thank you, my sales rep also steered me towards the 20”, aesthetically I really wanted the 21” all black wheel to match the sinister profile of the E53 with the night package plus… I’m thrilled with what I have! Absolutely stunning, and such an attention grabber. As soon as I get her back from the NY Car Spa I will be taking many photos. I have a video of the dash but it exceeds the size limits here…

you’re going to be thrilled with your new whip when she arrives!

 

I can't wait!

I know you were getting some grief for the wrap, but I think it's a great idea. I've had it on my Audi for 8 years and never once had to worry about scratches, door dings, bird poop, and it's super easy to clean. Especially if you have to park outside and have the extra money to spend, it's a solid investment!

 

It’s all good, I appreciate everyone’s perspective, even if it’s completely different from mine. I am confident wrapping is a solid investment for me and I’m planning on keeping this beauty for the long haul!

Given that I’ll keep my E53 until it’s lost all it’s value, do you or does anyone else have an opinion/recommendation on paying the $6,000 to extend the Mercedes warranty out?

 

pure gambling. Maybe wait until the end of the current warranty before you decide? At this point in ownership, everyone thinks they’re gonna keep their beautiful new car forever. I do too. The fact is, if you are spending time on here chatting about a car like this, you may get sucked into wanting something else sooner than you think.

 

Hopefully you will be getting yours soon!!! (But this doesn't bode well for my September order with no allocation yet...bleh)

 

You need to balance the anticipated need for covered repairs against the likelihood that there will be actual repairs needed.

My '18 E300 delivered in the Summer of 2017 has not needed any repairs except for 2 replacement windshields that were fully covered by insurance. Otherwise, only expected wear and tear items have been replaced. IMO MB's are engineered not to break. I drove a '77 300 (W123) about a half million miles over a decade without any mechanical failures.

 

I would go with the PPF and skip the extended warranty. My experience is that most of issues get worked out within the warranty period. In the last 10 years, I have spent less than $6,000 on "reliability" issues that would have been covered under an extended warranty.

 

In case of my 2022 E450 All-Terrain wagon (sold to my brother at 45K miles roughly), I never got any extended warranty, and not even a whisper of a problem in over 75,000 miles. My 2025 E450 AT wagon has around 9300 miles currently, and not a single issue till now......and thus I will not be spending money on an Extended warranty for the 2025 either. Of course if any problems crop up, I have another 40K miles to get the extended warranty, and so I don't intend to pay for it now.

 

I am #5. I am an E53 wagon fan who was surprised when Mercedes announced US availability. If the E53 wagon was not announced for the US, I'd probably be driving a BMW right now.

I was looking for something sporty, with the cargo utility of an SUV, the handling of a sedan, and a roomy backseat for family travel. It needed to score well on IIHS crash tests and headlight tests, be at least average in consumer reports reliability and score well in "fun to drive" in automotive reviews. The E450 All-Terrain has evolved into an award-winning luxury cruiser but has strayed from the sports wagon roots of the 2019/2020 E450 wagon. I like the full range of the BMWs and most likely would have picked a BMW. I was a few hours from purchasing a 2025 M5 Touring but didn't like that only summer tires were available and even those were in short supply. I'm going to drive the car in the Northeast. I would rather do a summer/all-weather tire swap than a summer/winter tire swap. On the E53, I can run readily available Michelin performance All Season tires year-round or switch to CrossClimates on the 19" winter wheel package for the winter. After experiencing a Mercedes with limited tire options and having done the limited production winter sports tires on a past Audi S4, I was pleased with the tire options for the 2025 E53 wagon. I am going to try the Michelin Pilot Sport AS 4's on the 20" wheels on the E53. I like that the car has performance and can also pick up groceries in the snow.

 

$2,500 sounds good for the front end.

I did a full PPF, but if I didn't do a full wrap, I would do the front (bumper, lights, hood, mirror caps, A-pillar) first, then the rear bumper (wrapping around the sides for parking lot scrapes), then the rocker panels, doors and finally the roof.

 

In May, I was told that I was the first E53 wagon order for the dealership, but the factory was delaying production until October due to the black MB-Tex microfiber seats. If I had gone with the leather seats, the car would have been in the first production wave. It is interesting that your car has the microfiber seats and has already been delivered.

I have similar seats in another car. They hold up really well, are super comfortable and have a sporty vibe with the suede and red stitching.

 

I put my order in in April, end of the month. The seats are super comfortable, the ride back to Brooklyn was 6 hours and the seats have some sort of automatic adaptive seat adjustment whereby they make small adjustments ever so often, super comfortable! Hoping your E53 delivers soon.

 

Paint protection film is a modern wonder. A very thin layer of clear polyurethane covered with a very thin layer of clear coat does an amazing job of protecting the paint from rock chips and parking lot scuffs. I'd pay the cost of PPF just to have self-healing clear coat on the car. PPF not only has self-healing clearcoat, but it adds rock chip protection too.

The only downsides that I have found to PPF is that my installer recommends not going through a car wash. I hand wash my cars anyway, so that isn't a large negative to me. I also wonder if paintless dent removal can be done on doors covered with PPF, but luckily the car with PPF hasn't gotten any dings yet. I did ask a paintless dent removal expert if he could remove a ding on a panel with PPF and he successfully evaded answering.

If I had to choose between $3,000 for the Dynamics Plus Package or $3,000 for PPF on the front, it would be 100% PPF. After three years, there are no rock chips except a minor hit into the PPF on the A pillar on the car with PPF. The rear bumper was scraped in a parking lot. I dropped the car off in the morning and picked it up in the morning looking brand new, with no paint damage. Without the PPF, it would have been a more costly repair, and the car would have been out of service for multiple days.

I can wipe the car with detailer any time and not have to worry about swirl marks. Scratches that are not through the PPF clearcoat self-heal. I was scared the first time that bird poop etched into the PPF and noticeably warped the PPF clear coat. After wiping the bird poop off, the PPF self-healed a day or two later and went back to being super smooth.

On a dark car, especially black or dark blue, I have polished the paint using CSI Ceram-X and a DA polisher. A polished dark car looks absolutely amazing. Unfortunately, even when I am the only one washing the car, I wash by hand and use the two-bucket method, light swirl marks start to show up on dark paint. With silver paint, light scratches don't show as much. A DA polisher and a one-step polish are far less expensive than PPF. If I was going to keep the car for three years, it would be tempted to go without PPF and then polish around three years of age. If planning on keeping the car 6 years or more, I can justify the cost of full PPF. It's nice to go into the garage and see a three-year-old car that looks new.

 

According to my sales rep, my E53 wagon has been at the port since Sept 11. Today I got an update that it is still not shipped to the dealer because of an ignition control unit software issue. Anyone else getting these reports?

 

interesting. I have not heard this but maybe not totally surprising for a brand new model like this. Mine was delivered without any report of this issue and has been fine for 100 miles…. I need to drive it more! Glad we have nice weather this weekend I am sure it will get sorted and it is better for it to get fixed now than having to mess with it later.

 

The sedan version of the E53 has been on sale for over a year. So anything electronic etc should already have surfaced over the past year+.

 

​​​​​​​This is apparently effecting the '26s

 

The post clearly states it's a new control unit that was released with old software. So any car that was built with the new control unit would be impacted and this is why early builds are fine but newer builds are held at port of have a no-sale slapped on them until the software glitch is figured out. These kind of things get a lot of attention as they tend to cost actual money and have immediate impact to everyone in the sale chain.

 

Ok, then it is software/firmware related, than hardware related, since I doubt the hardware itself has changed in the 2026. So should be fixed with a software update.

 

I would be shocked, if they just slap on a new control unit, into an E-class, and not test it thoroughly. But in this age of squeezing out costs, nothing can be ruled out.

 

Anyone waiting on an allocation? Anyone get one recently? I think MB gives them out in the middle of the month from what I read..

 

I have no real reason to doubt what the dealer said to the person above waiting on their car to be released form port.

It doesn't sound like the two are totally incompatible, it sounds more like during certain situations you end up with a malfunction that throws a CEL.

It could be a bug in the unit, or the control software and the unit API wasn't fully defined. Hardly sounds something that is out of the ordinary if you work with tech.

 

Software oddities happen in new vehicles all the time. Yes, they undergo tons of scrutiny (almost as much as aviation) but there's always a risk of something going wrong. For example, Volvo just recalled a lot of cars owing to a bizarre race condition in the brake controller on SPA cars (recent S60, XC60, XC90, etc.) When coasting for 1 minute and 30 seconds (or some VERY specific length of time) in B mode (max regen), you would lose ALL braking. Go figure, some guy in a brand new car did this exact thing on a downhill road and had to intentionally crash the car to stop it. Volvo initially blamed him until they pulled data from the vehicle's event recorder. Even crazier, the defective updated brake software was included in a previous software update for a rearview camera issue that was the source of another recall, something that has taken 4 software updates to fix, and they still haven't solved it 100%.

The scrutiny and subsequent lengths of time it takes to get things to market are one of the reasons I left the industry. (The above is also why the Volvos are leaving our fleet; I have zero faith in their ability to deliver quality software.)

 

The E53 wagon I ordered has been held at the VPC in Long Beach since 9/04 for what sounds like the same thing. I was told over 500 cars are affected.

 

I would not be shocked, especially given the software issues with the 2025 E class. From the post above, it sounds like a configuration issue where old software was put on new hardware. It wouldn't surprise me if Mercedes doesn't have a handle on software build management. New cars are rolling computers, but Mercedes has a history of building mechanical machines. Automobile manufacturers have more confidence than skill at building software.