Wrecked Em

My wife decided to pull the trigger on a new E350 today, but being unable to locate one we liked, we've decided to order something. We currently have it spec'd as follows:

• Sport Styling Package
• Exterior: Palladium Silver Metallic
• 18-inch AMG twin 5-spoke alloy wheels
• Interior: Grey/Dark Grey Leather
• Trim: Burl Walnut Wood
• Sport wood/leather steering wheel
• KEYLESS-GO
• Split-folding rear seats
• Panorama roof
• Active multicontour driver seat
• 115-volt household-type AC power outlet
• 4MATIC Package
• Lane Tracking Package
  
• Premium 1 Package

The point of contention is the Premium package. The dealer looks at me like I'm on fire when I tell him we don't need it. His argument is that it's basically unheard of to have a modern luxury car without a nav system. (Oddly, he doesn't seem to have a problem with one having crappy vinyl seats though) He implies that we'll have to do nothing short of committing insurance fraud, if we ever intend to get rid of the car down the road.

My attitude is that our phones can do anything that the nav package can; probably better. Her current car, we bought new in 01. I would predict us to own this car for at least 8 years, so IMO the nav system will be outdated anyway.

My wife was originally convinced that she needed it, but after demoing it and needing 4 tries to get it to take our home address, she agreed with me. Somehow though, the salesman has again been able to convince her that she might want it.

Now this will absolutely be her car. I will probably put on about 5% of the miles this car will see. If we wants the package, it's a non-issue. Unfortunately, I am envisioning her using it for a week, before she just defaults back to her phone.

As far as the other Premium 1 features go:
Audio: My wife is essentially noise-phobic. Any time I turn on music (which is a necessity for me), she shuts it off because it's "giving her a headache". She prefers to drive in complete silence.

Rear camera: somewhat useful, I suppose. Could an aftermarket camera be used?

Sunshade: Indifferent on this. I'd probably pay no more than $300 if it was available separately.

Heated seats: Indifferent. I wanted ventilated, but my wife didn't like the looks. I never use heat. She might in the off chance that the car is parked outside overnight in the winter. I'd pay $500 at most for the option separately.

So, after my long-winded rant, is there any other value that this package adds that I'm not seeing? Omitting it seems like an excellent way to save $4k, but I want to make sure I won't regret it later.

alexunlv

Get P1. Trust me - you are already paying premium for this luxury car. Not getting Premium 1 - is a no go. If you are getting a 2014, I'd probably just go for the P2 package instead of P1.

eNNCity

I'd get it for the rear camera alone, it's very useful for parallel parking. It removes the guessing work when backing up near the other front bumper when its a tight space. I use the heated seats on a regular basis. When you have the sunshade, you use it as it's helpful for sunny days. These all have every day practical uses, which is what I enjoy out of a luxury car like MB.

Long3494Qut

Given what you stated...they are all valid points. I would say your wife would not necessarily need any of this now or in the future from what you've told me. Although, I haven't seen a 2014 with no P1. I'd say don't get it and 8 yrs down the road I wouldn't really think the P1 would add that much more value to the car. Rear view camera would be the only thing useful for her.

T.H.Carrera

Get the p1.

mikeyle

my phone does a better job with navigation, but then i would have to buy a mount for it, and i think mounts look kind of tacky. built in gps is the way to go.

BenzV12

When I see the order list I see some irrelevances ,sorry if I sound cheeky
You have multicontour seats but no Adaptive lights ? Come on you spend more money on Keyless GO and multicontour,split folding seats , namely Keyless GO arguably a necessary item to have (I never buy a car sorry I mean MB w/o it )
Artico / MB TEX should be one of the greatest vinyl you can find , of course genuine leather is awesome but Artico is very useful only downside you can't use mf cloth to clean them
MB's navi may not be the best in the market but I am on the same boat with your salesman , it's a 21th century car and MB ,why not pay a few quids / bucks to have it since you already pay for split seats
It's your car , I don't want to be cheeky , rude, high nose but whatever you do don't forget Adaptive lights . I am not advising you for the items that you may not really need but would be very useful like 360 view cam,split screen
Anyway, enjoy your car when arrives

BACnMercedes

You make good points, but I think the P1 will be good for resale. Even if it is years later. Other than that I would leave it off too for those points and just add the one or two options you want in the aftermarket. I don't think a P2 package is available anymore though. We just "pulled the trigger" on 2014 and had to order one as well. After searching every dealers website and their individual inventory within 500 miles, I could not find what we wanted specifically. And I was NOT paying almost $300 for a comfort box. Or other dealer profit items we didn't want either. So I see your point about omitting the P1. Its your car, get what you want. Or don't want.
We ordered ours last week and told hopefully by the end of the year. When did they say yours would be in?

El Cid

In 2010 I ordered an E350 in order to get the Luxury suspension, etc. Ordering the P1 package was a no brainer for everything except the navigation. Especially the audio, BlueTooth, etc. Navigation is something I can live without, but it is part of the package.
As for P2, nothing on it I would want so I didn't order it.
The MB-Tex seats are great, much better than leather I had on previous cars. Toyota has even replaced the leather on its most expensive RAV4 with vinyl.
Considering all the other options on the car, I seriously doubt you are really paying that much for the P1 package. If you are, you are getting nailed on the other options even worse.

Tjdehya

For 2014 a P1 car is the same as a 2010-13 P2 car. There is no longer a P2 for 2014. So the non-P1 car he is ordering is actually better equipped than the lackluster non-P2 car you ordered.

The resale issue doesn't apply if you trade your car in when buying a new one. The dealer doesn't care, he will give you what they think the car is worth. (usually book value.)

The only thing in the P1 package that is worth buying is the backup camera. I don't think the back up camera is worth $3k+.
The Nav is crap and the audio is not much better than the non-P1.

I will agree though that the Lighting package should not be skipped.

bigigg

I'm more concerned with your interior color combo.. Honestly I wouldn't get burl walnut with grey interior. Get the black ash, much nicer combo! The grey swirls in the wood will compliment the grey leather.. personally i would get p1 and lighting package over keyless go and multicontour seats

paking

I don't mean to hijack this thread but it's been mentioned in several threads that we can't use micro fiber cloth to clean the MB tex. Any reason why?

Thanks.

dfordham

Don't know what harm it causes, but MB specifically states in the user manual not to use MF on MB-Tex.

Regards,
Don

GregTR

Well I think the question is who are you buying the car for? Yourself/your wife or the next person down the road? The other question is how long are you going to keep the car?

If you KBB price out a 2011 E-350 with 45,000 miles the value of the P1 package on that car is roughly $530. So this is what you can expect to get back from the price of the P1 package after 3 years of ownership. So if you forgo the P1 package now and save that money up front even if you sell the car for $4,000 less than what any P1 car sells for you're still coming out ahead. I'm pretty sure you could sell that E-class for that price to a dealer if nothing else.

If I bought cars the way the next buyer wanted it I would just buy one off the dealer lot as that is what the average person would want. And I wouldn't be selling a used Blue xDrive 6-speed manual with no "satnav" with heated steering wheel in Texas. But I built the car the way I wanted to have it and I'm willing to sit on it longer to find the buyer with similar taste or take the beating and just trade it to the dealer at a loss.

As for the P1 package, I completely see your problem. It's a very expensive package. I could live without the navigation as my phone with Waze does way better job than any built-in navigation with outdated maps. Where I live the roads are under constant construction and highway onramps and exits get changed and shut down on a weekly bases that even Google Maps can't keep up with and only social maps like Waze can tackle. A map database that gets refreshed every 2-3 years is pathetic IMHO and totally unacceptable for any brand let alone a luxury brand. My wife's Audi A4 map is ridiculously outdated and they don't even have an update for me to buy.

The 10GB media storage is laughable, you can get a 32GB thumb-drive for $30 and be done with it.

With having my own music selection and pandora streaming etc. I don't know why anyone would subscribe to Sirius/XM unless you're a Howard Stern fan.

Unfortunately for me the other pieces in the package were important enough to suck it up and pay or the other useless features. This is why it's a package. Plus if you wanted the ventilated seats and the heated steering wheel P01 package is required so I was kind of screwed.

I probably will never use the built in GPS and still rely on my phone for navigation but I will use the other features of the package to make it worthwhile. If it doesn't worth it for you then don't pay for it, you will never recover the cost.

Oh and if you really want the camera you can get the Park Assist package with surround view without ordering P01.

Dema

I showed your list to my wife. She told like very right selected options. She only told like she uses backup camera a lot, so she recommends it. Regarding navigation, my wife doesn't know, Her phone isn't smart, so she uses navigation from car, however she told if the lady has nice phone perhaps she doesn't need navigation in car. I never used navigation in phone so I have off topic question, does it work in areas off cell phone connection. There is in California a lot areas where cell phone doesn't work.

YYZ-E55

Every car sells eventually. No matter how ugly the color combo or how bad the options, they all sell. The question is how long it sits on the lot and how low the seller has to limbo.

If the OP is truly keeping the car for 8 years, the options/packages selected today won't matter in 2021. No new car dealer is going to inventory it, it will just go to auction, so save the $4k.

If for any reason the OP needs to sell it prior to the end of the warranty (and thus it is a car that a new car dealer might inventory), I suspect the lack of P1 will really sting - especially with a grey interior (beautiful to me but a tough sell - grey generally has the lowest take rate of the available interior colors).

I agree with Greg's comment about not buying a car for the next guy, but IMO the OP should be very confident in his wife's 8 year horizion if he opts out of P1.

RichM

Micro fiber cloth causes the MB Tex to become shiny. So will any other non natural fiber cloth. Cotton is the best to use to clean these materials.

alanme123

What's wrong with MB Tex becoming shiny??

alsyli

Agree w/ those who say that you can avoid P1 if you're keeping the car for awhile. If you sell it, the lack of P1 might not even matter if you're selling it privately....

ZeroMB

I think the lack of P1 will matter. The vast majority of people want nav. They probably won't even look at cars without it. I think your available audience will be much much smaller without the nav.

Also I really haven't seen a Mercedes with a windshield mounted nav device. Not sure how WA is but in CA, unless you windshield mount your phone, you'll get a ticket for holding it. And many other states seem to be headed in that direction as well.

BenzBee

The other thing to consider is that some states have a cell phone while driving law - which could apply to using cells as navigation (if not mounted on a windshield etc.)

Wrecked Em

Thanks everybody. I think I'm going to suck it up and go for the P1.

Also, I too have reservations about the walnut on grey. I'm pushing for porcelain/black w/walnut. Of course, if it were entirely up to me, we'd be getting an e250 wagon in dolomite brown, but she's not having any of that.

I'll also take another hard look at the lighting.

Wrecked Em

They're telling us, early Feb. Actually, it surprises me that we're approaching a fully loaded car, yet there's nothing available. We are fairly flexible on colors. I wish there was a customer searchable database. My dealer spend about 4 minutes looking in his before he told me we'd have to order what we wanted.

El Cid

Personally I think Navigation from manufacturers will disappear in next few years or be dramatically changed. Other systems offer better information, free updates and cost a lot less.
Looked at a couple of SUV's from other makes and couple offer nav. completely separately from everything else - and I wouldn't get it.

MBNUT1

E class's without P1 sell at a deep discount to ones with it