If you want a luxury sedan that'll outlive your mortgage and still feel special at 200,000 miles, the 2019-2025 ES is the one to buy, owners report zero drama, 50+ mpg from the hybrid, and an interior that hasn't aged a day. It's the last ES with the smooth V6, and the last one that feels like a proper Lexus before the brand lost the plot. The 2026 redesign strips out the V6, replaces buttons with touch-capacitive surfaces, and swaps hand-stitched luxury for Tesla minimalism that screams 'cost-cutting.' Nobody's driven one yet, so the hate is all aesthetic, but when a brand kills its best engine, ditches the iconic L logo for spelled-out branding, and makes the interior look like a rental car, that's a red flag. Buy the outgoing generation while you still can, it's the last ES that knows what it is.
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.