My E350 CDI Sport Saloon Review

[crockers]

A c320cdi I drove had this. I'd be suprised if it was not on the C63amg.

Was that a W203 or w204?

 

[st4]

Was that a W203 or w204?

W204 sport and a mighty fine car it was

 

[johny5_uk]

Dunno, I don't have it back yet. Only been off the road for 2 months out of the last 3.5 !!


FWIW the GL350 BE does it too. I think MB have a situation here which one day will be directly responsible for an accident. The throttle delay is alarming and I am amazed that some egghead in Germany signed it off like this.

Yep, "some egghead" my thoughts entirely.
I wasnt overly happy yesterday when the dealer didnt express any importance over this fault. They simply said "oh yes it does this on other cars too" and tried to brush it off as an inherent feature!?
I will phone up Mercedes UK to complain today, I wouldnt mind having a throttle that does what it is asked to do in comfort auto mode.

 

[Adam230K]

Excellent review. I've never owned a big engined diesel so excuse any proceeding ignorance. I understand its still being run in, but 22mpg is about what I get from my 4.4 V8 to and from work, I actually get 23. Are you flooring it alot or is it just normal driving that lets you achieve that?

 

[mbenz76]

Excellent review. I've never owned a big engined diesel so excuse any proceeding ignorance. I understand its still being run in, but 22mpg is about what I get from my 4.4 V8 to and from work, I actually get 23. Are you flooring it alot or is it just normal driving that lets you achieve that?

Official MB specs state the following for the E350 CDI:

Urban - 31.4
Extra Urban - 50.4
Combined - 40.9

My figures have improved since my review but I think there is still room for improvement.

I am getting about 5-6 below the quoted figures with 1200 miles on the clock now so I guess you could say it's run in now.

Driving style is mixed - half relaxed and half heavy footed so not thrashing it all the time.

My rush hour crawl to work now averages about 25ish.

 

[elpeterol]

At 5000 miles I am getting 37 mpg mostly 20 mile + rural jouneys. My previous E320cdi did about 1mpg better!

 

[johny5_uk]

the figures between 350 owners on here seem to be a bit random?
I have done about 4600 miles now and on a 180mile run down the A1 to London I can only manage 40mpg with outside temp at about 12deg.
This is with an extremely light right foot with no hard acceleration at all and gently cruising when going downhill along with slowing down up hill.
I just cant manage to get much better than this. I have even tried standard diesel on the last tank as I have being filling up on V-power since new and I could only manage a top mpg of about 43 with the v-power.

 

[mbenz76]

the figures between 350 owners on here seem to be a bit random?
I have done about 4600 miles now and on a 180mile run down the A1 to London I can only manage 40mpg with outside temp at about 12deg.
This is with an extremely light right foot with no hard acceleration at all and gently cruising when going downhill along with slowing down up hill.
I just cant manage to get much better than this. I have even tried standard diesel on the last tank as I have being filling up on V-power since new and I could only manage a top mpg of about 43 with the v-power.

I wonder if the coupe returns slightly different results because of it's different aerodynamic shape etc.? Although you would have thought it would be an advantage. The coupe does has a big old grill though which could catch air and cause drag.

Everytime I get on the motorway now for more than 10-20 miles I pull >45mpg.

I floor it getting onto the motorway, straight to 70 and switch distronic on. Then switch it off getting off. I wonder if my results will deteriorate if I start actually driving the car manually (as it were).

On paper the coupe is almost identical for mpg, so it's an odd one.

 

[Aoraki]

As you can see from my sig below, (spritmonitor.de) I'm not doing to well. 2500 miles under the belt now, mostly local town driving though. A spirited 150 mile weekend jaunt returned 36mpg.

 

[tylerdurden]

had the car for 2d.
D1 got 32mpg on motorway
D2 (milage now 150) and we are hitting 37.

nowhere near 40. WOuld love to get mbenz76 like figures.

Fingers crossed

 

[mbenz76]

Got an average of 35ish on a 50 mile trip though town, out into the countryside and back at the weekend, a good mix of town and country roads in varying levels of traffic and with a good few steep hills.

I don't think I am doing anything special. I was quite light footed for the first 500 miles or so as I got used to the car but I am driving normally now. I always stay within the speed limits (a scare when I had 9 points slowed me down a few years ago ) and use distronic a lot on runs so that helps I think.

Car is always in Comfort mode and unless showing some upstart who's boss or overtaking etc. I don't thrash it.

 

[mbenz76]

Took the afternoon off work today to give the car a bloody good clean ready for the sunny weekend/week that is being forecast. It came up an absolute treat I have always liked black when clean and gleaming.

Then went to pick the wife up from work. Sunglasses on and music up

It did kind of makes me wish I'd gone for the surround sound now.

 

[mbenz76]

46.6 MPG average on a 180 mile round trip consisting of about 80% motorway and 20% winding country A road.

It's improving and I'm not too far from the MB quoted figures, which to be honest I never thought I'd get close to.

 

[tylerdurden]

Mine has done 460 miles so far. I'm already better at using the accelerator.

Got 46.3 mpg on the OBC but that was after coming down from Wrotham Hill on M20.

I'm still running the baby in.

 

[tylerdurden]

i'm mulling over sound options.

My 40Gb 4th gen ipod does not appear compatible. Charges fine with cable but the comand does not recognise the unit.

new ipods seem quite dear so was thinking of getting a 250Gb USB powered HD. Can be had for £40-60.

 

[mbenz76]

I'm currently using my 8GB Nano.

Decided against using a USB disk as it has to be FAT formatted and that has obvious limitations on size. Even if you get a utility that will allow large disks to be formatted as FAT, you may (I haven't tried it myself) still hit file and folder limits.

Going to pick myself up a new 160GB Ipod Classic just for the car and that can hold everything for a long time.

 

[thebook]

46.6 MPG average on a 180 mile round trip consisting of about 80% motorway and 20% winding country A road.

It's improving and I'm not too far from the MB quoted figures, which to be honest I never thought I'd get close to.

Damn, I am getting approx 30mpg from my Coupe... Of course, I do drive it with a little spirit!

 

[tylerdurden]

are there any disadvantages to the ipod solution?

 

[mbenz76]

If there are I haven't found them. I believe that some generations of Ipod don't charge, but by Nano is listed on the MB site as not charging and when you plug it in it says can't charge with an MB logo, but it hasn't lost any battery so I think it is actually charging.

 

[johny5_uk]

I think the ipod way brings out a few advantages.
Playlists, Artist, Album listings, as above partition sizing.
I currently have an ipod 80gb classic that lives in my car, the only downside is that I havent yet found a way to get movies to play through command.
Surely I dont need a different lead??