Memory sticks (about the size of a postage stamp) holds 120 2.2MB JPEG images. We download them every night to a PC we have with us. After 11 days we have over 2000 pictures. This is a little higher than expected due to an exposure bracketing feature in the camera that my wife is using frequently. It takes three exposures for each picture.

Every gas station (Tankstelle) has diesel, frequently different pumps for PKW and LKW. It is like another grade. It is less expensive than the cheapest gas. We have been paying 84 to 90 cents per liter.

Cars here, Germany and Austria, appear to have NO dents. None. And they are generally very clean. Nearly every gas station also has a car wash. We have seen people washing their cars on rainy days.

Many things here are very narrow. Not only parking places. Also some streets. At one point we had to squeeze between a light pole and a front fender. On another occasion it was between a concrete wall and a bicycle.

Some streets require a U-turn to exit. This usually has parked cars all around. Dent free parked cars.

Recommendation: Parktronic, which we have found to work very well.

The nav system also works very well. It has nearly everystreet in any place we have gone and it knows about one way (einbahn) streets. It doesn't know about some restricted streets. And it has a quirk.

We found it the directions occasionally disagree with the map and say "Turn right" when the maps indicates a left turn is next. After making the right it nearly always follows with "make a U-turn if possible".

Recommendation: Navigation, especially if going ED.

Our car came with Michelin MXV4Plus tires. They were set at 30psi front/34psi rear cold which are the pressures recommend behind the gas cap for speeds over 100mph. We (I) found those squirlly. Although our testing was cut short by a flat tire, it seems that 2-4 psi additonal in the front and 2psi additional in the rear is a big improvement. At least on the Autobahn. Below 80mph it may not be noticable.

Recommendation: the Appearence or AMG packages, with V, W, Y, or Z rated tires, maybe a good idea for an ED car.

When we had our flat, we must have used over $50, and maybe over $100 on my wife's US numbered cell phone.

Recommendation: Arrange for an european numbered cell phone.

Recommendation to MB: insist on a factory installed phone for ED cars and arrange for rentals of compatible phones.

There have been a few times we couldn't get correctly in a space, or ideally in a space, because the mirrors got in the way. In Germany and Austria, E-classes seem very popular. They virtually all have cloth seats, no power adjustment for the passenger and frequently not the driver, no power tilt wheel, and usually a small motor (270 CDI is one of the largest). However they virtually all have folding mirrors (and most have Parktronic).

Recommendation to MB: Folding mirrors should be included on all ED cars.

David
In Munich
Turn in tomorrow

BklynBenz

lets see those pics davidnj

Oslo

Those plates are called ”Zollkennzeichen” or Custom Plates. They are used when transferring a car from Germany to abroad. On the red area of the plates, there is a date that tells for how long the car is allowed to be used in Germany. That will be the same date as the insurance expires. I see no problem why you can’t take those plates with you, as they are of no value after the insurance expire. The old oval plates that DWD mention, all had a Z in front of the number (Z=Zoll or Custom). It’s not “I’m a tourist”, and they are frequently used for transferring cars. They are also called “Überfürhungs kennzeichen” or Transfere Plates. Also, the plates will have a letter combination that tells the origin of the cars. In Sindelfingen, they use BB for Böblingen and another one I can’t remember. You can see on every German car where it comes from. B=Berlin, HH= Hamburg (Hansastadt Hamburg); MÜC= Munich, S= Stuttgart, (even X= NATO Headquarter) etc. Here is the complete list: http://userpage.chemie.fu-berlin.de/...e/doc/kfz.html

ToyCollector

Munich is just M. At least it was when I owned vehicles there in the 80s. Bigger the city the less letters, Bonn the capital of Germany is BN. If you see a plate with a two or three letter alpha combo, usually vehicle is from the country or a "minor city"..read that as a farmer not used to Autobahn!! Germans always have a system and these things are processed in your mind if you are on your game when the autobahn did it's thing. I haven't been back since the mid-80s but it was treat.

TC, born in Munich.

Oslo

You're right about Munich. But Bonn is not longer the capital. That is Berlin. And HH (Hamburg) is the second (or third) largest city. H=Hannover

ToyCollector

I did date myself in my post. I became an American in the early 80s so had to learn about Washington DC instead. My parents and all my relatives are German, so I was not an Army brat.

For more info, as I knew I dated myself. Cheers, at least we both shoot from the hip well.

http://www.kennzeichen.org/map1.htm