Mercedes-Benz is not wasting any time in bringing back the more rugged, more practical, more lifestyle-friendly flavour of the E-Class wagon, reprising the All-Terrain badge for a second generation.
The 2024 E-Class sedan has only just made its debut and hasn’t even landed at dealers – and yet here at the IAA Mobility 2023 show in Munich, the All-Terrain version has made its debut.
Luxury wagons are a niche market in Australia, and Mercedes-Benz will bring the E-Class down under only in sedan guise.
Australia will miss out on both the E-Class wagon and the All-Terrain. The previous-gen All-Terrain was sold locally in pre-facelift guise and saw service as a police vehicle in Victoria in facelifted six-cylinder form.
A quick refresher: The new E-Class sedan, the W214, grew 13 mm in length and gained 8 mm in width as well. The wheelbase grew even more significantly, by 22 mm. That made room for a sumptuous new interior and a boatload of displays.
The biggest change, though, was actually in the boot, with cargo capacity on the sedan leaping to 538 litres of room.
If that’s the kind of statistic that gets you excited, you’ll love the new All-Terrain. For this tall-wagon, cargo with the seats up is 615L, or a whopping 1830L with the seats down.
That’s enough for you and your kids and your dogs to all go on a long weekend’s adventure.
Powertrain options
Engines for the E-Class sedan included a turbocharged, hybrid 2.0-litre inline-four with 160kW and 400Nm for the E350 or a turbocharged, hybrid 3.0-litre inline-six with 280kW and 500Nm for the E450.
For the All-Terrain, Mercedes has ditched the inline-four. The 3.0-liter six is standard, as is single-chamber air suspension and 4MATIC all-wheel-drive.
Wheels start at 18-inches, but 19 or 20s are optional.
While the E-Class doesn’t get the eye-opening, triple-display Hyperscreen setup you can install on the EQS sedan and some others, it does come close.
On E-Class it’s dubbed “Superscreen” and features LCDs instead of OLEDs, slightly smaller ones at that, but it still offers the same seamless MBUX experience for driver and passenger as Hyperscreen.
The multi-display Superscreen will still be optional on the All-Terrain, but Mercedes is throwing in the off-road display mode, which uses the forward-looking cameras to create a perspective of an invisible hood.
That should help raise the All-Terrain’s off-road chops a bit, but don’t plan to head too far into the wilderness.
When it’s time for more corporate duties, the All-Terrain inherits the new E-Class’s integrated selfie camera. It works with TikTok if you’re into that sort of thing, but for most it’ll see more use in Zoom meetings.
MBUX routines add smarts to the car, enabling you to set triggers, like automatically turning on or off seat heaters depending on the external temperature.
5G wireless comes standard, as does the ability to use a compatible smartphone as a key to operate the car.
To differentiate the All-Terrain, Mercedes has created subtly different front and rear bumpers, including a subtle “underride guard” beneath the rear that nobody will confuse for a skid plate, but gives it a bit more of a purposeful look.
Unpainted plastic fender guards should save the paint from the worst of the punishment should the trail get a little unexpectedly narrow towards the end.