The punchy diesel estate is the Concorde of the 2020s

Europe by Mercedes-Benz E450d: it’s the closest you can get to flying by Concorde Is strident, pragmatic, long-distance motoring now enjoying its Concorde moment? Is it all downhill from here? Having just returned from the Alps in something a bit special, I fear it might well be. I’ve loved big, car-based escapades ever since thrashing a mate’s Peugeot 206 down to Arezzo as a 17-year-old. It croaked on arrival (head gasket!) and we spent a king’s ransom in roaming charges chatting to the IRA, never mind the repair work. (I notice the RAC’s Italy Roadside Assistance has at some point since 2006 rebranded to Roadside Assistance Italy). But it was a hell of a lot of fun. Of course, Peugeot didn’t engineer the 206 1.6 GLX with crushing cross-continental ability in mind, as demonstrated by the car’s measly 90bhp, seats flatter than the straight at Ehra-Lessien and a gearbox serving up 4000rpm at 80mph in top (the GLX did, thank goodness, get air-con). But other cars are forged for this sort of activity, and it’s these I’ll mourn when their time is up. Chuffing great diesel, huge boot, soft chairs with canyon-deep bolsters intended not for hard cornering but for hour-upon-hour comfort on the straights, a big tank: the ideal tools for touring. For obvious reasons, if not always the right ones, plush diesel wagons are dying out, and it’s hard to envisage superior touring apparatus in an electric future. Not until solid-state battery tech is here, at least. In the meantime, it will be the Concorde phenomenon. That airliner that could whisk you from London to New York in three hours, but since it was retired in 2003 the same flight has taken eight. Okay, this was never a serious issue for humanity, only one of minor convenience for the lucky few, but it still stung, because it was the killing off of technology that made an arduous task a lot easier. And cooler. The parallel is that, in 15 years, when I still hope to be getting lost in Europe en voiture, I doubt any contemporary product is going to be as competent as the one that represents Concorde in this little analogy: Mercedes’ E450d Estate – all £90k of it. (See also Alpina’s D3 Touring and the Audi S6 Avant, although the Merc is better than either as an all-rounder.) It is the apogee of long-range personal transit, yet extinction beckons because diesel has become so unfashionable. While such cars remain, our duty is to revel in them. Having fluked the perfect wheels, I did just that on this Alpine road trip. Fluked? Once we had sorted travel dates, I opened the road test diary. It reaches further into the future than you might think, mapping out when the main tests in the mag will run. Sometimes a juicy candidate materialises at short notice and we scramble to fit it in, but mostly it’s all planned. Cue a shiver of delight on seeing that the oil-burning Merc’s test window tallied with this trip. Forget MIRA: this would be real-life graft. A consumer test beasting. We even found some winter Continentals, their luridly tall sidewalls promising even greater comfort. Alas, my wife wanted to ease the journey out to Switzerland with an overnight stop. Wanting to fully tap into the Merc’s touring credentials, I was in camp ‘one hit’. So I drew her attention to the quilted seats, and assured her the mightiest non-AMG E really is as quiet as a Range Rover at 70mph (I didn’t crack out the road test data). And it did the trick. Result: 600 miles and an early start, with the concession that we would use the tunnel – these days ‘LeShuttle’ – to cross to France. It’s the rational approach if you need to beat a path deep into Europe on day one. On a weekday, you can even rocket from junction 11a of the M20 to the train itself in 20 minutes, which is miraculous considering the ferry alternative. And the E450d itself? Just under 2.9 litres of capacity, 1555rpm at 80mph in ninth, 553lb ft (!) at 1350rpm and a 73-litre tank. Four-wheel drive too. That this car would fulfil its mission despite wintry conditions and without needing to refuel was never in doubt. That said, having averaged 46.5mpg at a steady 75mph, my patience only lasted as far as Troyes. Thereafter we went a lot quicker, before the final, twisting drag up and up and up into the mountains, taken hastily in anticipation of that first icy pilsner. And guess what? It still averaged 43.4mpg. That translates to an all-out range of 700 hasty miles – ie fill and forget. It may as well have been nuclear-powered. You have to love that, although it’s not only the diesel frugality: it’s the opulence, the brutish turn of pace, the capacity to rival an HGV’s and the polished ride. Hybrids just aren’t as capable. And EVs? Pfft. So yes, the E450d Estate is serious money, but a seat on Concorde was never cheap.

May 2, 2025 - 08:07

The punchy diesel estate is the Concorde of the 2020s

Europe by Mercedes-Benz E450d: it’s the closest you can get to flying by Concorde

Is strident, pragmatic, long-distance motoring now enjoying its Concorde moment? Is it all downhill from here? Having just returned from the Alps in something a bit special, I fear it might well be.

I’ve loved big, car-based escapades ever since thrashing a mate’s Peugeot 206 down to Arezzo as a 17-year-old. It croaked on arrival (head gasket!) and we spent a king’s ransom in roaming charges chatting to the IRA, never mind the repair work. (I notice the RAC’s Italy Roadside Assistance has at some point since 2006 rebranded to Roadside Assistance Italy). But it was a hell of a lot of fun.

Of course, Peugeot didn’t engineer the 206 1.6 GLX with crushing cross-continental ability in mind, as demonstrated by the car’s measly 90bhp, seats flatter than the straight at Ehra-Lessien and a gearbox serving up 4000rpm at 80mph in top (the GLX did, thank goodness, get air-con).

But other cars are forged for this sort of activity, and it’s these I’ll mourn when their time is up. Chuffing great diesel, huge boot, soft chairs with canyon-deep bolsters intended not for hard cornering but for hour-upon-hour comfort on the straights, a big tank: the ideal tools for touring.

For obvious reasons, if not always the right ones, plush diesel wagons are dying out, and it’s hard to envisage superior touring apparatus in an electric future. Not until solid-state battery tech is here, at least. In the meantime, it will be the Concorde phenomenon.

That airliner that could whisk you from London to New York in three hours, but since it was retired in 2003 the same flight has taken eight. Okay, this was never a serious issue for humanity, only one of minor convenience for the lucky few, but it still stung, because it was the killing off of technology that made an arduous task a lot easier. And cooler.

The parallel is that, in 15 years, when I still hope to be getting lost in Europe en voiture, I doubt any contemporary product is going to be as competent as the one that represents Concorde in this little analogy: Mercedes’ E450d Estate – all £90k of it. (See also Alpina’s D3 Touring and the Audi S6 Avant, although the Merc is better than either as an all-rounder.)

It is the apogee of long-range personal transit, yet extinction beckons because diesel has become so unfashionable.

While such cars remain, our duty is to revel in them. Having fluked the perfect wheels, I did just that on this Alpine road trip. Fluked? Once we had sorted travel dates, I opened the road test diary. It reaches further into the future than you might think, mapping out when the main tests in the mag will run.

Sometimes a juicy candidate materialises at short notice and we scramble to fit it in, but mostly it’s all planned. Cue a shiver of delight on seeing that the oil-burning Merc’s test window tallied with this trip.

Forget MIRA: this would be real-life graft. A consumer test beasting. We even found some winter Continentals, their luridly tall sidewalls promising even greater comfort.

Alas, my wife wanted to ease the journey out to Switzerland with an overnight stop. Wanting to fully tap into the Merc’s touring credentials, I was in camp ‘one hit’.

So I drew her attention to the quilted seats, and assured her the mightiest non-AMG E really is as quiet as a Range Rover at 70mph (I didn’t crack out the road test data).

And it did the trick. Result: 600 miles and an early start, with the concession that we would use the tunnel – these days ‘LeShuttle’ – to cross to France. It’s the rational approach if you need to beat a path deep into Europe on day one. On a weekday, you can even rocket from junction 11a of the M20 to the train itself in 20 minutes, which is miraculous considering the ferry alternative.

And the E450d itself? Just under 2.9 litres of capacity, 1555rpm at 80mph in ninth, 553lb ft (!) at 1350rpm and a 73-litre tank. Four-wheel drive too. That this car would fulfil its mission despite wintry conditions and without needing to refuel was never in doubt.

That said, having averaged 46.5mpg at a steady 75mph, my patience only lasted as far as Troyes. Thereafter we went a lot quicker, before the final, twisting drag up and up and up into the mountains, taken hastily in anticipation of that first icy pilsner.

And guess what? It still averaged 43.4mpg. That translates to an all-out range of 700 hasty miles – ie fill and forget. It may as well have been nuclear-powered.

You have to love that, although it’s not only the diesel frugality: it’s the opulence, the brutish turn of pace, the capacity to rival an HGV’s and the polished ride. Hybrids just aren’t as capable. And EVs? Pfft.

So yes, the E450d Estate is serious money, but a seat on Concorde was never cheap.