There goes my theory. I thought that a coupe that so closely resembles the E-Class sedan would not be recognised on the streets. I mean, yes, you can see that it has only two doors, but you know, the people on the streets... they wouldn’t be able to make out the difference at first glance, right?
Wrong. Kids duly lined up to be photographed against the car. Others enquired whether it had been launched yet. Pillion riders on bikes whipped out their cellphone cameras and urged the riders to get closer to the car. Heads inside other cars turned and followed the Star car’s progress. And the superstar inside? Well, he was suitably chastened for having assumed a lack of awareness on the part of others around. The moral of the story is that the Mercedes-Benz E-Class Coupe cannot be mistaken for the E-Class.
The Coupe has all the elements that distinguish the sedan version and then some. But the main difference is that it looks much sharper and sportier. There was a collective intake of breath that accompanied its unveiling in Geneva in March last year. It was yet another example of Mercedes-Benz’s new design language that was finding expression under a new design director. There’s no doubt about it, it’s a good-looking car. So it’s indeed worth spending some time on its looks. The upright grille is offset by the sleek and raked headlamps. There is a visible longitudinal central crease that runs from the tip of the car’s nose and goes all the way down to the rear bumper, and that only serves to accentuate its wedgy look. The discreet application of the L-shaped LED lamps is much more elegant compared to the excess that’s seen in cars from Munich and Ingolstadt. The rear end is dominated by the tail-lamps; funnily, the tail-lamps, which looked as if they were borrowed from the Hyundai Sonata Embera in the sedan, don’t look that Embera-ish over here. The reason is that the width of the coupe is less than that of the sedan.
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