Mercedes-Benz has revealed an off-road capable, high-riding version of their all-new E-Class estate called the All-Terrain. It’s due to have an official premiere at the Paris Motor Show and reach the European market first in the first half of 2017.
It enters the market at an uncommonly competitive period for this particular type of niche vehicle, where it will now have to exchange blows with the Audi A6 Allroad as, the new Volvo V90 Cross Country, and to a lesser extent, the Volkswagen Passat Alltrack. Not to mention the swaths of semi-comparable SUV offerings out there.
The exterior of the new ruggedised E-Class includes the usual changes we’d associate with such a transformation. There are wheel arch cladding, roof rails, a new two-tone front and rear bumper, more pronounced side sills with the same protective material treatment, as well as a chunkier front grille design and a pair of hidden tail pipes.
By default, the E-Class All-Terrain has its ground clearance set at 121mm but through its standard air suspension, the driver can adjust this to as high as 156mm at the push of a button even while driving up to a speed of 35km/h.
This Air Body Control system, as Mercedes-Benz calls it, is one of the main weapons that the car uses to tackle the rough stuff where the regular E-Class Estate would bog down while not compromising a level of comfort and composure that the regular car provides. The second key feature being, naturally, the equally standard 4Matic four-wheel drive system.
The increased ride height also means that larger tyres can be fitted into the expanded wheels wells. It needs all the help it can get as Benz’ fitment of large 19-inch alloys won’t do much in service of absorbing the bumps and dips of a rutted landscape.
Luckily those tyres have higher-than-usual side walls and are more suited to mixed surface driving. They’ll work in tandem with the car’s Dynamic Select function which also includes its variant-specific All-Terrain mode that primes the car for off-road driving by tweaking the car’s electronic stability program (ESP), all-wheel drive system, active yaw control (AYC), and acceleration skid control (ASC) to provide maximum manoeuvrability.
The E-Class All-Terrain also borrows from Mercedes-Benz’s dedicated SUV, the GLE, in that its infotainment screen pulls extra duty by displaying rough terrain vehicle status information such as steering angle, available grip, weight distribution, torque distribution, suspension travel, vehicle level, and more.
Inside, the car doesn’t differ much from the standard W213 E-Class but with more aluminium and faux carbon trim, a pair of stainless steel pedals and thicker floor mats with the All-Terrain badging. The expansive dual screen infotainment and digital gauge cluster setup remains and so too does the choice of wood panelling along the dashboard.
It’s a bit too early to speculate on the potential powertrain options available internationally for the E-Class All-Terrain but for Europe, it appears the car will be offered in a single diesel specification called the E 220 d - a 2.0-litre turbocharged four cylinder unit that produces 142kW and 400Nm mated to the familiar 9-speed automatic transmission capable of thrusting the car to 100km/h from rest in just 8 seconds.
For those who feel that less really isn’t more, there is word on a more expensive, more luxurious version of the E-Class All-Terrain sporting a 3.0-litre turbocharged V6 petrol in the works.
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