What's in a name?
Thread Starter
MBWorld Fanatic!
Joined: Mar 2006
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From: NY/NJ
2012 W212 E350 Bluetec
What's in a name?
Does the arrival of the E550 and 550i signal the first time MB and BMW have launched directly competing cars with the same name (or at least the numeric part of it?)
I mean a long, long time ago there was the legendary 540K Mercedes roadster, but it certainly was not a competitor to the yet-to-be-born 5 series.
More recently, I suppose, we've had E- and C-320 Benzes but the C320 was the flagship (or close) of the C-class while contemporary BMW 320's were more entry level (if they were contemporary--I'm not sure how many markets they overlapped in). Plus one was 6-cylinder while the other was 4.
I mean a long, long time ago there was the legendary 540K Mercedes roadster, but it certainly was not a competitor to the yet-to-be-born 5 series.
More recently, I suppose, we've had E- and C-320 Benzes but the C320 was the flagship (or close) of the C-class while contemporary BMW 320's were more entry level (if they were contemporary--I'm not sure how many markets they overlapped in). Plus one was 6-cylinder while the other was 4.
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Joined: Sep 2006
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Mercedes and BMW follow a different naming system. These cases are coincidences imo. for MB, the 3 digits represent 1/10th of the engine volume. for BMW on the other hand, the first digit is the body code, and the following two digits represent 1/100th of the engine volume. So in the case of E550 the engine is 5.5L but for BMW 550i it is 5.0L.
