Mercedes-Benz of Boston» Mercedes Dealers Models

Boston Mercedes Benz – 2010 E Class

mercedesdealersboston — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:21:26 +0000

Mercedes -Benz Dealers Boston

The Mercedes – Benz E Class Coup and Sedan are as luxurious and performance driven as anything Mercedes-Benz has released in years. While we have not been privy to a test drive as of yet – hint hint! We will go with some authorities on the subject and agree on premise alone for the time being.

We provide manufacturer overview as well as Car and Driver and Motor Trend reviews for your perusal.

Motor Trend

If the 2010 Mercedes-Benz E-Class sedan’s styling isn’t
controversial enough for you, meet the E-Class Coupe. While the new coupe, like the CLK it replaces is based on the C-Class, its sheetmetal and engine choices tie it to
the all-new E-Class sedan. The E-Class Coupe is more relaxed and less sporty compared with the 2009 CLK, and along the way it drops out as a competitor for BMW’s unbeatable 3 Series coupe. For the rest of the story – CLICK HERE!

CAR and DRIVER

2010 Mercedes E-class / E350 / E550 Coupe – First Drive Review

Mercedes-Benz aligns its entry-level coupe with its stoic mid-size sedan in both look and feel. Should we play along?

In car-speak, acronyms have their pros and cons. Alphanumeric, gobbledygook names force customers to use the parent company’s name every time they identify a car, casting
a halo effect for the brand. “I drive a Legend,” for example, did less for Acura than, “I drive an Acura.” And so the RL was born.

Now apply that thinking to Mercedes-Benz, which, to be fair, has always used alphanumeric names. But as the company expanded its lineup to some 15 separate nameplates—not
counting the AMG models—it resulted in confusion on the showroom floor and significant marketing challenges in promoting individual models. Things needed to get simpler,
and they have. The replacements for Mercedes’ mid-size CLK-class coupe and cabriolet models will henceforth be identified as part of the E-class family. (The CL coupes
will become part of the S-class lineup.) For the rest of the story visit Car and Driver – CLICK HERE

BY STEVE SILER May 2009

Mercedes Boston-E-Class Push

mercedesdealersboston — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:08:18 +0000

Behind Mercedes’ $75 Mil. E-Class Push

June 22, 2009

-By Andrew McMains

With the launch of a $75 million campaign for Mercedes-Benz’ 2010 E-Class, U.S. vp, marketing Steve Cannon discussed the psyche of Mercedes owners, the role of “rational red meat” in the ads and why the automaker is creating mobile apps for the first time. The following are excerpts of an interview with senior reporter Andrew McMains.

Adweek: How has the economy impacted your consumers?
Steve Cannon: They’re definitely nervous. They’ve been shaken like they’ve never been shaken before. So, a bunch of confidence has been removed from the system. They’re still very optimistic. For the most part, these are people who are go-getters. They build companies, they’re leaders, and they’re entrepreneurs. So, while they’ve taken a hit, there’s an underpinning of absolute optimism in all of our communications that we’ve had with those folks. Everybody has told us that they’re definitely taking tighter control over household finances. They’re postponing some things — some of that casual dining, some of that impulse stuff they’ve cut out. One lady talked about her 24-hour rule. She still loves to shop but she walks back out, gives herself 24 hours and, in most cases, doesn’t go back. So, they’re definitely cutting back.

AW: What have you learned from your dealers?
SC: The dealers are definitely seeing a more cost-cautious customer. The way the dealers see it, it expresses itself in traffic: There’s a whole lot less traffic out there. [Customers] are giving them some reasons for optimism, so the E-Class is coming at a great time. It gives them a reason to re-engage with a very big customer base. The E-Class is in its ninth generation. We’ve got lots of E-Class customers out there and it’s important in a time like this to work with your loyal customer base. It’s easier to maintain loyalty than it is to [try for] conquest in a tough, tough market.

AW: What are the biggest challenges of marketing a luxury product in a recession?
SC: The biggest challenge for us is to connect with consumers that are postponing [purchases], cutting back. Almost to a person, though, in the dialogues I’ve had with Mercedes-Benz customers, they don’t see their Mercedes-Benz as a luxury. You’ve probably heard a couple of phrases out there, like “conspicuous consumption” and “luxury shame.” None of our customers are ashamed of the cars they own. In fact, for them a Mercedes-Benz is a necessity and it’s not a luxury by any stretch of the imagination. But we definitely have to give them the rational reasons to buy. That’s why our campaign is built on the heritage of 120 years and nine generations, but it’s all about innovation. That’s why we spent a lot of time highlighting [features such as] the attention assist, lane-keeping assist, blind spot merger, this automatic breaking system — life-saving technologies that matter to the customer whether you’re in a recession or not. So, we’ve built communications that’s giving them lots of rational red meat.

AW: Does the E-Class give dealers hope because the people who would be buying it are going to be returning customers and therefore more inclined to buy regardless of the circumstances versus, say, the C-Class, where you’re trying to bring new people into the tent? Is that a more difficult challenge in these conditions?
SC: It’s definitely a more difficult challenge. Most people are talking about taking care of your loyal customers first. You make sure that you’re informing them, you’re pampering them, you’re giving them reasons to buy. Sure we still have to [try for] conquest. But for this launch, at this time for this vehicle — because the E-Class really is the bread and butter of the Mercedes-Benz franchise…as well as the heart and soul…[Dealers are] out there at the local level sort of firing up the base, to use a political term.

AW: Are all your models impacted by MBUSA’s 30 percent sales decline year-to-date through May?
SC: GLK is a great story. That just launched in January and we’ve got 30 percent share of the segment. That’s all on-top volume, which is great…Obviously, the segments that have been hardest hit are at the top [of the price range]. Some of the bigger trucks have been hit harder than the overall market. Most of the fun-to-have roadster SL and the heavier car S-class segments are down significantly. So, while the overall market [sales] were down 30 percent, the market itself is down 35 [percent]. The slight silver lining through a tough year is the fact that we’ve been gaining market share.

AW: Are dealers seeing a bump in servicing revenue as a result of owners keeping their cars longer?
SC: What we see is: folks walking in, asking about pre-owns almost as a lower-price-point Mercedes-Benz. Body styles don’t change that much. You can be in a Mercedes-Benz pre-owned vehicle with a CPO, with a warranty, and they look at that as a smart bet in a tough environment. And that gives us a way to keep people in a brand. We also see some downsizing going on. So, M-Class folks looking at the GLK are saying, “Smaller platform, a little bit more efficient.”

AW: What lines or scenes in this campaign were indelibly shaped by what’s going on around us?
SC: “If you want to see the future of the automobile, look at the E-Class today.” That to me is a really strong leadership position that [says] the technologies we’ve got in there are [valuable]. We’ve got a public out there driven by consumer electronics. We’re innovation-hungry. We like to see new innovations. We like to see those cycles kind of fast and furious. To me the watchword [phrase] is “innovation that matters.” A couple of years ago, one of our competitors talked about a vehicle that parked itself. That was a bit of a gimmick that might have been an innovation but one that didn’t matter all that much. People are pretty decent at parking themselves. But when you talk about something like attention assist — that’s a brand new innovation…[It speaks to consumers because] they equate more accidents to driver fatigue than they do to drunk driving. And the fact that we’ve got a system, a smart always-on system that monitors your driving behavior, detects peak driving patterns and warns you to take a break, that’s something that matters.

AW: What’s the thought behind the tagline, “This is Mercedes-Benz?”
SC: It came out of a dinner. We start every new campaign with about five people at a table over dinner with the agency to frame the discussion. Out of that came a very frank insight that was, If you could distill everything that Mercedes-Benz is as a company, as an engineering company, as a marketing company — all of our heritage and all of our prowess — if you could kind of distill it down into a single car it would be the E-Class. This is Mercedes-Benz.

AW: Were all the economic warning signs in place when you started planning for this campaign?
SC: Oh yeah. We have been cognizant of the environment and we’ve been really reaching out to try to understand the impact of all this on our customers…[We've been asking,] “What is its impact on consumer psychology?” We’ve got an online community — MBA Advisors. We’ve got about a thousand people that participate in this. We poll them constantly to find out how they’re thinking and responding. We even invited a bunch of people to blog for us. It’s kind of like reading their personal diary. One of the questions was, “How are you responding? What are you doing in this economy?” They’re cutting back, they’re postponing purchases, but this thread of upbeat optimism [is there]. “We’re going to get through this. We’re taking a tighter, more proactive role in our household finances.” But they’re feeling pretty empowered about that. Ironically, in one study I saw happiness. People are happier. It’s just so counter-intuitive. With all the doom and gloom that we’re surrounded with, we asked people if they are happier and the scores have jumped. A couple of things are part of that. No. 1, it’s this feeling that I can take the worst that the economy can throw at me and it hasn’t killed me. There’s a little bit of that. Plus, they’re telling us they’re feeling empowered and good about their pragmatic, proactive approach to get control of their household finances.

AW: Kind of recalibrating then, right?
SC: Definitely recalibrating. But I was happy to see that [among] Mercedes-Benz customers, none of them see a Mercedes-Benz as an item of conspicuous consumption. It’s a product that they say reflects the values that are important to them: quality, timeless design, craftsmanship, authenticity.

AW: Will you spend less in media dollars this year?
SC: In a tough budget year, we said, “We’re going to put all of our money behind our product launches.” You can’t do everything. We had a GLK launch and that was pretty big. And the feedback as well as the 30 percent segment share inside of four months are indicators that we got off to a good start in a brand-new segment. We put all of our eggs in our new-product-launch basket.

AW: Any changes in your media buying mix?
SC: We bought, through the first three quarters, pretty well in the upfront. So, in network [TV], national cable, we got a significant buy. Interestingly enough, TV has been a terrific medium in this down economy. With a lot of our marquee properties that we buy on, we’ve gotten some great deals and the viewership year-over-year has gone up. So there have been some definite — in the TV world — bargain opportunities out there with increased viewership. Folks are traveling less. They’re going out to eat less. So they’re watching some TV.

AW: Has MBUSA done mobile sites in the past?
SC: We have not. This is the first one, for the E-Class. We’re embracing the reality that that’s the way consumers are going to interact with us…We used that same community that I told you about to gauge what people are carrying in their pockets and 75 percent of them have smart phones. Even though our demographic might be a little older [and] you might think that these guys might be technology followers, we’ve got a lot of entrepreneurs and Type-A people that are early adopters. So the time is right for us to wade into this. While the E-Class will be first, it will be only the beginning of some of the mobile applications that we will develop for our marketing mix in general. We’ll start here and eventually we’ll be able to deliver the full MBUSA.com experience in a mobile app right up to and including a digital walk-around for the vehicle. That’s the way the market is moving.

AW: Any spot or moment in a spot or ad that you’re particularly proud of?
SC: The museum spot, where the E-Class coupe crashes through the window of the Mercedes-Benz museum in Stuttgart. It takes its rightful place among some of the greatest designs in automotive history. It’s a beautiful combination that balances a little bit of breakthrough creative and a little bit of fun but plays the heritage card with a performance and classic design mixed in.

Nielsen Business Media

Links referenced within this article

a $75 million campaign for Mercedes-Benz’ 2010 E-Class
http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/agency/e3id499f8aa1018de833e0d8de3136ac012
Nielsen Business Media
http://www.adweek.com

Find this article at:

http://www.brandweek.com/bw/content_display/news-and-features/direct/e3i8071e0d9c25cb6b8cf375897c9e07e02

Boston Mercedes Dealers – E250 CDI

mercedesdealersboston — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:40:35 +0000

Dan Neil:

Mercedes-Benz E250 CDI: Fantastic but for one flaw

Dan Neil / Los Angeles Times

The Mercedes-Benz E250 CDI is an astonishing piece of machinery that gets about 44 mpg.

Dan Neil
June 12, 2009

From Sindelfingen, Germany — Several years ago, while on assignment for a magazine, I participated in an experiment with Mercedes-Benz that involved my being wired up like a lab monkey and driving across the Austrian Alps in an E500, some 10 hours of hellbent berggeblitzen (not officially a German word). These biometric readings were later plotted against the car’s telemetry in an effort to measure the effects of fatigue on my driving. Given my superhuman talents and composure behind the wheel, naturally, the effects were negligible.

Especially because I unplugged the monitors and took a two-hour nap at a rest stop.

A peek inside the Mercedes-Benz E250

Wrote the story, cashed the check, and that was that. Until Thursday, when I got into the new-for-2010 E-class and discovered the Attention Assist system, which — lo and behold — detects the gradual raggedness in driver inputs that betray drowsiness. The boys in white lab coats have been busy.

If the car senses erratic steering and rapid corrections, the telltales of fatigue, the Attention Assist will advise you to get some rest as it displays a big coffee cup icon in the instrument panel (this is my favorite ISO 9000 icon, by the way). Attention Assist is just one of a dozen or more marquee safety systems Mercedes has piled onto the E-class for 2010, and it’s clear at the outset that Mercedes is returning to safety as a transcendent brand value after years of marketing itself as the spoils of well-paying bad behavior, the glittery metal floss under Britney Spears’ untrussed derriere.

Suddenly, the E-class is, again, the car for grown-ups.

I won’t parrot the company line about the E-class being the heart and soul of the brand, except that it is. The E-class is a “business saloon,” the standard-issue Mercedes — stout, reliable, comfortable and enduring. This is the stainless-steel Rolex of cars, steadily elegant and appropriate for any occasion, and you have to admire the alacrity with which the E-class can go from being a tan airport taxi drone in Berlin to being a valet-park star in Beverly Hills.

To save you the suspense, I’ll tell you now: The new E-class is a fantastic car but for one huge, agonizing, inexcusable error that baffles me like a Rubik’s Cube the size of the Seagrams Building. More on that in a moment. For now, consider a short list of some of the more fun safety systems available on the E-class as standard or options.

In case of a pedestrian accident, the Active Bonnet spring system pops the hood up a couple of inches to make a softer place for said pedestrian to bounce off. Strangely, this makes the new E-class the car I’d most like to get run down by. The optional night vision system has a thermal imaging sensor that alerts the driver to the presence of pedestrians (not sure about vampires, who tend to run a lot cooler).

The intelligent lighting system dynamically shapes the beams of the bi-xenon headlights according to oncoming traffic, speed and terrain. Cornering and fog lights are integrated. It has five lighting modes so that, if the system sees that you’re on a lonely country road — prime territory for a single-car accident — it will flood the landscape with beams worthy of a Baja 1000 truck. Very cool, like a Pink Floyd concert with headlights.

Many of these systems — the Blind Spot Assist, Distronic distance-keeping cruise control, the Brake Assist Plus (which will pre-load the brakes for max stopping power in case of an impending rear-end accident and will actually slam on the brakes if the driver is completely out to lunch) — are transferred from the S-class. One I like a lot is the Speed Limit Assist, which actually can read speed limit signs and post the number in the instrument cluster. I absolutely love ignoring this feature.

The whole car is like that. Everything is “adaptive” or “assisted” or “active” or “automatic.” (I’m guessing the Mercedes German-English Wortbuch was lopped off after the “a” section.) That all of these systems and so much techie content have jumped over the cost-cutters’ knives to land in the mid-price E-class tells me one thing: The stakes are high. It’s no secret that Mercedes cost-cut itself out of the esteem of many longtime owners in recent years. No secret either that Audi and BMW have boxed out Mercedes in styling and performance, respectively. (Lexus outsells both brands in the U.S., but a Lexus just doesn’t feel like a German car).

The E-class tells me somebody at the board level said, “Fix it.” And here is why, when people ask me what kind of car to buy, I always say, if you can afford it, Mercedes-Benz. Year to year, model to model, some brands overtake and others fall behind. Mercedes certainly has had its little felt hat handed to it from time to time, and some of its cars have been laughable. But longitudinally, decade by decade, no other company has the technological chops, the brand poetry, the routine genius of Mercedes-Benz.

Because of scheduling problems here at the Mercedes-Benz mothership, the only E-class I could wrangle was a E250 CDI, with a sewing-machine smooth 2.2-liter turbodiesel under the hood, one of a suite of diesel engines M-B has branded “BlueEfficiency.” And not without cause. The E250 CDI is an astonishing piece of machinery that gets about 44 mpg while generating — get this — 369 pound-feet of torque at 1,600 rpm. Rommel had whole mechanized divisions that didn’t have that kind of torque. It’s crazy.

So, yes, while 8 seconds to 60 mph doesn’t sound that fast, leverage that factoid against 2.2 liters of displacement, 44 mpg and a curb weight of 3,817 pounds. The car absolutely scampers down country roads, quite fast enough to exercise the seriously improved driving dynamics. The E250 has only 16-inch wheels with all-season radials wrapped around them, and yet the car had plenty of cornering bite and drama-free road holding, excellent steering feel and a tight, snubbed-down ride.

A year ago, I’d have bet anything M-B would not bring an E250 CDI to the States. Today, I’m cautiously optimistic. If this is the shape of automobiles to come, with smaller and more fuel-efficient engines supplanting snot-fire V8s, well, I’m down with it.

The E-class has otherwise been pretty ferociously squeezed for every watt of juice. The fuel pump and the power steering pump now vary their outputs depending on demand. The radiator fan housing has active vanes that can close, thereby making the car a touch more aero-efficient. The new body style returns a coefficient of drag of 0.25, which I believe is the best in class. As for the body styling, well, the wind may love it, but I’m less enthralled. It’s very proper and Swabian and gloriously unartistic. Still, it’s good to have the old Mercedes mirthlessness back.

What’s the tragic flaw in our hero? Geez, of all things, the interior materials. Ugh. Especially in the “Elegance” package (the other upgrade package is Avant Garde, which looks more promising) the burred walnut wood looks like something out of a Happy Meal. There are some nice touches — the optional wraparound ambient cabin lighting, for instance. But honestly, if you gave me this car, I’d glue orange shag carpet on the dash like in my friend’s old surf van before I rode around looking at that hot sweet mess.

As they say in 12-step programs: progress, not perfection.

dan.neil@latimes.com

Boston Mercedes Dealers: Diesel M- Class

mercedesdealersboston — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 04:48:01 +0000

Mercedes Dealers Boston.com know that the Mercedes-Benz Diesel is something very special and it is without a doubt a welcome addition to the already amazing Mercedes-Benz family of cars!

The text in italics is provided by Mercedes-Benz USA website ( Click here to get to the official Mercedes-Benz website).

Performance:

The Mercedes-Benz website creates some real curiosity with the performance outline of the 3.0L Turbocharged V-6 Diesel. The V-6 is harnessed to a 7-speed automatic transmission that adapts to your driving style – an intelligent performance vehicle with great gas mileage!

Our new, state-of-the-art BlueTEC technology isn’t just about assertive horsepower, massive torque or impressive 0-to-60 speeds. It’s about all that – and performance of another kind. This breakthrough in diesel can take our SUVs over 600 miles on a single tank of fuel.(1) That’s farther than Los Angeles to Salt Lake City and better fuel economy than some hybrids.

In case any of you were unaware or forgot….

As inventors of the diesel engine, we’ve now reinvented it without the noise, odor and emissions of old.

GOING GREEN!

Staying environmentally conscience; The solution known as AdBlue is injected into the exhaust, BlueTEC reduces smog causing NOx to its bare essentials- nitrogen and water.

Packages:

Some premium packages include; Rear View Camera, HD Radio with SIRIUS Satellite Radio, iPod/MP3 Interface, Harman/ Kardon, Power Steering Column. Auto-dimming mirrors, KEYLESS-GO, and Parktronic and more.

Mercedes-Benz Dealerships:

If you have interest in learning more about the new 2009 Mercedes- Benz vehicles, do it firsthand and get yourself to a Herb Chambers Company Mercedes-Benz dealership.

CLICK HERE to get to Chambers Motorcars of Boston, A Herb Chambers Company

CLICK HERE to get to Flagship Motorcars of Lynnfield, A Herb Chambers Company

CLICK HERE to get to Mercedes-Benz of Natick, A Herb Chambers Company

Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week

mercedesdealersboston — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:56:16 +0000

Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Swim is presented annually in Miami Beach, Florida.

Coinciding with the swimwear industry’s largest trade show, the invitation only event provides a runway platform for designers’ swimwear and resort collections with exposure to national and international media, style setters and fashionistas.

Fashion, beauty, supermodels and celebrities come together in South Beach to celebrate the sexiest swimwear designs in the world.

Fashionistas gathered at the Raleigh Hotel in Miami Beach for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week 2009, better know as Swim Week. The event, which goes on all weekend long, kicked off with a runaway show by Diesel and an after-party filled with drinks and live music

Boston Mercedes-Benz Dealers!

mercedesdealersboston — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 23:43:58 +0000

Welcome to Mercedes Dealers Boston!

Mercedes-Benz Dealers Boston editors find the best luxury car service, Foreign and luxury car parts and after market sales. It is our intention to provide up to date information on all things Mercedes-Benz!

Mercedes-Benz Dealers Boston are automobile enthusiasts as well and will feature galleries of some of the best car collections in the area!

Enjoy!