Suneet

Hey guys,

Well I'll be graduating school soon and I've got a great job lined up so I'm thinking about buying a new car in a year or so. I'll rock the LS atleast till then (190K miles and going strong), and will probably keep it longer. But I've started thinking about what car I want to buy next, it will be the first car I will pay for fully myself and since I'm so attached to my LS, I have to give myself time to see myself with a different car. Ofcourse I love the new GS, and I love the new LS.. but I've been thinking about.. an E55.. I know, I can't believe I'm saying it myself.. but that car is truly a beast.

Let's get some 0-60 numbers for some perspective:

6.1s BMW 330i 2006
6.0s G35 2003
5.8s GS430 2004
5.7s GS430 2006
5.4s BMW M3 2003
4.8s Aston Martin Vanquish SV12
4.7s Aston Martin DB9
4.6s 360 Modena
4.6s BMW M6 2005
4.5s E55 AMG (2005)

All I have to say to that is The E55 is truly a beast. I also love the styling of the car, and the interior is sleek and refined. What do you guys think? I could pick up an 04 or so in a year comparable to the price of what a new LS would cost. Its one slick machine. Don't know much about reliability, but I know its a blast to drive. It will be really hard to purchase outside of the Lexus family...

STIG

Suneet, I studied the wrong major I should have went for EECS instead of stupid MCB. Damn it!

E55 is just sick, but I heard reliability isnt that great.
-Linn

Seize

Oh yeah, the E55 is definitely a beast. My cousin has one with some performance tweaks...gets pretty fun when we go on straight-aways and go up against Ferraris, the looks on their faces is priceless when we pull away

Iceman

The E55 is one of the only other cars I test drove before buying my GS. It is indeed a "beast", both in a positive sense regarding performance and a negative sense regarding the feel of the car. It lacks a lot of the luxury refinement and features standard on much less expensive Lexus cars, and I honestly think it looks pretty plain.

You can make any car fast, but you certainly can't make any car reliable, trouble-free, and simply well put-together.

OC 335d

I used to like the E55 looks wise but now it looks quite dated IMO. I'd rather have a M5.

O. L. T.

iTrader: (17)

I'd rock it.

marshmallo

The new E63 looks better to me and it beat the M5 in a few
comparos

Only word of caution is MB's quality has been downright scary
lately.

lkirchner

I still have 4 of the 55 Kompressor cars and one of them is my wife's '06 E55. I have recently owned 2 Lexus so I can speak with some degree of fact vs perception. The E 55 is a beast but when driven normally like my wife does it is a smooth and fairly docile car. One poster stated that the car was not as luxrious as it should be. I will have to admit from an eye candy point of view that the Lexus interiors are much more pretty but I found that the plastics and the switch gear in the Lexus looked and felt cheap in comparison to the MB's. For my taste the seats in the E55 are extremely comfortable and much more supportive. Her car has the drive dynamic seats with the massage function and they are phenominal. The real beauty of the car is its stealth appearance; kind of low keyed a true wolf in sheep's clothing. One weekend when I was driving her car a new GTO pulled up to me at a stop light and it was obvious that he wanted to play and naturally I had to take him up on his challenge. Long story short there is now a GTO in the area without doors. When we got to the next light he rolled down his window and said "What the hell is that thing".

Now for the age old reliability issue. I have had almost zero defects with any of the 55 cars. I did have the infamous superchrger chirp on the S class which was taken care of by the dealer. The SL has been defect free even with the performance enhancements , the CL has been flawless and the E class still remains defect free. Perhaps I have been lucky but from my personal experience the MB's have been as reliable as the Lexus
that I owned.
For the poster who recommende that you get the E63, I have driven the new AMG and to be quite honest I did not see that much difference other than it does not have the brute torque that the 55 engines have. From what I know the 63 will outperform the 55 at speeds in excess of 100 to 110 but who drives at those speeds on the highway?

Seize

Great write-up, that's some good input there

Seize

Hopefully these pics will persuade you to get one


My friend took these pics from the MB World Rose Bowl Meet that happened in March of this yr.

so friggin' nice

marshmallo

The car mags seemed to like the refinement of the E63. Did you
not feel that it was a better street car than the E55?

About the reliability issue you have probably been very lucky which is
great. They are excellent cars when they are working well.

My friend's E class was so unreliable and developed so many expensive to
fix and hard to find electronic problems that he got rid of the car and said
he'd never buy MB again. I've also seen a few Benzes just die in the middle
of the road. You can also check out Consumer Reports for which
cars have been good and bad and E class has been bad for at least 5
years. I will try to get the most recent copy and put up the info on the
E class here.

Gojirra99

http://sr1.clublexus.com/forums/show...nsumer+reports

Iceman

Your review and comparison were excellent--unbiased and well-written. Since I'm the poster you referred to, I will pull out this quote and disagree with it. I found the interior materials on the Benz to be cheaper-feeling than I thought an $80K+ car should have. In a related but separate issue, I also found the E-class interior cluttered and poorly designed from a human factors point of view. With the GS, all the controls simply seemed to be placed in logical spots with easy-to-understand functionality. I got the impression test driving the E55 that it would take quite a bit of time to learn the function and location of all the arcane controls.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

To me it doesn't matter if it takes a while to learn the controls as much as whether the controls, once learned, work efficiently. iDrive for example fails on both counts (slow to learn, doesn't work efficiently) but from what I hear, on 6 and 7 series at least the voice recognition is very comprehensive and well implemented to offset the iDrive weakness.

Not having owned an E55, I don't know if the controls would remain inefficient and difficult once learned. No one I know who has or had a Benz seems to have struggled to learn the controls or thought they were awkward.

RX_330

If by a "bit of time" you mean 5 minutes. Then yeah, I agree.