tutterrow

Hi all,

I'm just returning back to MB fold, I long ago drove the CLK 430, and had some questions about whether this 2014 E350 4Matic would qualify as a "good purchase".

My criteria are

• Good family car for 3 (wife and 7 year old)
• Fairly fun to drive - the driving will be split between my wife and I. I work from home.
• Good value overall vs. my options in the market. I've only been looking for a month or so, but like this car. So does my wife - which may not happen again for months

You can see most of the details on the car in description, it does also still have about 1.5 years left on the MB warranty. They will also be replacing the brake rotors and pads.

The dealer gets good reviews online and was helpful in our phone call - he also came down $500. I live in Atlanta, so it's a few hours away, and before I drive up there wanted to get feedback from anyone that might have an opinion on my "use case".

thanks,
Kirk

davidjohnbamber

I would have no problems recommending you to buy the vehicle. That said, can you buy another 2 years of M-B warranty on this car? Right now M-B has a 2 free services, and a good APR on CPO E class models. That gives you an extra year of warranty Just something to consider. These cars are great rides, and having a warranty will give you peace of mind CPO, or 3rd party.

cetialpha5

It's not too bad, has a few options like keyless go, but not parktronic or a pano roof. There's a lot of 2014's on the market now. There's nothing special about this one. It's actually a Pzev which might not be good in your state as it's not a Pzev state. If you were in a pzev state, you'd be covered for 15 years/150k on certain emissions components, if you're not, it's much less. This isn't an MB dealer so it's not CPO, all you can do is see if it qualifies for an extended warranty by checking with some dealers in the extended warranty subforum. If it had a CPO warranty at one point, then it would no longer qualify.

thenew3

do a test drive at night as well. This car does not have lighting package. The factory halogen lights are pretty weak.

cetialpha5

In 2014, they went to LED on all models, but there's a lighting package with active curve illumination and automatic high beams which this model doesn't have. There's a few other options that it doesn't have, the driver assistance package, parktronic, has MB-Tex instead of real leather (not too common to find it), multicontoured seat, cooled seats, etc.

babacah

That is about the price I'd expect CPO from a MB dealer. Good car otherwise.

thenew3

Didn't know LED was standard. The loaner I had for a week had very yellowish lights that were also very weak. Very similar to my 2013 with halogens.

I've also seen several face lifted (2014+) driving around here with very yellowish headlights with very white LED DRL's under the headlights.

tutterrow

Thanks everyone, especially pointing out the missing Pano, lighting package and paktronic. I'll simmer down and look more

pamiboy

The only halogens for non-lighting package facelift cars is the high beams and front indicators. Both DRLs and low beam are LEDs as standard. Now if you have seen some similar cars with halogen lights , then they much be "pseudo upgraded/ modified preface lift cars with the new grill installed. I don't see any other way you can have halogen low beams / DRLs. Now it's different for the C class cars which have a base halogen version (which usually are the loaners).

cetialpha5

You can tell if it has parktronic by the sensors in the front and rear bumper, usually shows up in pictures. Not sure how you tell on the lighting package, with Bixenons in the 2010-2013 years, they had headlampe washers, but those are now gone. The pano roof is also easy as they usually include a picture of the roof. Keyless go typically has the button on the dash, but sometimes they take the button off so you really need to use a VIN decoder to tell what it really has. I like the power trunk closer too, but lots of times they never take a picture of the rear trunk where you can see the buttons and the handles for the fold down seats. Use this vin decoder to see what options it really has:

http://www.vindecoderz.com/EN/Mercedes-Benz

BetterTomorrow

Since you mentioned your 7 yrs old child, almost 30k can buy you a car with latest safety equipment (emergency braking with pedestrian detection, rear cross traffic alert and rear view, blind spot monitor, etc). These are invaluable options once you get used to their usefulness in my opinion. Even a new Toyota Corolla has all those and more as standard options now days, so buying a car without those options may be setting yourself up for bigger loss when the time comes to sell. With that said, if you were to buy a pretty bare optioned E, a better alternative in similar price range may be something like 15 Hyundai Genesis, 3.8 AWD. It is larger, safer, quieter, more comfortable, more technology packed, much less expensive to maintain, very reliable and should be comparatively athletic to E350. If you like E350, perhaps find one with driver's assistance, lighting package, and 360 degree parking assistance or parktronic.