Is The Mercedes E-Class The New S-Class?

This is a question I've been pondering for a while. Since time immemorial, the Mercedes S-Class has been the top of the line, the flagship of the fleet, and if you listen to a Merc buff, the best car in the world, bar none. Now, I'm a sportscar guy, and I've got nothing against big sedans, per se. But if I'm going to be dropping that kind of cash, it will be for something with two seats and less weight.

Yes, I know, there's the Mercedes SL, but there's a funny thing about the SLs: Mercedes doesn't consider them the top of their range. Their halo car is actually the S-Class coupes with the biggest engine available. Odd, I know, but Mercedes is a rather conservative company.

So the S-Class is, by their own admission, the flagship ... if so, then why am I seeing more and more tech and add dollars put into the E-Class these days? Not sure what it's like over in Europe, but here in America, there's E-Class ads all over the place. They're all voiced by Timothy Olyphant, who is best known as the volcanically tempered Sheriff Bullock from the astoundingly violent and vulgar HBO series Deadwood (which is a great show).

Now, part of the emphasis on the pushing the E-Class is going to be monetary. I've always gathered that the E is Mercedes bread and butter line. Not only do they sell them with up market trim and performance bits to gearheads like us (when we have the doh-rey-mee) but they also sell them as strippers to taxi services across the continent. The E-Class is what's known as a "volume seller" in American carmaker parlance.

For the longest time, all of the gee-wiz gizmos have been found in the S ... but now I'm seeing more and more of them in the E. The latest iteration has stuff like lane assist and brake assist and some sort of thingamabob that can tell when you're nodding off and warn you about it (I shudder to think how they do that). The E is also slathered with airbags and safety this and performance that ... and don't get me started on the AMG version with that big-block V8.

The E has something lese going for it that the S does not: It's right-sized, to use a buzzword from a few years back. The S is impressive, but the E fits easier on a lot more European roads than the S does. Maybe the bean-counters at Mercedes took a look at things and said, "Hey, you know what ... we sell a lot more E-Class cars, they're more affordable and more "useful" than the big S. Maybe we should concentrate more on the E-Class?"

Photos from Flicker users Ed Callow, fspugna and CLF.