2025 Mercedes-Benz E-Class All-Terrain Review and Test Drive

Are you suffering from SUV fatigue? Mercedes has a solution in the E450 All-Terrain wagon.

Christian Wardlaw | 

Feb 13, 2025 | 6 min read

Christian Wardlaw

If you've seen the film "The Sixth Sense," you know the famous line actor Haley Joel Osment utters about ghosts. Now, imagine his character riding around in the modern United States, peering through the back window, observing the SUVs many people drive, and whispering: "They're everywhere."

Ubiquity breeds tedium, so if you need a useful vehicle that can handle light off-roading but want something other than an SUV, the 2025 Mercedes-Benz E450 All-Terrain is a traditional luxury wagon that may offer what you seek.

In addition to the Audi A6 Allroad and Volvo V90 Cross Country, the 2025 E-Class All-Terrain offers room for five people, plenty of cargo space, standard all-wheel drive, and a raised suspension. Also, because these wagons are more like a car than a truck, they're typically more rewarding to drive and more efficient on the road than SUVs.

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Mercedes offers the 2025 All-Terrain as an E450 with a generous list of standard equipment. It has a base price under $80,000, including the destination charge to ship it to your local dealership from the Sindelfingen, Germany, assembly plant that builds it. The E450 All-Terrain received a host of updates for 2024. Up front, there's a new airbag between the driver and front-passenger seat. But 2025 models are otherwise functionally identical.

For this review, Mercedes-Benz provided a test vehicle for evaluation in Southern California. Optional equipment highlights included the Pinnacle, Leather, MBUX Superscreen, and Driver Assistance option packages. With a handful of additional upgrades, the manufacturer's suggested retail price was $88,810, including the $1,150 destination charge.

Is the 2025 Mercedes-Benz E-Class All-Terrain a Good Car?

With a few exceptions, the Mercedes E-Class All-Terrain is an excellent car. Swift and smooth, comfortable and capable, it makes plenty of sense as an alternative to a traditional SUV unless you need a third-row seat or plan to head deep into the hinterlands.

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What's Different About the E-Class All-Terrain?

Compared with an E-Class sedan, the E450 All-Terrain has a station wagon body style offering 33.1 cubic-feet of cargo space behind the back seat and a maximum volume of 64.6 cu-ft with the rear seats folded flat. By comparison, the E450 in sedan form provides 12.7 cu-ft of volume in its trunk, so it's easy to see why wagons were once so popular with people who needed extra utility.

Today, SUVs have taken that role, and in the Mercedes-Benz lineup, the All-Terrain is an alternative to the GLE and the GLE Coupe. With 31.6 cu-ft behind the rear seat and 64.1 cu-ft with it folded flat, the GLE450 Coupe falls slightly short of the All-Terrain in the cargo-carrying department. The boxier GLE450 is a smidgeon bigger behind the back seat at 33.3 cubes, but with the back seat folded, its 74.9 cu-ft far exceeds the E-Class wagon's capacity.

Thanks to its height-adjustable air suspension, the All-Terrain offers improved ground clearance and approach angles compared with an E-Class Sedan. It also has run-flat tires like the E450 Sedan, plus exclusive offerings such as a black lower body and wheel-arch trim, hill-descent control, and an Offroad driving mode. Drivers can also activate a camera view that shows what is immediately in front of or underneath the All-Terrain's front end.

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Testing the Mercedes E450 All-Terrain's Special Features

My family had the All-Terrain during the holidays, and it was perfect for last-minute shopping trips, shuttling gifts to celebrations, and traveling from our suburb into the city.

The All-Terrain doesn't have dark-tinted rear-window privacy glass, though the cargo cover can thwart prying eyes. It was odd loading a vehicle with this much cargo space that sits so close to the ground. I bonked my head more than once, which doesn't happen with a higher-riding SUV.

In Offroad mode with its suspension raised, I confirmed the All-Terrain can travel where an E-Class in sedan form can't. But given its all-season tires and vulnerable underbelly, not to mention the cost of repairing an expensive car, you'll want to keep the off-road trail-difficulty rating to a minimum.

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Sumptuous, Swift, and Technologically Sophisticated

My family loved this car for different reasons. My wife liked how easy it was to enter and exit, the comfort of the front passenger's seat, and the quality of the materials. My daughters adored the tropical-hued Verde Silver paint and the Tonka Brown leather seats that reminded them of sea shells and dark Hawaiian sand. One of their friends, a 17-year-old German car and wagon fan, came into the house gushing about the All-Terrain, saying he didn't know such a thing existed.

They weren't the only ones enamored of this E-Class wagon. I enjoyed driving it in the Individual mode, with the adaptive air suspension tuned to the firmer Sport tuning to eliminate the soft, pillowy ride and the powertrain placed in the Comfort setting to rid the car of occasionally harsh transmission shifts. The Comfort steering mode was also kind to my damaged shoulders. So calibrated, the All-Terrain was a dream to drive no matter the road.

Mercedes equips the E450 All-Terrain with a turbocharged 3.0-liter inline six-cylinder engine that produces 375 horsepower and 369 pound-feet of torque. Add the mild-hybrid system with an electric Integrated Starter Motor embedded into the transmission, and the automaker's claim that this wagon will zoom to 60 mph in 4.6 seconds is credible.

Official fuel-economy ratings are 22/31/25 mpg in city/highway/combined driving. On my evaluation loop, the car got 23 mpg and returned 22.9 mpg during a week and hundreds of miles of driving.

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Equipped with a third-generation version of the Mercedes-Benz User Experience infotainment system and the optional Superscreen setup with driver, center, and front passenger displays, the test car's dashboard was a mess of dust, fingerprints, and smudges. It can also be frustratingly difficult to find specific functions and settings buried within the technology, and the touch-sensing steering wheel control for stereo volume struggles with finely tuned adjustments.

Aside from exploring its novelty, nobody used the front passenger screen. Also, during my voice command recognition evaluation, the "Hey Mercedes" digital voice assistant flunked two tests. However, the online music integration, augmented reality video overlay when using the navigation system, and Burmester audio quality proved excellent. I could live without the bass rumbling through the seat, though.

The All-Terrain's Driver Assistance package is impressive, too. While a hands-free semi-autonomous driving system is not available, the optional tech upgrades work transparently, effectively, and smoothly. In my opinion, it provides an excellent safety net.

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Wagons deserve more consideration, but I think too few remain available. The venerable Subaru Outback, a pioneer of the rugged wagon set, is even evolving into an SUV.

But if you're looking to be different, wagons aren't "everywhere" as SUVs are. So if you want to stand out in a place like Los Angeles? Driving a Mercedes-Benz E450 All-Terrain seems like a solid strategy. I didn't see another one the entire week I had the test car.

Christian Wardlaw

Chris says his first word was "car." For as long as he can remember, he's been obsessed with them. The design. The engineering. The performance. And the purpose. He is a car enthusiast who loves to drive, but is most passionate about the cars, trucks, and SUVs that people actually buy. He began his career as the editor-in-chief of Edmunds.com in the 1990s, and for more than 30 years has created automotive content for CarGurus, J.D. Power, Kelley Blue Book, the New York Daily News, and others. Chris owns Speedy Daddy Media, has been contributing to Capital One Auto Navigator since 2019, and lives in California with his wife, kids, dog, and 2004 Mazdaspeed Miata.