• Five large, comfortable seats
• Boot is one of the biggest on sale
• Advanced tech takes the sting out of parking

Make no bones about it – the Mercedes E-Class Estate is a big car. It’s longer than many SUVs, even seven-seat ones, but while that means finding a parking space is a little more difficult it does marvellous things for interior space.

That parking problem is aided as well with cameras and sensors all round plus the option to allow the car to park itself.

Passengers in the E-Class’ back seats will enjoy loads of legroom and headroom – there’s space to stretch out, and even more height than in the saloon model thanks to the less sloping roofline. There’s also plenty of width – meaning you can carry three adults abreast without too many complaints. Well, apart from the large transmission tunnel centre passengers have to straddle

It’s certainly just as spacious as an A6 Avant or 5 Series Touring back here. In fact, the only car we can think of with more passenger space is the Skoda Superb Estate…

If you’re travelling with two, though, they’ll sit in sumptuous comfort with a wide, sturdy armrest between them. Passengers in the rear also enjoy their own distinct air-conditioning controls and large windows giving a great view out.

Storage for odds and ends is decent, too, with a large cubby under the central armrest and good-sized glovebox. The lidded storage bin underneath the climate controls houses a wireless charging pad and USB connections for your phone or other gadgets.

Boot

The E-Class Estate’s boot is simply vast.

With 640 litres on offer with the seats in place, it’s rivalled only by the 660-litre Skoda Superb and truly huge SUVs or vans. More important rivals that it treads all over are the 560-litre BMW 5 Series Touring, the 565-litre Audi A6 Avant and 560-litre Volvo V90. To put it simply, whether you’re heading to the flat-pack furniture store, moving house, or simply transporting a couple of Labradors, the E-Class is likely to have more boot space than you’ll ever need.

Fold the seats down and the story is even more impressive, with 1,820 litres of space across a totally flat floor. The exception to this is the plug-in hybrid E300de which has a large battery pack slap bang in the middle of the floor. It makes it trickier to load long items and reduces capacity to 480 litres with the seats up or 1660 with them folded.

Mercedes no longer offers a pair of rear-facing child seats in the boot, but this does mean you get a large underfloor storage compartment instead. Swings and roundabouts...

When it comes to folding down the second row, there are switches on the seats themselves as well as in the boot. The seats fold 40:20:40, allowing for longer items to be pushed in between two rear passengers – very handy. They fold totally flush to the floor, too, while the parcel shelf rises out of the way with the tailgate to make loading a cinch.

Safety

• Packed with active kit
• Five-star Euro NCAP rating
• Systems all work very smoothly

The E-Class Estate was rated five stars by Euro NCAP back in 2016, and with the 2020 facelift Mercedes included even more equipment to ensure it’s as safe as can be.

All-round LED lighting comes as standard, as does autonomous emergency braking capable of spotting cars, cyclists and pedestrians.

Opt for the Advanced Driving Assistance pack and you’ll find a whole raft of semi-autonomous systems aimed at making long drivers as safe and comfortable as possible. The E-Class Estate can use data from the sat-nav and road signs to set its own active speed limit, for example, while the adaptive cruise control can use live traffic data to detect a jam and slow down in anticipation. Once in traffic, it’ll drive itself at speeds of up to 37mph.

A new capacitive steering wheel has been installed, too, which detects touch rather than pressure. This means drivers won’t need to wiggle the wheel to reassure the car they’re still there – they can simply rest their hands on it.

Better yet, all of these systems work really smoothly, meaning you’re much more likely to actually use them than some rival’s setups.

Mercedes has also gone one step further with its blind-spot monitoring system. It now remains active even when the car is turned off, warning you of anything that may be coming up behind – this ought to help prevent exiting occupants from ‘dooring’ passing pedestrians or cyclists.