Mercedes-Benz E-Class vs Maserati MC20

What's the difference?

It's nice to see the E-Class still embody the ancestral heritage of Mercedes-Benz, a brand which has had much change forced upon it in the last decade.

This hybrid one in particular does a remarkable job of blending the future and the past in one deeply capable and customisable package, but not one without its flaws.

While the E 300 e manages to unite these elements nicely, it's ultimately held back by its classic rear-drive underpinnings which have consequences for packaging and electric range.

With a 320km/h-plus top speed and the ability to get from rest to 100km/h in under three seconds, there’s no doubting the MC20 meets or exceeds its performance brief. But when you’re paying these prices, there must be more than just the measurable stuff going on.

And there is. The MC20 brings a big dollop of purity to the ranks of current supercars, doing away with all-wheel drive and hybrid tech and relying instead on and old-school approach in terms of handling and overall feel.

Anybody who wants to argue that call has plenty of alternatives to the MC20 from other manufacturers, and for some of us, that less-is-more thing will ring true.

Note: CarsGuide attended this event as a guest of the manufacturer, with meals provided.

The E-Class recently received a significant facelift to bring it in line with the brand's latest design ethos, and it serves to refine an already elegant sedan.

The E-Class isn't just the brand's definition by reputation, but by its look, too. While some may be disappointed by how similar it now looks to the C-Class below, or the S-Class above, giving the core Mercedes sedan range near identical silhouettes, it cuts a unique path from its traditional rivals.

BMW's 5 Series leans into a sharper and more aggressive design language, while Audi's A6 does much the same with a post-modernist edge.

I'd argue the stoic Germanic stare of the E-Class’ softer face places the Mercedes exactly where it needs to be, but it doesn't stray from its sporty rear-drive underpinnings entirely.

The car's new blacked-out highlights accentuate its width, and the 10-spoke alloys on our test car fill the wheelarches and draw your eye to the car's low stance and big brakes.

A classic Benz beltline runs from the front lights to the rear, uniting a tidy and clearly well-built package.

Inside and the more luxury-focused touch of the E-Class compared to rivals is evident. Lavish wood trims work their way through the doors and across the grandiose dash, and while the flashy screen fittings from the wider Benz range are present here, the interior is toned down several notches from the glitz of the brand's smaller vehicles.

This offers it a much more stately ambiance, matched by the synthetic leather ‘Artico’ seats which are more like lounge chairs you sink into.

The overall design links the E-Class with its siblings nicely, and there are a lot of the brand's re-imagined classic touches present, like the circular climate vents, wooden panel inserts, and silver-tinged toggles which run down the centre.

It's not all retro, though, with the E-Class wowing observers with its giant single gloss panel hosting the multimedia suite and digital dash elements.

Obviously, you can go further here, with a long list of optional interior colour and trim combinations to customise the E-Class to your heart's content, although I was happy with the classic black on brown woodgrain of our test car.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the MC20’s design is that it’s so restrained. You won’t find wings, vents, fins and diffusers all over the car, but rather an overall shape that creates downforce, rather than that job falling to tacked on additions.

And, like any modern supercar worth its salt, the MC20 is based around a carbon-fibre tub for rigidity and low weight. From that tub structure are hung aluminium front and rear subframes which, in turn, mount the suspension and other mechanical bits.

The wind tunnel still got a huge workout in the car’s development, of course, but the aim was to integrate the downforce-inducing elements rather than having them demanding your optical attention.

As a result, the whole car is an upside-down wing, if you want to simplify it. But a very pretty upside-down wing.

This gives the MC20 a smooth, sleek look that stands it apart from the rent-a-racer crowd and supports the theory that sometimes, less is, indeed, more.

Some of the detailing is lovely, too. The vents cut into the Perspex rear windscreen form Maserati’s trademark trident shape, there’s lots of visible carbon-fibre inside the door jambs, there’s lashings of Alcantara inside and the two-tone body kit breaks up the shape perfectly.

Elements we’re not so sure about include the 'Park' button mounted way down low under the dashboard, and the swing-up, scissor-type doors, which, if your more than about 180cm tall, still require you to duck under them.

On the upside, the carbon-and-leather steering wheel with its integrated controls is gorgeous to hold and gaze at.

The E-Class takes many forms around the world, and one of them is a taxicab which makes a lot of sense because the E-Class is one of the few cars I've had on test of late that I'd actually like to be driven around in rather than always take the helm myself.

The rear seat space is enormous behind my own driving position, and the detailed luxurious trims continue, complete with the dazzling milled silver speaker fittings, woodgrain trim, and in our test car, rear heated seats.

Again, the seats are ones you simply sink into, and the window is nice and wide for great visibility.

Alongside rear heated seats in our car, amenities include large bottle holders in the doors, flip-out ones in the armrest, hard shell pockets on the back of the front seats, as well as dual adjustable air vents with a lock-off.

The front seats also offer generous space, comfortable and supportive designs, and a lavish space for full-sized adults with a high level of adjustability.

As much as I hate the fact that you have to tick pricey option boxes on an already pricey car, the amenities they afford are properly luxurious.

The seat heating, for example, extends to the armrests in the doors and centre console, and the third climate zone is a necessary touch if you're ferrying around rear passengers often.

While a sedan like this is never going to have the ease of seating of an SUV, there are lots of little areas where this Benz shines.

Proper four-door keyless entry is a nice touch. As is the ability to pre-condition the cabin, the way the doors open nice and wide, and the 40/20/40 split fold of the rear seats allow you to use the centre fold as a ski-port in European style.

Up front, you can customise the digital dash how you see fit, and while the touch panel controls on the wheel and centre console can be clumsy at times, at least there are multiple ways to interact with the system, and a physical dial for volume control hasn't been forgotten.

Over time I've even warmed to the centrally-located touchpad controller. It's easier to use than the one in Lexus products, and it's nice that I have a way to interact with the piano-gloss screen without needing to reach over to it while I'm concentrating on the road (leaving finger prints all over it in the process).

Even things as simple as the car's instruction manual being entirely digitized into the multimedia suite, complete with search function, is just smart.

The layout of the E-Class creates a significant reduction in boot space in this hybrid version, however.

Because it's a rear-drive sedan, it requires the batteries to be awkwardly packaged under the floor and on top of the axle, so the boot floor is an odd, tiered surface, with space reduced from a decent sedan-sized 540 litres (VDA) in purely petrol variants to a hatchback-sized 370L in this PHEV.

As you might be able to tell from the pictures, this shelf arrangement makes the space hard to use, although it did manage to fit our largest (124L) CarsGuide travel case on an angle.

Although the MC20 has a front and rear luggage compartment, they’re both small enough to be pretty much useless. This is a shame, because as a long-weekend getaway car, the Maserati otherwise makes a strong case for itself.

The other area that suffers for the car’s art is the interior practicality. While the driving position is great and the pedals and wheel relationship is spot on, when it comes to storing anything, you’re on your own. Best the MC20 can offer is a single cupholder at the rear of the central tunnel.

The mid-engined layout also means there’s precious little vision through the back window. To counter that, Maserati has fitted the MC20 with an interior rear-view mirror that can act as a conventional mirror (you can still see only the engine) or as a screen for the rear-mounted camera.

The catch is the image projected to the 'mirror' lacks depth of field and forces the driver to refocus on the image rather than simply glance at it.

Maserati has followed the lead of many a high-end carmaker by using the options list to ramp up the profitability of the MC20. Of course, that’s after the MSRP of $438,000 has been dealt with by your accountant.

The point is that you kind of need to suspend disbelief when it comes to supercars and their value-for-money credentials. By any sane, conventional measure, they’re seriously over-priced, but within its peer group, the Maserati is neither the cheapest nor the most expensive way to go this fast.

But back to those options: Again, it’s all a case of throwing away what you think you know, because there are several options for the Maserati that cost more than a good, brand-new hatchback.

The carbon-fibre engine cover alone will cost you a staggering $13,164, and according to Maserati management, it’s a popular option.

Then, there are the carbon-fibre brakes which not only cost $28,961, but if you want the yellow-painted calipers, that’ll be another $2962.

The hydraulic front-lifter which allows you to deal with driveways and speed humps is a monstrous $8721, but at least there’s some engineering in that. Unlike the black-roof option which is, er, a black roof at $10,202. And the external carbon-fibre kit? A cool $92,806!

The E 300 e has a 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine producing 155kW/350Nm mated to a nine-speed torque converter automatic transmission, driving the rear wheels.

The transmission contains an electric motor which is capable of producing 90kW/440Nm on its own, allowing full range of motion in the ‘Electric’ driving mode.

It is also capable of hybrid assistance to the petrol motor, making the E 300 e the fastest non-AMG-badged E-Class model to 100km/h, with a claimed sprint time of just 5.7 seconds.

It also has a 13.5kWh lithium-ion battery pack, which is good for a claimed electric-only driving range of 51km (on the more lenient NEDC testing cycle).

It's a complex mix of gear, and the electric range I experienced was certainly less than 40km. In other words, it's used up very quickly.

The Benz offers some interesting driving modes to help with this, which we'll explore later in this review.

Previous generations of Maseratis borrowed Ferrari (both brands were once part of the extended Fiat Chrysler family) technology for their drivelines in a deal that allowed both brands to share the cost of development.

And since having a Ferrari-built engine in your car was never seen as a sale hindrance, it was a sweet deal for Maserati. But when Ferrari was spun off and became a publicly-owned company in 2016, Maserati’s supply of engines dried up.

The solution was to take engine design in-house and the twin-turbocharged 3.0-litre V6 in the MC20 is one of the first fruits of that.

While it’s undoubtedly a high-tech powerplant, in other respects it’s fairly conventional. Maserati, for instance, has a long history with the V6 layout, and there’s no hybrid element to the driveline. Nor is there a hybrid option.

Maserati claims the V6 is the world’s most powerful six-cylinder production-car engine and, with no less than 463kW at 7500rpm and 730Nm between 3000 and 5500rpm, that’s a credible statement.

Technical details that you won’t see on most road cars include a dry-sump lubrication system (where the engine oil lives in a remote tank rather than the hot sump of the engine itself) and a sophisticated fuel injection system with two injectors per cylinder.

The real trick, however, is an ignition system with two spark plugs per cylinder. There are also effectively two combustion chambers, the first ensuring multiple flame fronts to achieve a more complete burn of the fuel in the main combustion chamber.

The rest of the driveline is similarly aimed at the purists out there; the transmission is an eight-speed dual-clutch, driving not all four wheels, but only the rears through a mechanical limited-slip differential.

Selectable drive modes from GT (the default setting) through to 'Wet', 'Sport', 'Corsa' (Track) and 'ESC Off' tailor the shift points, throttle sensitivity and suspension behaviour, but still allow for full engine power.

All of this hybrid gear leads to impressive consumption figures. Officially the E 300 e will consume just 2.2L/100km on the combined driving cycle, with around 13.0kWh/100km of energy consumption worked in as part of that calculation.

However, the hybrid Benz requires 98 RON premium fuel, has a smaller tank (60L) than its all-combustion counterparts, and its claimed 51km of NEDC range is more in the late thirties or early forties in the real-world in my experience.

That said, our car consumed a blend of 5.6L/100km and 8.3kWh/100km in my time with it, which is a nice balance of fuel and energy consumption.

I drove it with a lot of electric mode in the mix, but also had a day solely on the engine, and some experimenting with 'Sport' mode and 'Battery Saver' which is designed to maintain the battery level whilst using hybrid mode where it can.

The E300 e accepts a European-standard Type 2 ‘Mennekes’ charging cable in AC form only. It can charge at a theoretical max speed of 7.4kW, although the max I extracted from my local solar-charged AC outlet was 7.2kW.

It took around an hour and a half to get my E 300 e to about two-thirds charge. It would have charged to 100 per cent in around two hours using this method.

Expect somewhere between four and five hours for it to charge to 80 per cent from a 2.4kW wall socket with the included charger.

The system as a whole works well, but I wish it had more purely electric range. A battery closer to 20kWh would offer 60 or 70km of real-world range for a car of this weight, but would eat significantly more boot capacity.

Fuel economy is probably not going to be top of mind for most MC20 buyers, but the official combined figure of 11.6 litres per 100km is still pretty greedy by 2022 standards.

Balanced against the available performance, however, and an engine making more than 600 old-fashioned horsepower with that combined fuel-economy number is still cause to reflect on modern technology and efficiency.

The MC20 has a 60-litre fuel tank, making it a handy cross-country car for weekends away.

For all the electrification and evolution in Mercedes-Benz’ greater range, it's almost like coming home to sit in the E-Class.

Not only does the E 300 e stay true to the brand's luxury sedan roots with the comfort and refinement on offer, but it's perhaps the one variant in the E-Class range that makes a significant stride toward the future of the nameplate.

I'm sure we'll see a fully electric version of the E-Class in the near future (the brand is shifting to electric-only with an aggressive timeline), but for now, at this price, hybrid is the way forward for luxury sedan refinement.

The way this car blends its electric and combustion modes is notably smooth, and the engine is so distant it's genuinely hard to tell when it turns on, unlike this car's smaller A 250 e PHEV hatch sibling which takes a major drop in refinement when the rattly 1.3-litre four-cylinder engine needs to be relied upon.

This is likely due to the higher-end nature of the 2.0-litre engine and nine speed longitudinally mounted transmission in a much larger and heavier car. One thing I've never liked about the Mercedes PHEVs (and is a common problem among many PHEVs) is the ‘hybrid’ mode could be a bit smoother and more transparent on how it divides its time between electric and with the engine on. At times it runs the engine at the lights for no reason, and it seems unusually keen to turn it on when it could be using electric power. Perhaps we are spoiled by the simplicity and twenty years of refinement of Toyota's Hybrid Synergy drive, but it has the affect of making you wish every hybrid was as good.

The default ‘Comfort’ mode, while the most forgiving in terms of this car's ride, is weighted toward entirely draining the battery before it uses combustion power. The extra drive modes and customisation this PHEV offers are very useful though. Battery Saver mode lets you rely predominantly on combustion power. It's better to use on the freeway where combustion power is at its most efficient, allowing you to switch back to Comfort or Electric when you're stuck in traffic.

Sport hunkers the E-Class down for a sportier and firmer experience, and it also tweaks the accelerator response and auto transmission for a far more aggressive driving tune. As this mode won't use the electric motor at all, even at low speeds, it can be handy to use it to charge the battery via regenerative braking for times when you might not have access to a charger.

In fully electric mode, the regen braking can be tweaked to the max using the paddle shifters to increase your electric efficiency and range.

Like the smaller A 250 e, it's a highly customisable experience, letting you experience as much or as little electrification as you want in the moment, although in this case it's let down a little by the limited battery capacity.

Still, the E 300 e is an E-Class, quieter and sleeker than before. The ride is as stately as the interior suggests, and even on those 19-inch wheels little noise or discomfort makes its way into the plush cabin. The transmission is as close to an old ‘slush-o-matic’ you can get, and I mean that in a good way. Unless you're in one of the Sport modes, it will never interfere with the experience from behind the wheel.

Once you do awaken it in Sport or Sport + though, it shifts, even via paddles, with a surprising urgency, and it's in those modes where the air suspension transforms the cosy barge-like ride from Comfort or Electric into something far more rigid and responsive.

The dynamic breadth of ability in this car is a reminder of what premium money like this can buy. On the one hand you have the luxury of an economical comfort saloon, and on the other you have at least an inkling of semi-electrified performance at the flick of a switch.

Just remember to plug it in when you get home, or you're lugging around a lot of battery for no good reason.

Here’s where your half-a-million bucks has gone.

The MC20’s acceleration is absolutely shattering and is all the more amazing for the fact the car uses neither all-wheel drive grip nor hybrid torque to achieve its sprinting abilities.

While the V6 is not the most sonorous of powerplants, it does manage to sound high-end and pretty sophisticated and it’s never as shouty as some of its opposition which seem to confuse decibels with kiloWatts.

While the sheer thrust confirms the existence of two turbochargers, the lack of lag (or throttle delay) and the ability to charge into the rev limiter in the lower gears does not.

Even though power peaks at 6500rpm (as with many a modern turbo motor) the MC20 will happily smash on to the redline at 8000rpm; sometimes too happily if you don’t have your finger over the upshift paddle. As with other good modern turbocharged units, this one doesn’t actually feel overtly turbocharged.

The transmission shifts relatively smoothly in GT mode, but as you crank up the mode selector to Sport, the shifts become very fast with an accompanying jolt through the backrest as each gear clicks home. The shifting process is fairly foolproof, although you do get full over-ride, so you need to pay attention.

Both the cars we were able to sample at Philip Island were sporting the optional carbon-ceramic braking package, and one was also fitted with the optional 'birdcage' alloy wheels which are lighter.

Each of them needed a firm shove on the pedal to slow things down, but it’s true the lighter wheels seem to be worth their almost-$3000 ask as that car required less leg-pressure for the same result.

The lack of a hybrid element to the driveline, as well as the rear-drive layout, suggests a degree of purity of purpose in the car’s design. And that’s backed up by its behaviour in the first corner.

Fundamentally, instead of just hurling it at an apex and allowing the electronics to sort it all out for you, the Maserati requires a more 'classical' technique if it’s to really shine.

It doesn’t, for instance, reward trail-braking (where you continue to brake once you’ve turned into a corner) and would much prefer you get your braking over and done with before applying any meaningful steering lock.

Ignore this, and the rear weight bias of the mid-engined layout can see the car try to yaw, with the rear end becoming light and the vehicle over-rotating (which is a spin, to you and I).

Similarly, getting on the power before you’ve actually got the MC20 turned, can unload the front end and send the front wheels ploughing (ploughing is an exaggeration, but at the speeds we’re dealing with here, even a small degree is a big deal) towards the outside of the turn.

Ultimately, then, the technique becomes a text-book case of brake, turn and then power out, at which point the MC20 reveals itself to be huge fun and incredibly fast. The only thing to deal with then is the knowledge that whatever happens next is going to happen extremely quickly.

Neither ANCAP nor Euro NCAP have tested the MC20 for crash safety, so we can’t give it a star rating.

But the lack of standard safety gear such as rear-cross traffic alert and blind-spot monitoring (it’s optional at $2797) can’t go unmentioned. That’s especially concerning when you consider the mid-engined layout makes for very poor rear visibility.

Mercedes covers all its passenger cars with a five year and unlimited kilometre warranty, beating out its primary Audi and BMW rivals which persist with three-year offerings, and generally out-performing the premium segment.

The E-Class needs to be looked at once every 12 months or 25,000km, whichever occurs first, and like many German automakers, service packages can be bundled in at the time of purchase to bring overall costs down.

In the case of the E-Class, this will set you back $2450 for three years, $3200 for four years, or $4800 for five years, at a claimed minimum saving (three years) of $550 compared to paying-as-you go.

It's not as expensive or as unknown as it used to be here, but at close to $1000 per year, even when purchasing via the pre-paid packs, it's still very much at the premium end.

High-end cars often disappoint on the details, and the Maserati is no different here, offering just a three-year factory warranty (albeit with unlimited kilometres).

That trails even the most humble commuter cars these days, and suggests there’s still a degree of indifference from some carmakers. And, possibly, their customers.

There is, however, the option of fixed-price servicing for the MC20 with the first three years’ worth of servicing costing $4000.

Scheduled services are every 15,000km or 12 months, whichever comes first.