This is what happens when a luxury upstart stops apologizing and just builds a genuinely excellent sedan. The current G80 nails the fundamentals, a cabin that feels $20k richer than the sticker, a ride that dissolves highway miles, and styling confident enough that strangers assume you paid BMW money. The infotainment will test your patience with menus buried three layers deep and touch controls that occasionally ignore your finger, but that's the tax for entry. Depreciation is brutal if you're the first owner, glorious if you're the second: $82k lease returns selling for $33k with under 30k miles. Buy it if you want S-Class comfort without the S-Class payment. Skip it if the nearest Genesis dealer is two states away.
This is Mercedes doing what it does best: building a highway cruiser that wraps you in a quiet, refined cocoon while the miles disappear. The inline-six in the E450 delivers the silken power this chassis deserves, and owners who maintain them properly report 200k+ miles without drama. But if you're shopping used, generation matters enormously. Diesel models across multiple eras suffer AdBlue injector failures that clog systems and trigger check engine lights. Older examples need diligent maintenance or they'll punish your wallet, and the four-cylinder E350 feels like the wrong engine in this car. The current W214 generation earned genuine acclaim (Car and Driver's perfect 10/10, MotorTrend's 2025 Car of the Year), but you're still paying luxury repair bills to keep any E-Class running right. Buy the six-cylinder, keep up with services, and you get a car that genuinely elevates highway driving above the BMW and Audi alternatives.