I've had my 13 Bluetech for over a year. Love the looks but it's a bit uneventful to drive. Particularly the sluggish trans seems uncharacteristically slow - drives me nuts. Is this to handle torque or what?

I end up driving my Huracan more because the E is so ho-hum. Been shopping new M3, CLS63, 750i or anything more fun to drive. But before I switch just yet - is there a re-flash or update that will wake the car up?

As in Lamborghini Huracan ?

Seems like you are looking for something which the E 250 Bluetec is not, even though it is a Sports sedan in all rights, it is not a "fun" car to drive relative to the market but then again it never pretends to be. The E 250 serves it purposes and does it expertly.

If you are still looking to stick with diesel, the 535d might be a good choice to consider. It is much faster and it is a bit more lively to drive. I was cross shopping both the 535d and the E 250, the 535d has incredible pull.

That's the nature of Mercedes's 7G-Tronic transmission. It prioritizes smoothness over quickness.

Yes Lambo. And I recognize the E350 Bluetec is not a quintessential sports sedan. I'm just wondering if there are ways to speed up the huge delays to throttle input and gear change.

Perhaps a throttle position remapper like a Sprint Booster might do the trick.

I copied these steps down from another post two years ago so I don't know who to give credit to, but here are the steps to reset the adaptive tranny learning. I do this whenever I want to restore a little pep to the pedal.

1. Get in car and close the door.
2. Turn key to position 2 (or press the start button twice) with feet off the pedals, i.e. do NOT start the engine.
3. Floor the gas pedal and keep it down waiting 10 seconds when you will turn the key to position 1 (or press the start button once) still keeping the gas pedal down.
4. After key in position 1 lift you foot from the gas pedal and wait about two minutes. In my car the cluster goes black after about 20 seconds but then pops up again after about two minutes. Anyhow, wait two minutes no matter what happens.
5. Turn key off.
6. Go test drive it. You will have a different car to drive.

I just did this. Dash never went black after 20 seconds but I did wait 2 min. Can't tell whether it changed anything in E mode. In S I noted that the car seemed to hold or go down to gears to stay in the boil which I think is about 2k. But I can't recall whether it always did this and I didn't notice LOL.

Then again my test drive was about 2 min!

I should take out that part about the dash cluster. That's from whoever wrote it originally - mine doesn't do that or at least I don't pay attention to it. I just set a timer on my phone and wait at least two minutes before I open the door or do anything else with car.

If you to this right after driving the car, it's easier to tell the difference right away as you have a direct comparison. For me, it makes the pedal seem more responsive even in E mode. Whereas after a few weeks/months of learning, the pedal starts to feel numb in E mode.

look into piggy-back tuning boxes. Not the ebay type, just do your research. You might find better input on the ML or GL forums as there's more of those diesels out there. I have one that changes both boost and injector duration and it gave my E320 bluetec a nice bump. Still not a racecar, but pretty decent. The whole reason I'm not going to upgrade to the 212 is because they kept the old version of the OM642 in the pre-facelifts, whereas the SUVs and the S get the newer, more powerful version. That's despite the 212 being significantly more heavy than the 2122. Then when they did the facelift, they dropped the 6-cylinder version completely.

Give me a 2016 212 with an updated OM642 and I'd be a happy man. They sold a final year of the 212 in Europe with the 258HP/457 ft/lb tq OM642 and the new 9-speed. Now that would be a sweet car.