Category: Large 4x4s 
Price Range: £30,280 to £75,823
Spacious, comfortable, practical, Mercedes badge.
Not as dynamic to drive as some rivals, manual gearbox awful, diesel a bit noisy.
A good compromise between off-road ability and on-road comfort but feels a little dated.
An M-Class is not cheap to run. Fuel consumption from the petrol engines is verging on the horrific - especially for the AMG and ML 500, obviously. Extended service intervals (as indicated by the on-board computer) are a bonus, however, and residual (resale) values are strong. With Mercedes' three-year standard warranty plus 30-year MobiloLife cover, a used M-Class makes a fairly sensible purchase, but be aware that reliability is not one of its stronger points, if customer satisfaction surveys are anything to go by. The current M-Class feels more like a proper Merc than its predecessor and works out as a good all-round ownership proposition relative to the costs of running a vehicle of this type. Best value as a working vehicle is the ML 270 CDI, best value for posing is the ML 55 AMG. It's more difficult to see an argument for the ML 320 and ML 500, although US buyers, with cheap petrol, may disagree.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Mercedes E-Class Coupe
wrote on 27 05 2006