Been thinking about a hybrid e53. Mainly wondering about the comfort, as I’ve heard from online car reviewers the road noise is quite bad. I’m not quite a car person, don’t get me wrong I still enjoy a great exhaust and going fast, but I wouldn’t give up the creature comforts. I have a bunch of car person friends that like to track once a year, so I basically want a comfy daily that can also have some fun at the track occasionally. The PHEV is attractive because my commute is short (7mi) and gas is expensive.

I definitely plan on getting the acoustic glass, but how much difference does 20 vs 21 inch wheels make? How’s the suspension comfort? Any known reliability issues?

is the e53 good enough or is a 2 car solution better? as a single guy seems hard to justify 2 cars in the garage

Edit: Also curious if anyone recorded any decibel readings, for reference i recently test drove a new model y and it was ~67 dB at 70mph.

 

I love my E53 but can attest that it is louder and much harder riding than other cars. Recently have driven: X5 hybrid (prior car), Kia Tellruide (wife’s car) and E350 (dealer loaner). All are quieter and softer riding. All are also less fun, slower and less special.

 

You really have to drive one on the roads where you live…on 21s the ride sucks on bad roads, and the tire noise is not insignificant..but only because it so isolated otherwise, especially in EV mode. That said, quickly became used to it…in my experience the PS4S is a noisy tire in general…and on decent roads the ride/handling compromise is great.

But I would never take it on a track. Far too big and heavy to be enjoyable, IMO. PHEV and track car are two extremes; if you want both, it’s two different cars.

 

For starters, the E53 has a coil spring performance suspension, not an air suspension. Not that the air suspension in AMGs that have it is particularly comfortable, it does have the advantage that the spring rate is adjustable, too. With the coil spring suspensions, only the damping is adjustable between the modes, so a coil spring suspension is generally still more firm in the Comfort setting. Some newer AMGs such as the SL and GT coupe have active rollbars in addition to the active damping, so they can be surprisingly comfortable as they relax the roll bars for just strait driving in Comfort mode, which allows for much more independent movement of the wheels over bumps. The general issue with heavy performance cars like the E53 is that the suspension ends up quite firm in order to manage all that weight and not have the body roll around everywhere.

I agree with the above that this isn't a track car. I've driven other E Performance models on the track such as the GT63S E Performance and even the new C63S E Performance. They do handle, but the weight is ever present. I drove the regular GT63S and the E Performance back to back and the weight penalty was painfully obvious. Even though the latter had more power, I ended up having to drive it slower, to avoid flying out of the corners. The weight just wanted to drag it out of every corner. Didn't like it at all.

A PHEV can in theory be interesting. Having a smooth electric car for the commute and an ICE for performance and longer distance. For me though, part of the experience of driving a V8 AMG is that it still feels special even at 30 mph. The other thing since you are single, what do you need a midsize family sedan for? Get a CLE 53. You won’t be able to drive electric, but it might actually be more comfortable, because it isn’t as heavy and I quite enjoyed it on the track as well. It has the new PS S 5 tire, which is awesome.

 

I will say the PHEV portion of the E53 is really good. Even at highway speeds the mileage doesn't tick off as fast as it does on my NX450h. Range billed as 50 miles with each full charge, imagine I'm getting at least 45-48 miles in reality. I haven't seen how far I can go with 0 miles to go so it may squeeze out another mile or so.

I am at 900-some miles and still have half a tank of gas from delivery. Only driving 7 miles for a commute, you could easily keep up with just level 1 charging.

I think it's a good one car solution unless you want a sports car. If you have the funds I could understand leasing an EV for daily commute and having something trackable or at least fun to drive as well for the weekends.

 

I sorta agree and disagree with Superswiss...I am single and I love everything that the E53 wagon has to offer. Electric range around 50 miles on a full charge, fast and sleek, and if you need to haul something, you have the full trunk with seats that fold down. You won't get that with the CLE53.

I recently went on a medium road trip to check out some outlets for furniture. At one of the outlets, I was able to use a Mercedes fast-charging system to charge my depleted battery back to full in less than 30 minutes FOR FREE. I took the back roads of SC and NC because I am still breaking in the wagon (got it like 2 weeks ago) and wanted to avoid major highways as much as possible. It was quick and agile. Handled NC mountain roads like I couldn't believe. The battery range was awesome just as much as the straight six was powerful AND efficient. Quite comfortable on 20" AW's...I have never driven a CLE53, but I would be hard-pressed to see its advantages over the E53 wagon. Note: the brakes do take a bit of time to learn. I have only driven mine on the 2 weekends so far and have almost dialed in the brakes in Electric or Comfy mode. The first couple of drives made me feel like I was first learning how to drive clutch (jerky movements). After a handful of drives, I am much much smoother.

and man, did I get looks and compliments on it being gorgeous (and a wagon!!!). People will just walk up and start asking questions. Almost immediately they complement the Sonoran Brown color. Around here, I get G-wagons that come up and just get alongside like they are boasting and then speed off. I know I am not looking at their box on wheels (despite the price tag), I know if I wanted to speed off I could beat them at any point, and I know they are looking at my wagon like "dannnnngggggg!!!".

If you have the funds, splurge on the E53 above the E450 wagon. And maybe I am biased bc I am coming from a 2011 G37 convertible, but even in Sport mode, it really is comfortable. people have been saying that you feel the bumps, but I guess that is subjective. If you are coming from an air suspension or land-yacht, yeah, you will notice the bumps. otherwise, it is the car hugging the road.

I bet that 75% of people that drive SUV's would switch to a wagon if they gave it a test drive. The other 25% truly need a third row or really like looking at things from a higher perspective.

I will also say that I have noticed that I am still taking right hand turns a little wide. Still trying to figure out where my tires are so I don't hit curbs.

 

This depends on what you are hauling regularly. Seats fold down in a coupe as well. I've hauled plenty of stuff over the years in my coupes. Getting shelves and such at IKEA for example, no problem fitting them. Long items pass through between the front seats, or I can move the passenger seat forward if that's enough. Granted, I also have my wife's hatchback, which fits taller items that I can't get through the trunk opening in a coupe, but that's rare. I don't buy cars for the 1-2 times that I might haul something large. For that I can just rent something else. FWIW, I drove around Europe with my C63 coupe for 2 months. Had two checked luggage in the trunk and still had room for my backpack and other bags. It's amazing what goes in there. The CLE is even larger than my C. Going out of town for a weekend with my wife with luggage and gear, it always fits with room to spare. The beauty of a 2+2 is that it feels more like a 2 seater sports car when you are just by yourself, but there are rear seats for occasional passengers or you can use them to expand the full size trunk.

I totally get wagons, though. I'm not into SUVs at all. On my last trip to Europe with my wife, I rented a VW Golf Wagon. We had two checked luggage and a carry-on, so the extra room of the wagon came in handy. My issue generally with wagons, though is that you can't hide your cargo. In Europe that's not an issue, but here in the USA, SUVs and wagons are prime targets. Tourists regularly get their luggage stolen here from their SUV rentals. So easy to break the window and grab whatever is in the trunk. If you try to hide it below the cargo cover, they know you are hiding something. So what I love about my coupe is that I can go anywhere and nobody knows what's in my trunk and there's no way to get to it. The rear seats can't be folded from within the cabin, so even if they brake a window, they can't get into the trunk.

I agree with you that suspension comfort is subjective. I have no issues with my firm suspension in my C63. It can be harsh on bad roads, but I don't like soft suspensions. I need to feel the road. I just pointed out the suspension concerns since OP seems to focus on comfort mostly. Many folks around here complain about the comfort of AMGs.

 

The E53 encourages a 2 car solution (utility and sports) almost as much as an SUV due to its weight. As mentioned above, the first time you throw it into a hard turn at speed it will competently accomplish it but doesn't feel rewarding like a proper sports car does. Tracking it would be seriously abusive. If you can afford it, this car paired with a proper sports car is about perfect.
I'm running my 20" all season tires at 35F / 36R cold which is probably as low as safe given the weight you are carrying around, and with the shocks in comfort the ride is "comfortable" on my less than perfect NE roads.
You want the Exclusive trim which includes acoustic glass. The car is quiet enough except mine just developed the seatbelt area rattle at 1000 miles - I thought they fixed this on the '26

 

Even as a 2 car solution for a single person, the E53 is too big and too heavy, IMHO. Neither my wife nor I daily drive, but between the two of us I feel we have the perfect 2 car garage. My AMG coupe is mostly my fun weekend car and grand tourer for road trips. It's a beast on a canyon road and an excellent cruiser for just eating up miles on the highway. In Comfort mode it has this great balance between luxurious wafting along, yet you always know where the wheels are and what the road surface is like. Never losing touch with the road. Then my wife's hatch is our short distance A to B, town and city car for errands and such and when she has to go somewhere. Being compact, light and having a short wheelbase it's just quicker around town than even my C63 and it's far easier to find a parking spot that most other cars have to pass up. If I just have to run an errand and my wife doesn't need her car, then I just take hers. I've long felt that a compact hatch is the best daily you can have. It's the perfect car for the city and to zip around larger, unwieldy and heavy cars. A large sedan for errands is too big, and a sports car while fun isn't necessarily great on a long road trip, so for me there would always be a mismatch between the car and the use case.

 

The E53 wagon would be a nice single car solution. The main disadvantage to me with using an E53 as a single car solution is that it has low profile tires and no spare tire. A Porsche Cayenne or BMW X5 with a spare tire and higher sidewalls might be an alternative if having no spare tire is an issue where you drive.

With the acoustic glass and 20-inch wheels with Michelin Pilot Sport All Season tires, I have measured the interior noise between 52 to 64 dB. On the highway at 70 MPH, with the combustion engine on it ranged from 60 to 63 dB depending upon the road surface. I measured 64 dB with the electric motor. I'm not sure why it was louder with the electric motor than the combustion engine. The car is quiet, but not ultra-quiet. Those readings are quieter than the Model Y you tested, but road surface, wind, etc. can factor in. The tread pattern on the Pilot Sport 21" summer performance tires may be louder, but I haven't measured it. The reviews mentioning tire noise tested with the 21" summer tires.

The E53 doesn't have much sound from the exhaust. It adds a bit of rev match blipping in sport mode and adds more engine and exhaust sound in Sport Plus mode. Sport plus mode disables yaw control. If I wanted more engine sound when driving on public roads, I would create an individual setting in the dynamic select program, add the engine noise and add yaw control.

I find the E53 wagon's suspension comfortable. You should test drive an E53 if possible, to see if it feels comfortable to you.

I observed 29.7 to 30.0 MPG highway at 70 MPH after the battery went to 0% state of charge. At 65 MPH I observed 31.7 MPG with the battery at 0% state of charge. This is quite an achievement for a 577 HP car. When getting the 31.7 MPG my wife and I noticed that the car was getting rather hot inside with outside temperatures at 49 degrees, going to 53 degrees. After 15 to twenty minutes of us wondering why it was so hot inside, we learned that my daughter turned up the rear climate control zone to "High." Without blasting the heater, it is likely that the E53 would get better than 31.7 MPG at 65 MPH. Tire pressures were at 40 PSI front, 47 PSI rear, solidly within the recommended range. In both the 65 MPH trip and the 70 MPH trip the cargo area was fully loaded, adding additional weight. I didn't do anything special, other than driving 70 MPH to get 30 MPG, so with more time on the engine and changing driving behaviors a bit, it might be possible to exceed 30 MPG at 70 MPH and 31.7 MPG at 65 MPH. If your battery is charged, you will of course get more range, and the car will report a higher MPG because it calculates miles divided by gallons of gas used. For example, one day, I forgot to charge the battery the previous night and got 47.7 MPG. That isn't "real" MPG, because it was using some battery. The 30 and 31.7 MPG figures are real in that is how much gas is being used when the everyday useable battery has 0% state of charge.

As a side, note, at 65 MPH over 5 hours, I passed one car, a Subaru. (It seems like it is always a Subaru.) This possibly increased MPG further as I was almost never blocked and could maintain a steady speed. At 70 MPH, I was passing some cars, sometimes being slowed below 70 MPH before passing. I would sometimes need to go to 75 MPH to pass and let other cars go by.

My observed MPG gives the E53 better range than I was expecting. The car has a 15.9 Gallon tank, so it can go 477 miles at 70 MPH plus another 40 to 50 miles on electric. The car will give a warning at 60 miles remaining, so that gives roughly 462 miles of range before warning and over 500 miles of range total. My typical highway trips are easily handled with the combustion engine range. The range, and combination of electric for local drives and combustion for longer trips, makes the car suitable as a single car solution.

The main disadvantage of the E53 is that the MBUX operating system is still half baked. Today, I wanted to review dash cam footage. MBUX told me that no USB drive was connected. Yet, it had already started a new dashcam recording on the same drive. At the same time, MBUX couldn't connect my iPhone with CarPlay over WiFi, but it would connect via USB. After driving the car and turning it off, I was able to review the dash cam coverage. I am expecting that when I get in the car again, CarPlay over WiFi will magically work. Once a month or so, I drop the CarPlay connection and add it back to make it work.

MBUX sometimes gets confused when trying to switch media sources and mutes the sound.

There is no way to tell the car, that I want to charge the car to 70% useable (80% real) by default. After parking the car in the garage, I have to manually change to the home charging program which defaults to 70% charge. It would be a five minute software change to allow the owner to change the default charge target on the "standard" program. I have no idea why Mercedes hasn't made this change yet. There is an option for the car to select the home charge program based on GPS address. However, it doesn't change to the home program automatically. The driver has to confirm the change to the home charge program. The car prompts for the charge program, right as I'm driving down the driveway and need to watch where I'm driving, not the entertainment screen. Mercedes could prompt the driver when turning off the car at the home GPS location, but they don't.

When my wife rode with me, the car would occasionally use her seat settings and jam me into the dashboard. I have mostly gotten around this by selecting my profile before I start the car. Yet a few days ago, I got in the car by myself, selected my profile, hit the start button and the seat still tried to compact me into a pretzel. I think the car sensed my wife's phone in the house and used her seat settings even after I selected my profile. I believe there is a bug, if not just bad design in the automatic seat memory positioning.

The touch sensitive volume control on the steering wheel, should never have been released to the public. The same goes for the four-way touch controls on the steering wheel, which are difficult to use.

On the positive sides, the audio system, especially with Atmos spatial, is excellent. Mercedes removed the Apple Music app. They don't yet support spatial music through CarPlay. The Tidal and Amazon Music apps support spatial music but their user interfaces are lacking.

Mercedes has done a nice job with the interior. Some people on the internet don't like the media pictures of the disco interior, but you can change the interior accent lights to something tasteful.

Also, in keeping with the bad user interface, if I have the seat upright, in my preferred position with the steering wheel, not fully extended, the steering wheel blocks the turn signal indicators, engine temp indicator, parts of the tachometer, etc. That alone was enough for me to go for an M5 Touring as an all arounder. The 2026 M5 is lacking availability in winter tires, if not all tires, so that made me take another look at the E53. The E53 has 20" Michelin Pilot Sport All Seasons that can be purchased any time of year. I was happy with how they performed in the snow. The 20" Michelin Pilot Alpins are also available for even better snow performance. When looking for a single car that can run year-round, I check availability of winter tires. The E53 passes the tire test. If you want to go with even higher performance summer tires on the E53, they are available in the 21" size.

The E53 just added a picture of the future AMG GT 4 Door EV at startup on the entertainment screen. I like some changes to the startup screen from time-to-time, but instead of marketing messages, I'd prefer if they would spend some software engineering money on getting the rest of the bugs out.

Of the cars that I have owned, the E53 is my favorite. The wagon makes utility close to an SUV, yet it drives like a car. This is where the E53 shines as a first or second car. The car has been out for two years. It's hard for me to give the car a 100% recommendation since a driver will have less frustrations in the entertainment and other controls in a BMW, Porsche, etc. Would I swap out my E53 for a BMW or a Porsche SUV? No. But sometimes it is pleasant to drive another make and just have it work and not wonder what the MBUX issue of the day will be.

In summary, the E53 wagon is an awesome one car solution, but it isn't perfect. It lacks a spare tire, has questionable user interface design choices, and has too many MBUX bugs. On the other hand, as a performance, luxury, executive transport that can be used year-round and has decent cargo space, it is in a unique position in the United States automobile market. Other countries may have some more options.

 

I've been looking to upgrade and am tracking several CPO and preowned E53s out there on the market. Looking at the carfax on them, a few are already titled as lemons. I really like the updated interior(without the hyperscreen), but in checking on known issues I am seeing a number of reports on wiring harnesses, battery degradation, and sensors malfunctioning. It could all be gremlins common with a model refresh, but it does have me looking at the W214 E450s just to have a less complicated platform for the inline 6. It won't have the same punch or feel, but it is still very serviceable. Especially when you consider that the E53 curb weight means it can't be a real track car anyway. If they had made a non-PHEV version of the W214 E53, I would have been on it already. Especially if it had a real exhaust note vs a simulated one. I've thought about a W213 E53, but I can't justify the spend to just have the same interior I have now.

 

based on reading your post above, I think you’ll
be more comfortable with the standard model. I have not heard of any of these issues with the hybrid, but it is more complex.

 

The complexity of hybrids is definitely something to keep in mind. The good news is that the E53 has the more proven P2 hybrid setup, not the newer and more complicated P3 system. The P2 system is the more traditional hybrid setup with the motor integrated into the transmission. That's also very similar to the mild hybrid in the E450, so not sure the E450 can be considered simpler. The difference is the E53 has a high voltage system and can drive fully electric, so it's a bit more complicated in that regard and failure of the hybrid system can leave you stranded, but so do failures of the mild hybrid system. MB had a rocky history with their 48V mild hybrid system. Just look around. Electrification whether it's mild hybrid or full hybrid adds complexity and additional points of failure. That's not to say hybrids can't be reliable as there are plenty of old Priuses on the road, but those are Toyota reliability and quality. MB isn't exactly at the top of the reliability list.

 

Regarding complexity of the E450 vs E53, I would certainly avoid a used lemon, but not rule out the E53 completely. As was said above both have batteries and electric motors for propulsion that are complex but not necessarily points of failure. And if the PHEV capability of the E53 is taken advantage of, the ICE will potentially get very little wear. But keep in mind the E450 has air suspension, either optional (sedan) or standard (wagon) that IS known for expensive medium-term issues.