2017 Mercedes-Benz E400 4Matic Wagon First Drive: The World’s Best Wagon

If the E-Class sedan is the heart of Mercedes-Benz, the E-Class wagon is its soul. One-in-three E-Class models sold in Europe is a wagon, and it’s one-in-two in Germany. Benz has blinged up and worked out in recent years, flaunting glittery high-lux interiors and thundering big-horsepower V-8s, and the new E-Class wagon offers versions with white carpet, plus – next year – an E63 AMG variant that will be among the quickest load haulers on the planet. But underneath it all is a car that hews to the best traditions of the three-pointed star. The 2017 Mercedes-Benz E400 wagon is quietly comfortable and elegantly functional, its serenity of purpose underpinned by deep knowledge engineering. It is the world’s best wagon.

In Europe the new E-Class wagon will be available with a variety of powertrains, but for now the U.S. gets only the E400 4Matic, powered by a twin-turbo 3.0-liter V-6 that develops 329 hp and 354 lb-ft of torque. Sharp-eyed Benz fans will note that puts the wagon a notch above the sole E-Class sedan currently available in the U.S., the E300, which is only available with the 241-hp, 273 lb-ft 2.0-liter turbo-four. But there’s method in the madness: Mercedes-Benz USA insiders say the wagon’s bigger engine compensates for the 400-odd pounds more it weighs than the sedan, and the sporty 396-hp six-cylinder Mercedes-AMG E43 four-door is on its way to add some muscle to the sedan lineup.

The new E-Class wagon rolls on the same 115.7-inch wheelbase as its sedan sibling, but is four-tenths of an inch longer overall. Compared with the outgoing wagon, overall length has grown just 1.1 inch, but the wheelbase is 2.6 inch longer, and the roofline 1.3 inches lower. The rear seat feels roomier, though Mercedes claims only a modest seven-tenths of an inch improvement in knee room and a three-tenths of an inch improvement in shoulder room.

The big gain is in cargo capacity: The new E-Class wagon boasts a maximum 64.3 cu ft of load space, compared with 57.4 cu ft available in the E350. The extra room will be appreciated by kids (up to six years old and under 4 feet tall, Mercedes recommends) using the rear facing third row bench seat that is is standard equipment on U.S.-spec E400 wagons. The second row seating is now split 40:20:40, meaning the center section can be folded down to accommodate long items like skis while still carrying two adult passengers, and the backrests can be positioned at a 10-degree steeper angle to add an extra cubic foot to seat-up cargo capacity. The optional Keyless-Go system includes hands-free opening and closing of the tailgate.

Making the 4Matic all-wheel-drive system standard was a no-brainer: Many of the E-Class wagon’s most loyal American customers live in snowbelt states, and in households where Ferraris and Bentleys are for high days and holidays, the E400 4Matic will be a daily driver when the weather turns bad. Standard air suspension, with adjustable damping modes, was a no-brainer, too. The system, new for the new E-Class, features dual-chamber air springs up front, and triple chamber units at the rear, and in addition to the self-leveling capability necessary for a load lugger, automatically lowers the car at speed to improve fuel efficiency. Along with all the practical hardware, the E400 4Matic is also available with the full suite of driver aids and near-autonomous driving capability available on the E-Class sedan.

We sampled several E400 4Matic wagons in Germany, heading north-east out of Hamburg towards the Baltic Sea, with a mixture of city and urban running, plus a couple of V-max autobahn charges and some nip-and-tuck fast cruising on quiet two-lanes. The cars were fully loaded, some with glitzy Designo paint and interior packages, and all rolling on optional 20-inch rims and low-profile tires. First impressions? This is a remarkably quiet wagon.

With their big, open cabins, wagons are naturally prone to annoying noise resonances. The air suspension undoubtedly helps reduce transmitted road noise in the E400 4Matic, but Daimler engineers also paid attention to the fundamentals, adding additional bracing to the floor and front end of the body structure, plus special insulation on the firewall, bodysides and floor, and noise absorbers under the rear seat and the wheel wells. Whether hustling down the fast lane of the autobahn at 140 mph, or idling over village cobblestones at one-tenth that pace, the E400 4Matic wagon’s cabin remains impressively hushed.

The acoustic performance is all the more impressive given our testers were fitted with ultra-low profile 245/35 R20 Pirellis up front and 275/30 R20 meats at the rear (18-inch wheels and tires more suited to dealing with Gotham-sized potholes are likely to be the baseline spec when the car arrives in U.S. Mercedes-Benz showrooms early next year). German roads are generally smoother than Yacht Rock, so it’s difficult to make a definitive judgment on ride quality, but despite the sporty tires the air suspension coped well with the small jitters we did find, and soaked up the larger heaves on the back roads with aplomb.

Mercedes-Benz product planners made the right choice in specifying the 3.0-liter twin-turbo V-6 for the U.S. Delivering eight percent more power and a hefty 30-percent more torque than the 3.5-liter V-6 in the outgoing E350 wagon, and driving through Daimler’s new nine-speed automatic transmission, it should shave almost second off the old car’s Motor-Trend-tested 6.2-second 0-60 mph acceleration time. With the nine-speed tranny constantly shuffling smoothly between ratios, and all 354 lb-ft of torque present and correct right from 1,400 rpm through 4,000rpm, the E400 4Matic feels pleasantly responsive, even with the powertrain in Comfort mode.

Speaking of modes, switching between the Eco, Comfort, Sport and Sport+ settings available for the powertrain, suspension and steering reveals the E400 4Matic’s sole weakness: Inexplicably clumsy calibration of the steering weighting and transmission shift feel.

Steering heft ramps up quickly once you turn the wheel left or right, and feels annoyingly non-linear, like you’re hauling a bobsled up a ski-jump ramp as you make the turn, then bracing against it running back down the ramp as you wind off lock. Setting the steering to sport mode is a complete waste of electrons, as it merely increases the effort, with no gain whatsoever in feel, and, arguably, a loss of accuracy as you overcompensate for the weighting changes. If you want sportier powertrain and suspension settings and decent steering, go to Individual mode, where you can make both as racy as you want, yet keep the steering in Comfort mode, the lesser of two evils.

Except… Setting the powertrain to Sport+ mode induces an unnerving thud from the transmission on upshifts, and not just under full throttle. When asked whether the new transmission has issues with higher-torque engines, Daimler engineers earnestly reply no, it’s been designed to handle more than 500 lb-ft. The thud, it turns out, is all software, an artifact designed to let customers know their E400 4Matic is now ganz sportif and has nothing to do with improving the speed of the shift. Apart from being totally out of character with the smoothness and refinement of the rest of the car, it’s also totally pointless.

There’s a lot to love about the 2017 Mercedes-Benz E400 4Matic wagon. In so many ways it’s a worthy successor to the legendary W123 and W124 wagons; durable, high-quality, deeply capable cars that were the stealth-wealth icons of the 70s and 80s. And although a few gigabytes perhaps separate it from sublime greatness – the steering and the transmission niggles are easy software fixes – it is still the world’s best wagon.

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Mercedes-AMG E43 Wagon

Look, but don’t touch

A six-cylinder E-Class wagon with all-wheel drive, sports suspension and styling and 396 hp? What’s not to love? Well, you can look, but not touch. The Mercedes-AMG E43 sedan is heading Stateside, but the wagon variant launched at the same time will remain forbidden fruit to us. Although the E-Class wagon has always done reasonable business here, Americans simply don’t like wagons enough for Mercedes-Benz USA to consider offering a multi-model lineup.

But here’s the thing: It’s probably just as well we’re not getting the E43 wagon. After driving it back-to-back with the E400 4Matic wagon, we’d be hard-pressed to recommend it over the regular car. That’s partly because the E400 is so fundamentally accomplished, and partly because this AMG-lite model compromises some of the E-Class wagon’s most compelling attributes.

The stiffer bushing in the rear suspension means noticeably more road noise from the rear axle coming into the cabin. The ZR-rated Yokohama Advan tires – the same 245/35 front and 275/30 rear combination as the R-rated Pirellis on the E400 with optional 20-inch rims – are also noisier and harsher on coarse surfaces. And the artificial steering and transmission calibration foibles evident in the E400 feel more pronounced.

Sure, the E43 about a half a second quicker to 60 mph than the E400 4Matic, but no faster overall, as both cars are electronically limited to 155 mph (in Europe at least; here both are dumbed down to 130 mph because of our love affair with all-season tires). The tweaked V-6 is a delight, its 396 hp and 384 lb-ft delivered with a subtle snarl, the exhaust crackling on the overrun like distant sniper fire. And yes, it’s a touch tauter, more agile in the twisty bits, with better drive out of the corners thanks an all-wheel-drive system that directs more torque to the rear wheels.

But that’s not enough to make the E43 AMG a truly desirable alternative to an E400 4Matic with the right options. Then there’s the specter of big-banger Mercedes-AMG E63 wagon lurking in the wings. We’ll see the new E63 sedan later this year. It’ll have dramatically reworked suspension and will be the most powerful AMG E-Class sedan in history. The wagon version will follow in 2017, with all the same hardware under the skin. The good news is we’re getting that one.

Photos of the 2017 Mercedes-Benz E400 4Matic wagon:

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