Got her home, the 212.025 I mean.

From the family photo you can see it was really a missing piece. One could claim the last one should be there too, unfortunately just in a dream.

Drove her home from the factory, you can see the fuel tank being at a quarter already after the first 1000 km. A bit of stop and go traffic unfortunately at the autobahn.

Sorry about poor picture quality, some with camera phone and I did not want to use any photo hosting service.

 

Wow, nice pic!!

That's actually the best angle yet I've seen from the car, seems to be a VERY angle specific car for me. Some angles it looks really bad to me, and some it looks sharp.

Congrats, and awesome fleet!! Wow. Did you trade a 211 for it? What are your impressions of the car, how does it stack up to your 221? Or even your 211 if you had one before it?

Just noticed on the far left single pic of the car, it looks like the headlights are off alignment and are not in harmony much with each other . I've noticed it before, but close-ups really seem to give it away to me.

 

From the photo it does look like the small front light would not be aligned with the bigger one, I'll have to go and check it from the car, it could be just that the photo isn't directly from the front.

All cars (204, 211, 212 and 221) are a bit different and a direct comparison is difficult, perhaps only makes sense between the 211 and the 212. Honestly I don't have enough miles on the 212 that I could have a firm view but I would say the steering being more accurate, responding immediately while both feel similar on a straight road.

The W204 suspension is the hardest from the three (or four), partly perhaps because of the narrow and low profile tires but it must be from the suspension itself. And the W204 has the standard 4-Matic suspension, no AMG options or similar. Since the 204 is the lightest too, it does drive corners sharper than the others.

All the rest are/were with Airmatic but I would say the 212 drives smoother over bumps than the 211 while the 221 has the smoothest suspension but also less reactive than the E-class, even if the 221 was driven at S-mode.

One night I drove a good distance at complete darkness and the intelligent light system appeared to me the most astonishing single feature on the car. It adjusts the short beams according to the traffic to an extent that it feels like driving with high beams when the car in front is sufficiently far, before it actually changes to long beams (this is a smooth transition actually). It gives so much light all over the free road that the W221 with bi-xenons feels like it had halogens only.

It has some "simplifications" too over the 211, like the rear folding seats now are like on a 204, the rear backrest only moves and falls forward. It doesn't give an equally flat floor as the 211 and probably a bit less height too. Not a problem for me because I don't carry big objects in this car but someone who is used to making the full advantage of the 211, might be disappointed.

Airmatic has only two levels like on the 221, luckily Airmatic and transmission are still controlled separately (unlike the 221).

 

Awesome, thanks for the write-up! Very informative.

Any significant changes in interior refinement/build quality/touch/fit-finish, etc. that strike you? I've heard it go both ways thus far, some people have said the 212 has a colder and less "refinement in the form of elegance" factor per-se with worse materials as a whole, and I've seen people say basically the opposite.

 

I wouldn't say the interior build quality being different really, either way. But the 212 is more modern, I thought I would not like the sharper lines that much but now I feel the whole instrument panel looks a lot nicer than that of a W211, perhaps the centre air nozzles aren't completely to my taste, the simple forms of the W211 centre nozzles are nicer.

But I should not even try to compare the looks, it is all depending so much about personal preferences and taste. 212 is very much following the 204 style anyway.

I found a photo of the lower control panel, unfortunately the air nozzles are not shown completely (but all the marketing material that we've seen show the interior quite well).

 

Beautiful. Congrats . It looks splendid.

 

Good Looking Car

 

Nice...lucky you, can you show pics of the infamous rearwith lights on