Mercedes E55 AMG Kompressor Estate 2004
Discussion
Ph1listine said:
Lovely, did you get it dyno'd before pulley and map?
That I didn’t do, but it was a monster when I picked it up! Eurocharged did the work - can’t remember everything but: X-pipe, secondary cat delete, pulley, remap, headers, Quaife LSD, SLR gearbox software, and some other bits. There is always something satisfying about seeing an E55 Estate racking up the miles, just being driven by people laughing in the face of boring alternatives (and acting a bit sheepish about their fuel bill... )! I've had mine 6 months now and love it, although it only gets used once a week really so not really much to report! Jealous of the LSD, think it is something I may have to invest in at some point.
Ninjacj said:
There is always something satisfying about seeing an E55 Estate racking up the miles, just being driven by people laughing in the face of boring alternatives (and acting a bit sheepish about their fuel bill... )! I've had mine 6 months now and love it, although it only gets used once a week really so not really much to report! Jealous of the LSD, think it is something I may have to invest in at some point.
Was yours a Colchester car before? Pretty sure it was the one I drove passed everyday! Very nice. Yeah I bought it to use it everyday, rain or shine. Its such a good daily, I dont keep my cars long normally but it's hard to imagine not having such a practical but also beastly machine to go through life with!
Great to read the positive reviews of the E55 and is making me think before advertising mine for sale .
I have the exact same spec e55 albeit a 2005 3 owner car . I’ve owned it for 5 years and racked up 60k superb effortless miles and probably spent a small fortune in fuel and ongoing maintenance but it’s such a capable car I’m undecided what to do .
I also have a 987 boxster s and would choose the e55 everyday of the week .
Just bought a 2010 c63 estate to replace e55 but it’s a totally different drive .
Your observations are spot on and throw me into turmoil on what to do .
Cheers
I have the exact same spec e55 albeit a 2005 3 owner car . I’ve owned it for 5 years and racked up 60k superb effortless miles and probably spent a small fortune in fuel and ongoing maintenance but it’s such a capable car I’m undecided what to do .
I also have a 987 boxster s and would choose the e55 everyday of the week .
Just bought a 2010 c63 estate to replace e55 but it’s a totally different drive .
Your observations are spot on and throw me into turmoil on what to do .
Cheers
Regarding performance whilst running on gas (lpg), I unfortunately for a brief period of time owned a dual fuel Vectra Sri primarily because it was cheap and had access to cheap lpg. As far as I am aware the gas had a lower calorific ( no pun intended) value than petrol so it was down on power compared to petrol. It was half the price of petrol at the time so was bearable. Performance was noticeably different with only 120bhp available on the good ‘petrol’ day.
cslwtfatboy said:
Great to read the positive reviews of the E55 and is making me think before advertising mine for sale .
I have the exact same spec e55 albeit a 2005 3 owner car . I’ve owned it for 5 years and racked up 60k superb effortless miles and probably spent a small fortune in fuel and ongoing maintenance but it’s such a capable car I’m undecided what to do .
I also have a 987 boxster s and would choose the e55 everyday of the week .
Just bought a 2010 c63 estate to replace e55 but it’s a totally different drive .
Your observations are spot on and throw me into turmoil on what to do .
Cheers
Need some pics here please! Great selection of cars, never intended on buying a Boxster but there really great fun cars and an absolute bargain still at the moment, also I like the fact there the absolute opposite of the the big AMG Merc. Great contrast.I have the exact same spec e55 albeit a 2005 3 owner car . I’ve owned it for 5 years and racked up 60k superb effortless miles and probably spent a small fortune in fuel and ongoing maintenance but it’s such a capable car I’m undecided what to do .
I also have a 987 boxster s and would choose the e55 everyday of the week .
Just bought a 2010 c63 estate to replace e55 but it’s a totally different drive .
Your observations are spot on and throw me into turmoil on what to do .
Cheers
I really like the C63 estate, fantastic looking things with a noise to die for. What spec/colour did u buy?
BangernomicsAndy said:
Regarding performance whilst running on gas (lpg), I unfortunately for a brief period of time owned a dual fuel Vectra Sri primarily because it was cheap and had access to cheap lpg. As far as I am aware the gas had a lower calorific ( no pun intended) value than petrol so it was down on power compared to petrol. It was half the price of petrol at the time so was bearable. Performance was noticeably different with only 120bhp available on the good ‘petrol’ day.
Interesting this, there is definitely a difference, if I know I'm in a situation where I want full fat I switch to petrol. Would be interesting to get it on a rolling road and do one run on LPG and one on petrol. I wasnt looking for an LPG car, for me I can run around doing normal sensible jobs and benefitting from only 65p a ltr tho. There doesnt seem to be a definitive answer on if it does any damage or not. I have a little bit of purist in me when it comes to old AMG and M cars so like I said in an earlier post it originally put me off but it's working for me on a daily basis right now. Only real negatives are there arent many LPG stations around here, Its only a few miles out my way tho so not too bad and the tank is small to allow the 7 seat option to stay so it only takes £25 to fill up which only lasts a week.
Ninjacj said:
Yes previously mine was a Colchester car (on a "CU04" Cardiff plate before the private plate) , somehow Essex seems to be the hub for E55 estates as I know of quite a few owners from that area!
Yep that's the one. That's the car that actually made me buy another E55k, my current one. I was already driving past its driveway regularly but one day I was walking out of Asda on the way to my 2005 XC90 and there it was. Sat there pretending to be like the other normal cars, it just looked sooo dam cool. Almost burst into tears having to get back into 163bhp of misery 
Gav from MBClub is fairly local to me too, about 15 miles down the road, his is ball achingly clean, incredibly well maintained and currently for sale at just over £13k. He is an obsessive owner and that would be a great car for someone to just buy and enjoy. I get ridiculously excited when I see another and start shouting at the wife/kids "look look another one!" Met with the usual sighs and groans of Dad your such a loser
Lovely cars 😍 love a fast wagon , always fancied one of these but were a bit out of my price range so went for a Volvo v70 T6 . Great car and very rare -got it in to Volvo straight away for the polestar treatment now running 315 bhp , averaging just over 16mpg at the moment with spirited driving 😂 is soon to become the main family car so hopefully mpg will rise once wife and kids onboard with more sensible driving 😊 
RossOCD said:
Interesting this, there is definitely a difference, if I know I'm in a situation where I want full fat I switch to petrol. Would be interesting to get it on a rolling road and do one run on LPG and one on petrol.
I wasnt looking for an LPG car, for me I can run around doing normal sensible jobs and benefitting from only 65p a ltr tho. There doesnt seem to be a definitive answer on if it does any damage or not. I have a little bit of purist in me when it comes to old AMG and M cars so like I said in an earlier post it originally put me off but it's working for me on a daily basis right now. Only real negatives are there arent many LPG stations around here, Its only a few miles out my way tho so not too bad and the tank is small to allow the 7 seat option to stay so it only takes £25 to fill up which only lasts a week.
The c63 has 41k miles on with 2 previous owners . Also has the performance pack with limited slip diff.I wasnt looking for an LPG car, for me I can run around doing normal sensible jobs and benefitting from only 65p a ltr tho. There doesnt seem to be a definitive answer on if it does any damage or not. I have a little bit of purist in me when it comes to old AMG and M cars so like I said in an earlier post it originally put me off but it's working for me on a daily basis right now. Only real negatives are there arent many LPG stations around here, Its only a few miles out my way tho so not too bad and the tank is small to allow the 7 seat option to stay so it only takes £25 to fill up which only lasts a week.
Very pleased with it so far 👍
Great post RossOCD. I do like a fast estate. I’ve had a few, including the very rare E34 M5 estate, LHD, with the 3.8 litre straight six, but the most enjoyable was the E61 M5 V10 which felt like a supercar. Dreaded the bills on that one though! Never had the E55, but pretty sure I’d love it! For open top motoring I did have a Boxter S of same vintage but didn’t find it very exciting - much prefer the Lotus Elise or Exige for that kind of fun! Great post though, thanks!
RossOCD said:
Located in door card by window switch...
No - Never seen one with heated steering wheel was it an option?
No - Never seen one with heated steering wheel was it an option?
andy43 said:
Heated 'wheel wasn't an option. Only thing I can see you're missing from the pics is Distronic radar cruise - which was a bit clunky and over sensitive on my CLS55, I think it would have been more relaxing without it.
Awesome aren't they!? Enjoy it
I wanted to check this... so I revisited an electronic brochure that I store in an ethereal place above all of our heads, called 'THE CLOUD'. The caveat is that it's a US brochure.Awesome aren't they!? Enjoy it
It refers to a 'heating' package and whilst the heated seats are available as standard for the E55 AMG, the steering wheel isn't.
It seems as though all other models could get a heating package (including steering wheels), but AMG owners couldn't spec one for this model!
bolidemichael said:
It seems as though all other models could get a heating package (including steering wheels), but AMG owners couldn't spec one for this model!
The E55 AMG wheel is unique due to the shift buttons and their associated little labels on the front. Odd the range topper didn't have the option, but I guess complexity or a wiring limitation maybe was the cause. Although highly specced to begin with, there were a lot of options on these cars. You could rack some serious money up in options. However it does seem a lot of new buyers were actually quite shrewd with picking what they particularly wanted, and despite some sellers best efforts at bigging cars up, I don't think I have ever truly seen a "fully loaded" example.
For example Ross' car has the pretty rare heated rear seats, and cooled front seats. Mine has neither, but then original owner on mine splashed out on the £1300 Radar Cruise, and Rear Seat TV. All the options on mine cost £10k (in 2004), and its probably the same value on this one. But if you really wanted to tick absolutely everything and venture into the Designo range of customisation you could quite easily add £30k+ (half the price of the car!) again!
(focuses on Saloons and US market but this is a pretty cool video for options geeks! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkwhRfNLwhc)
RossOCD said:
Yep that's the one. That's the car that actually made me buy another E55k, my current one. I was already driving past its driveway regularly but one day I was walking out of Asda on the way to my 2005 XC90 and there it was. Sat there pretending to be like the other normal cars, it just looked sooo dam cool. Almost burst into tears having to get back into 163bhp of misery
Gav from MBClub is fairly local to me too, about 15 miles down the road, his is ball achingly clean, incredibly well maintained and currently for sale at just over £13k. He is an obsessive owner and that would be a great car for someone to just buy and enjoy. I get ridiculously excited when I see another and start shouting at the wife/kids "look look another one!" Met with the usual sighs and groans of Dad your such a loser
That is a cool story! - impressive that these cars are rare enough to recognise and remember specific ones. I would probably recognise any that have been for sale in the last 2 years just off the reg sadly! Yes Gav and Simon are both selling very nice examples, and actually for once I think there are about 7 for sale at the moment across the sites which is a lot. Gav from MBClub is fairly local to me too, about 15 miles down the road, his is ball achingly clean, incredibly well maintained and currently for sale at just over £13k. He is an obsessive owner and that would be a great car for someone to just buy and enjoy. I get ridiculously excited when I see another and start shouting at the wife/kids "look look another one!" Met with the usual sighs and groans of Dad your such a loser
Looking at the other cool wagons people own in this thread should have a fast-wagon only get together !
Gassing Station | Readers' Cars | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff