E 280

STORY

The E-Class is the heart of Mercedes-Benz. It is the mid-size saloon that most people picture when they picture a Mercedes, and the brand's all-time best-seller with well over 15 million built. Its lineage runs back through decades of executive cars: the 1950s "Ponton", the "Strich-Acht" W114/115, and above all the indestructible W123 of the 1970s.

It was the W123 and its successor, the tank-like W124, that cemented the car's reputation for building quality that outlasts everything around it. The taxi ranks of the world filled with high-mileage diesels that simply refused to die. The "E" prefix itself, for Einspritzung (fuel injection), became the model name in the early 1990s.

Neither as flashy as the S-Class nor as accessible as the C-Class, the E-Class is the definitive, quietly excellent Mercedes.