These days, when I look at new Mercedes-Benz E-Class cars, I think about that famous Estee Lauder line. ‘The pursuit of beauty is hounourable,’ she used to say. And Mercedes-Benz is one company that can certainly claim to have done the honourable thing – they have pursued beauty in automobile design. Some of their more recent efforts may look rather dubious, but over the last few decades, they did make some of the best-looking cars ever. Fifty years after the world first saw it, the pathbreaking 300SL, with its tubular frame, mechanical fuel-injection and dramatic (if impractical) gullwing doors, still looks radical enough to stir up emotion in any international auto show. And who can forget the eager panache of the 1950s 300 or the delicate, feline grace of the 190SL from the same decade? Then there were those impossibly striking-looking 1960s SEs – you only expect to see one of those being driven by some intimidatingly beautiful European woman – dark glasses slightly askew, silk scarf billowing in the wind. Or the 1960s/70s pagoda-roof SLs, which had the carelessly indifferent star-quality of the very wealthy and the very good-looking. Those SLs just didn’t give a damn and the world loved them for it. The last-generation SL, launched in 1989, is still the car to have if sheer snobbery is your thing. The new rich drive current SL55 AMGs, but old money still wafts past in 1980s/1990s SLs. Unless, of course, they’re blasting by in one of those grosser wagens – a barely-in-control, V12-engined, 600-horsepower, S-Class-based coupe that’s the new CL65 AMG.
But I digress. This story isn’t about some of the more exotic cars that M-B have built. This one’s about cars built for those who are on a relatively tighter budget, yet aspire to own a proper, full-size Mercedes-Benz. Which is not a bad thing at all, for even ‘economy’ Mercs with smaller engines (the early-1980s 190E being a prime example here) have always boasted of excellent build quality, reliability and unburstable longevity. All of which are qualities that can also be associated with the early-1990s E-Class, the much-loved W124 series, which was sold in India till 1996. Though it was replaced by the ‘twin-eyes’ W210-spec E-Class in 1997, people continued to associate the older W124 with the word ‘Mercedes’, for much longer. To quote Bijoy, from an article he wrote for the Business Standard Automobile Annual in 1996, ‘the old W124 shape has its own presence and is easily recognisable as a Mercedes from a kilometre away.’ You know where he’s coming from. I mean, everyone from Idi Amin to Paul McCartney to Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh probably had one of those cars at some point in their lives.
But things have changed. And the new E-Class (W211) is in a completely different world from the old E. Hence, when we were informed that we were getting the latest E200 Kompressor for a test, we thought of pitting it against the W124 and see whether the game has moved on. Sting might not like it, but would the Ayatollah at least still be driven in the new E-Class? Let’s see.
The lines are drawn
Styling first. And I’ll start with the W124. It really is very hard to say anything that hasn’t been said in the past, by many people and at many times. And yet, it must be said again – the W124’s lines are timeless. Straight and solid and square as they come, this is one Mercedes whose presence is as commanding, as compelling now, as it was ten years ago. Totally devoid of fatuous, short-lived styling cues – let’s see where Bangle’d BMWs are, in ten years time – the W124 E-Class is the very embodiment of an honest German family saloon. I won’t discuss A-, B- and C-pillars or rooflines or windscreen rake, because you wouldn’t care. All I’ll say is, if cars were human, the W124 would be a rich German farmer’s wife – good looking in a solid, well-fed, hard-working and dependable kind of way. You can imagine spending a decade with this car and still being able to feel happy opening its door every morning, getting in and doing the daily commute. To quote Bijoy’s 1996 article again, ‘the fit and finish and attention to detail are impeccable.’ It was that way back then. And after almost ten years and almost one lakh kilometres, it still is. The only thing is, I do wish they had given it alloys. Pressed-steel wheels (15-inch) behind plastic wheelcovers on a car that cost Rs 23 lakh when new, smacks of scrimping. Not fair.
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