To be clear from the start: I would own a Mercedes-Benz E-Class. Big fan. Now that that’s out of the way, I can tell you why I absolutely would not choose the 2025 Mercedes-AMG E 53 Hybrid.

When we left the home of the Mercedes-Benz, we traveled mostly on the freeway at unlimited speeds for the first two hours of the trip. Time and kilometers flew by.

The car’s 577-horsepower, 3.0-liter turbocharged six-cylinder engine is paired with a battery pack to provide an EPA-estimated 42 miles of all-electric range. On the highway, the car performed bravely, mostly in hybrid mode, accelerating quickly when challenged and staying in its lane with ease. The steering was properly balanced for speed.

It was when the autobahn ended and the dual carriageway began that the AMG E’s least inspiring qualities came into play.

While acceleration was steady with no lag or jerks, the E-Class couldn’t escape its comfortable cruiser feel. Sure, it was powerful, but I didn’t find it entertaining. None of the expected driving pleasures were achieved. It felt familiar when I drove the less powerful E 450 a few weeks ago.

Steering between 35 and 55 mph (miles per hour) was too loose, even with the car in Sport mode. With the right calibration, driving the sedan around winding mountain roads at moderate speeds can be a pleasantly aggressive challenge. This was not the case here, although it was equipped with variable all-wheel drive and rear axle steering.

This was perhaps the biggest disappointment of the whole experiment. The fix seems so easy, after all, the engineers in Affalterbach, Germany, where AMG is based, are surrounded by good roads where these speeds are the norm.

It’s almost as if plug-in AMG has focused so much on sustainability and speed that they’ve forgotten that the core of what makes a sports car sporty isn’t straight-line acceleration or performance, but the combination of those with handling and agility.

With road salt building up on the windshield, spraying the cleaner and then using the wipers was effective, but the extra drops of liquid that the wipers kept spraying all over the passenger side as they did their job was inexcusable and annoying.

During my two hours in the passenger seat, I didn’t like the touchscreen setup on that side any more than I did when I first drove the E-Class in Vienna last year. The size of the screen encroaches into the passenger compartment, making it feel less spacious than it should be in a midsize sedan.

As a driver, it annoyed me even more. As I arrived in the Alps after dark, I had to concentrate on the journey. Instead, my passenger repeatedly took my attention away from the road as I scrolled through the app’s options on the bright screen.

Key parts of the E-Class remain, despite its AMG badge. The suspension absorbs bumps in the road. It’s pleasantly elegant inside and out, despite the gloss-black dashboard trim that the AMG tester specified. That said, it doesn’t look aggressive.

The 2025 Mercedes-AMG E 53 Hybrid starts at $88,000, an $18,000 premium over the 2025 Mercedes-Benz E 450. It was priced at more than $110,000 when tested.

I’m sure if you take the E 53 to the track you can step on it and beat the hell out of it and have a blast. But most people won’t. They buy a car with an AMG badge, enjoy the added performance, and go about their business.

But honestly, it’s just not worth the money for most people. The car doesn’t differ enough from the E-Class to be convincing, and where its performance as a daily driver really matters, it fails miserably in its argument.

If you want low emissions, this plug-in hybrid model has it. That’s about the only reason I can think of to buy an AMG E-Class over an E 450 or a Porsche Panamera 4 E-Hybrid (it has 30 miles of all-electric range), which is about the same price when the options are considered. on AMG.