Video: 2014 Mercedes-Benz E550 Cabriolet Review

What we've got here is an E550 Cabriolet. That means it's the convertible version. It's got a turbo-charged V8 and rear wheel drive. It's a German car. That means it should be a lot of fun. Is it? We'll find out. The biggest difference is upfront, you'll notice, where the new E-Class takes on sort of the curvier, sinewy look of Mercedes' redesigned S-Class flagship. The big shift here, obviously, is in the headlight. These now have kind of a single frame instead of the dual elements that have characterized the E-Class for several generations of the car, all the way back to the 1990s. But, Mercedes does say that there's LED light piping, now, that kind of continues to preserve the sort of "four-eye look," of the old E-Class. That's probably the first time that "four-eyes" has ever been used in a positive context, unless all those kids in elementary school were actually complimenting me. The E-Class Cabrio's power soft top takes about 22 seconds to lower with the windows about 28 seconds to raise. It does so from a switch inside the car. Also, you can hold the key fob here near the door handles, and it'll do it that way, too. Anyway, it's a pretty seamless process. There's no levers you gotta pull inside the car, and there's a power tonneau cover that kind of comes into place after it's all through. Mercedes has a system it calls Air Cap that extends wind deflectors here behind the rear seat, as well as one here above the windshield, at speeds of about 25, 30 miles an hour, or so. Now, this one's unique because it does reduce a lot of wind turbulence, kind of around your head, but it also adds a lot of wind noise here above the windshield, so you gotta kind of trade one for the other. So, you gotta be wondering why the E550 has a soft top, when Mercedes has a lot of experience with hard tops, including its own SLK convertible. Well, it does lack the all-weather installation of a hard top, but I gotta say, it's pretty quiet on the highway. You could forget that you're driving a soft top unless you looked up. It works at speeds up to about 25 miles an hour in the E Cabrio, Mercedes says. That's a lot faster than hard top convertibles, which generally just don't work at all, as soon as you start moving, Also, it preserves more trunk space leftover here. Overall trunk space, about 11 and a half cubic feet in the E-Class Cabrio, a little less than the about 13 and a half cubic feet in the E-Class coupe, and a lot less than the 16 plus cubic feet of space in the E-Class sedan. But, with this top down here, it has to go into this partitioned area right here, which leaves a little under nine cubic feet of space leftover. That's a pretty usable area. Definitely not something you would have if you had a hard top convertible. Now, the interior of the 2014 E-Class doesn't have quite the dramatic visual update that the exterior does, a pretty traditional dashboard design, here, kind of carries it over from last year. Mercedes does remain pretty stingy with the features, too. You shell out more than $68,000 for the base E550 Cabriolet. Features like a backup camera, keyless access with push button start, those still cost you extra. The E550 has a turbo V8 with 402 horsepower, plenty of low end punch, a lot of smooth, powerful revving, as well. Also, a very good seven-speed automatic transmission kicks down two, three gears at a time without too much trouble. There is a little bit of accelerator lag, that's pretty endemic of Mercedes, but overall in the E-Class, it's not all that bad, actually, though we've come to expect better ride quality out of this car with Mercedes adaptive suspension. Now, all the classes have adaptive suspension. High-end ones have two modes, here, you can switch between sport and comfort modes. Even in comfort, the suspension does kind of filter out a lot, but it doesn't feel as buttery smooth as in past E-Class sedans with the adaptive suspension that we've tested before. Throw the car around on curvy roads and the E-Class weighs more than 4,000 pounds, that's the E550 Cabriolet we're talking about, and a lot of that weight is over the front axle. Really feels nose-heavy coming in. When you finally get the tail out, it comes out in kind of skittish, erratic manners, not a lot of fun to really throw around on a curvy road, best just to keep it on the straightaway. It's hard to put a real finger on the competitive set for the E-Class Cabriolet, which runs, including destination, right around $61,000 for the V6 E350, all the way up to around $83,500, or so, for a loaded E550. You might say that the BMW 435 convertible, the Audi S5 Cabrio, those sort of overlap the most in terms of pricing, but both are slightly smaller, more downmarket vehicles. So, the E-Class Cabriolet, kind of in its own territory, here, as a four-seat, kind of grand touring convertible, you might say that's actually the right choice for you, then, because it occupies that space, doesn't cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some others might find, though, that you can do that for a lot less money. See what you think. (engine revs)