Hi all,
What's with the resonance in these otherwise great cars? Almost every example I've driven has this booming sound throughout the interior, especially on the highway, and particularly when there's not much else inside (like passengers) to dampen the sound. Has anyone come up with an effective solution?

Any large empty space that is enclosed can act like an infinite baffle speaker enclosure. This is true for most cars with a lot of empty internal space, not just MBZ..

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Jeff Lawrence
1989 300e
2000 Dodge Grand Caravan SE

Jeff, I've noticed significantly more of this sort of noise in the TEs, actually. While road noise is probably less than what you'd find in your minivan, or in my dad's Previa for example, this resonating boom is quite bit more noticeable in the MB. I've recently driven a slew of Volvo wagons, a couple of TEs, in addition to ours, and a Camry wagon for good measure. Road noise is up over the sedan counterpart - but not the boom. It's not even as noticeable in the 123 wagons. I'll chalk it up to poor design given its consistency of occurrence, but I wonder if there's a way to reduce it a little? The TEs are some of my favorite MBs.

I'll bet the Te has a natural low frequency resonance. I've never noticed it myself (been in a couple). These were with the windos up and A/C on. Oh well, go figure..

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Jeff Lawrence
1989 300e
2000 Dodge Grand Caravan SE