Further unpleasant surprises for motorists this month as the government seizes yet more money from us under threat of criminal sanction (what Gordon Brown calls ‘asking’) to help replace money wasted from earlier seizures.
Further unpleasant surprises for motorists this month as the government seizes yet more money from us under threat of criminal sanction (what Gordon Brown calls ‘asking’) to help replace money wasted from earlier seizures. This time it takes the form of car tax (VED) increases.
If your new car is in the new band M (255g/km CO2) you’ll pay £950 for your tax disc instead of £405. This will clobber not only British-built exotics such as Rolls-Royce, Bentley and Aston Martin, but also Range Rovers, most new Jaguars and even the relatively modest Vauxhall Insignia. Band L (226–255g/km) will cost £750 and will clobber the Ford S-Max and Land Rover Discovery. Even down at Band H (166–175g/km) it will cost you £250 to tax your humble new VW Beetle 1.6. Those in bands A–D (less than 130g/km), however, will pay nothing — and that includes some surprising winners such as the Audi A3 1.6TDI and the BMW 316.
Naturally, these measures are clothed in environmental fancy dress and we’re all invited to play make-believe. But making-believe ignores the fact that exotics contribute far less to overall CO2 than their output figures suggest: there are very few of them, they generally do many fewer annual miles than their more frugal brethren and their owners, if they weren’t driving gas-guzzlers, would still be driving something. The overwhelming majority of car CO2 emissions come from the low g/km cars and punishing the tiny number of high emitters will make no appreciable difference. Also, if we all obediently bought bands A–D and paid no VED, are we expected to believe they would remain zero-rated? Tell that to the marines.
One vehicle that won’t be too heavily clobbered, however, is the excellent Mercedes E 250 CDI Sport Coupé I drove last week. With manual gearbox it’s 148g/km (band F, £125, same as the Nissan Note) and with auto 168 (band H, £250, like the Beetle). But there the comparison ends. I had to check and check again that there really were just 2,143cc under that bonnet because the engine’s power and refinement are so far beyond the humble Note and Beetle that you can’t believe they’re in the same bands. Granted, there’s a slight harshness when you really gun it (0–62mph 8.8, top speed 144mph) but only enough to let you know it’s there. You almost feel you’re with the big boys in band M.
It’s a good-looker whose curvaceous lines make it appear smaller than it is. It’s also quite low (AMG wheels and 18-inch alloys on the model tested) but once you’re in it the front seats are surprisingly capacious and as comfortable as anything you’d expect in an E-class. The rear seats are fine in themselves, with slightly more legroom than anticipated but less headroom — that’s the problem with curves. There’s ample boot space, though, and the seats are split/fold. The five-dial instrument binnacle is a minor masterpiece of elegant compactness but, although it’s clear enough when lit, I doubt that all eyes would find the tip of the speedo needle instantly in daylight without a microsecond’s pause. The colour contrast isn’t quite sharp enough.
Paddle shifts, conveniently but unobtrusively placed, are a welcome addition to the five-speed auto, and the kind of driver who wants a sporty E-class will doubtless make good use of them. A couple of times I flicked the cruise-control stalk rather than the slightly too-adjacent indicator stalk. You soon learn but there shouldn’t be any need to. A novel feature was cornering lights that automatically follow the direction of turn. They came into their own one foggy night when the ability to follow the verge rather than overrun or lose it suddenly became pretty crucial.
The E-Class has long been the gold-standard Mercedes. Although neither its best-seller nor its most luxurious, and despite its ubiquity as a Brussels taxi, it is the model by which the marque as a whole is judged. In the mid-1990s the Mercedes leadership took a near-disastrous decision to increase volume at the expense of quality control. In a competitive industry nothing — no thing — is more valuable to a company than its good name (RIP British Leyland). For some years Mercedes’s reputation for engineering excellence and longevity wobbled, particularly that of the treasured E-Class, which suffered an unreasonable number of electronic failures.
Problems continued into this century but have now, I hear, been righted; the E-Class is back where it belongs. Certainly, the one I had felt as if you could confidently take it round the world. Its handling was nimble and precise, its ride not too firm, its performance excellent, its economy beyond what you have any right to expect (45.6mpg combined for the auto, 52.3 for the manual) and its comfort unquestioned. The standard car costs £33,560 and might last you the rest of your driving life.
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