Luxury_W204

I'm interested in picking one of these up but haven't test driven one yet--compared to say the Comfort Mode on a 2018 GLE, how do these tend to handle? Light steering or more on the heavier side?

Thanks!

EWT

No idea compared to an 18, but compared to steering on the 08 GL550 it replaced, the steering on my 11 ML550 is much lighter and has far too much power assist IMO.

Luxury_W204

Ah gotcha, good to know. Appreciate it.

Vmaxxer

My 2011 W164 can be all. With the air suspension on sports mode the car can be tight, direct steering and floating on "comfort mode"

Luxury_W204

Oh there's a drive/dynamic select on the 2011?

Vmaxxer

There's a button lower left where you can select Sport- Normal - Comfort. I prefer the "normal" for daily driving and choose "comfort" on long highway drives. There is also a button (to the right) which lifts the car when you need to pass some high obstacle (only when driving slowly)

Luxury_W204

Oh, right on. Thought I had to buy an '16 or newer for that lol. Just looking for a comfortable secondary car for driving around town.

Thanks again.

EWT

You only get the button with air suspension. I had it on my GL (all X164 GLs have it but it was optional on W164 MLs). Pros: Cushier ride and is better when pulling a heavy trailer since the rear end doesn't sag. Cons: The front shocks fail regularly when the airbag develops a leak that starts out as sagging overnight and progresses to undriveable when the leak gets big enough so that the pump can't keep up (and driving around with leaking shocks will kill the expensive pump). The shocks aren't cheap and if you're paying someone to do the work for you, installation isn't either. There's a thread on the topic currently going in the GL forum, and book time for both is apparently 3.5 hours. Fortunately, the rear airbags that are seperate from the shock are sturdier - I only had to replace mine once in 250K miles.

I don't miss it on my ML. Also, changing suspension firmness with the button didn't change the feel of the steering on my GL - it was much weightier in all modes than the steering on my ML. I didn't find the ability to change modes very useful. Comfort is really wallowy and sport is too stiff IMO on anything but smooth roads, although it did like it for towing.

Luxury_W204

The Comfort/Sport is an optional feature or the ability to raise/lower is?

EWT

Both. They're both tied to the air suspension that is optional on an ML. With air suspension, you can alter the damping and you can also raise the suspension a few inches although the ride quality is atrocious, and it lowers after you hit a certain speed (the GL and I assume ML also change ride height automatically in normal mode based on speed with air suspension) There is also an off road package that could be ordered on top of the air suspension has more drive/suspension options and a locking center diff, but those are pretty rare, especially on MLs.

Carcheologist

I have a diesel 2010 ML350 and my friend has a W166 ML350 (2013 I think?). Mine feels much more classic German, nicely weighted steering, good damping.

His has much lighter and more vague steering, and seems a little floaty. His might need new shocks, ours have newer Bilsteins.

But even the car rags complained about the change in steering feel from the W164 to W166.