New Mercedes-Benz

Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon stopped by the shop Monday to show off their new car. This is their sixth Mercedes-Benz but their first brand new one. It is a 2008 E320CDI BlueTec diesel.

Since they brought it out I just had to drive it, of course Mrs. Sheldon insist I drive it. Who am I to say no? This engine is amazing. If the first thing that comes to mind if you think of diesel is tons of black smoke, a loud knocking engine and poor acceleration then you are in for a surprise.

The first thing you notice is nothing. No knocking noise, no black smoke and no sluggishness. The only way to tell the engine is running is to look at the instrument cluster to see the gauges are showing activity, it is that quite and smooth. Once put in drive it moves away from a stop like it was a gas engine. No turbo lag or laziness and in fact when the turbo does spool up it is so linear you never feel the "bang" of the turbo coming on. Simply just steps up and gets with the show. Having driven many late model gas Mercedes-Benz I think their claim of this engine being able to out run a gas motor of the same size to be true. I couldn't really romp on this car since it only had 350 miles and not even close to being broken. I kept the engine speed below 3000RPM but that was still plenty and zoomed the car to almost 80MPH before I got to the end of the on ramp and that was up hill! Mrs. Sheldon reports it does 100MPH with no effort. Impressive to say the least.

There was a time in my shop that almost every car I worked on was a diesel. During the mid 90s' that turned to mostly gas engines as Mercedes-Benz enter the horse power wars with BMW and other German car companies. While I don't really miss those old oil burners it will be nice to see if this engine puts Mercedes-Benz diesels back on the map. I think they have a hit on their hands. If the sales this dealership says they have are true with this diesel then I know they have a hit on their hands.

fasthair