benz has lost its way
 

once again, i was in los angeles.

and this time i stayed in a hotel that furnished me the free use of a 2004 E320.

without going into too much detail, i also had access to a new xj8 jaguar.

i trialed the benz for 2 days and gave it back. what a bunch of junk.

i am sure that the jag is a more expensive vehicle. certainly it is a better vehicle.

better ride. better handling.

but to my mind, the salient virtue of the jaguar is that the controls are all intutitive. one doesn't need the manual to figure out how to manage the car.

that is not the case with the benz. it seemed to me that it was designed to challenge the driver to operate its controls successfully.

what i found most obnoxious was the interior's mood lighting. perhaps there is a way short of cutting wires to turn it off, but damned if i could find a method. when i stopped by a benz dealer to question them on the subject, simonson in santa monica was quite offended. apparently, benz is quite proud of this constantly on at night mood lighting.

i hate it. just what i want to do, drive around at night so that everyone outside the car can clearly see what is going on inside the car. is this some kind of patriot act intrusion?

basta, benz.

Albert
The ambient lighting is adjustable, I believe all the way down to "off". It's done using the steering wheel controls and the display panel in the instrument cluster. I'm no big fan off the W211 chassis, but I wouldn't "slam" the car mainly based on the ambient lighting, some people like it. Myself I rather like the control aspect of the car, everything seems to fall into place very nicely.

Gilly

I hear the new DVD based nav systems are a lot better. :)

Just remember where the beach is. It helps when you get lost.

I read/hear this comment about newer autos all the time. While not a big fan of non-classic MBs (yes, i've driven them), I must disagree with this common complaint.

When someone gets in my 126 car, they never know how to work a single control, especially the windows, seat controls. Climate control as well. Myself, I can operate everything blindfolded.

The point is, if you OWN the car, you learn the controls very easily, no matter how ackward you may think they are in the beginning.

Newer cars may have a different learning curve, but I am confident that if I bought even an i-drive car, I would have it down after a couple of weeks.

Kinda funny, yesterday I test drove a '95 Aurora and a '96 Park Avenue Ultra. After over a year in our Benz, the controls on these 2 cars puzzled me at first despite being far more simple than the stuff in the Benz. It's just a matter of getting used to things.

I agree. I cursed the radio and climate controls in my 1985 300D for weeks until I figured them out :eek:

I still haven't figured out what a minor annoyance with mood lighting has to do with the headline "benz has lost its way"??

I'm sure it costs MB a bundle to research the whole ambient lighting thing. Those electro-luminescent panels on the rear roof can't be cheap. Someone somewhere must have done some sort of research and market analysis before deciding to implement this. I sort of like it, but sure, if they were turned up to full brightness (for ambient lighting) and a driver didn't know how to dim them, it would be an irritant, not a good feature.
I feel the same way about the MCS radio display on the ML's, can't get them dim enough, at least on the first 2 or 3 years of MCS.

Gilly

well, please tell me, where is the dimmer control? i searched high and low. tried everything.

the major sinner may have been the m-b dealer who put these cars into a hotel promotion program without including the owner's manual.

It's not done using an individual switch or knob. It's done using the steering wheel controls and the multifunction display in the instrument cluster.

Gilly