Modern Classic

Elegant on the outside and glamorous within, the MERCEDES-BENZ E 300 COUPE is an engaging mix of old-school grace and contemporary tech, writes JON WALL

- Jon Wall

AFTER DISPORTING OURSELVES during the past 10 months aboard a succession of ever faster and more powerful automobiles, perhaps at this juncture we should turn down the boost just a tad. For here we are, already well into autumn, and it seems to me that Keats’ “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” might not be the most appropriate time of year in which to be careening hither and thither across the landscape like a screeching, demented bat.

So, for this month’s ride, I was looking for something more relaxed, refined and elegant. Something that’s certainly not sluggish, yet is neither ridiculously rapid. Something with presence, but is by no means in your face. And something that contrives to be both subtle and eye-catching, that whispers wealth, ease and perhaps even a certain stolidity, while never vulgarly proclaiming its occupants’ good fortune too stridently.

That seemed like a tall order, until the kind people at Daimler asked whether I’d feel like spending a long weekend in the company of their Mercedes-Benz E 300 Coupe, and suddenly I had exactly what I was looking for. For Benz – and I’m not talking about its hyperactive AMG offshoot here, or the company’s stunning run of successes in Grand Prix racing in the past four years – was for decades as much a byword for rugged dependability as it was for a particularly Teutonic take on discreet but practical luxury (and, so the neighbours wouldn’t gossip overly, not too much of the latter either). And in several key aspects, this two-door version of Merc’s latest executive-segment saloon turned out to be as sensible a take on the concept of the posh coupe-cruiser as were its antecedents of half a century ago or more.