Mercedes E-Class Wagon Its Best Feature

Wagons are an admittedly small market in the USA, but those we do still get are pretty cool. Whether it’s the performance of the Audi RS6 and Mercedes-AMG E63 Wagon (and the forthcoming BMW M5 Touring) or the lifted pseudo-SUV appeal of a Volvo V90 Cross Country, there’s something cool about them. But the coolest of all, for a single feature, was the Mercedes-Benz E-Class Wagon and its All-Terrain sibling because, for years, they had a feature none of the others had: rear-facing jump seats in the trunk.
 

Jump seats are not at all common, but these were a genius way of making a practical family wagon even more practical by seating up to seven people in emergencies. But for the new generation – freshly launched as a 2024 model – the jump seats are gone. Why?
 
American Obsession Not Enough To Keep Them Around
As it turns out, jump seats are not an option everyone is clamoring to add to their vehicle. A Mercedes-Benz US representative confirmed that there was a low take rate on a global scale, which led to the cancelation of the feature for the new generation E-Class. What’s interesting is that the jump seats were popular in the US, proving that wagon fans, while a small group, lean into the oddities of their wagon obsession.
 
“Globally, the take rate was not high enough (even though it was popular among U.S. customers), so it was removed globally.” – Mercedes-Benz spokesperson.
 
With the demise of the E-Class All-Terrain’s jump seats, the feature as a whole has left the American market. Tesla had planned on launching jump seats as an option for the Model S Plaid in 2021, previously an option on the Model S, but that seemingly fell through the cracks and never appeared as an option when ordering, despite being spied in vehicle storage yards at Tesla factories. It’s now past the point of being able to petition Mercedes to continue with them for the US market, but it wouldn’t be the first time America got certain features by popular demand that no one else did.
 

Times America Got Features No One Else Did
Two cars spring to mind when talking about features America got that no one else did, and both of them for the same reason. The first was the E60 BMW M5, which was sold in North America with a manual gearbox. It was a car that was never meant to have a manual gearbox and was hastily engineered with a transmission transplant from the 545i. But that meant you couldn’t disengage stability control. The other car to get a manual for the American market was the Mk8 Volkswagen Golf R. While the rest of the world did away with it, US buyers were adamant that a stick shifter in the hot hatch was a must-have. For a long time, the US market was one of the main reasons both the R and GTI retained their manual gearboxes, but sadly, with the facelift introduced earlier this year, the manual was put out to pasture for good.
 
Of course, the US also got jump seats on occasion when legal loopholes required innovative workarounds. The Subaru BRAT was a compact pickup with only two seats, but in order to circumvent the Chicken Tax, it got rear-facing jump seats in the truck bed, along with cool grab handles, meaning Subaru could label it as a passenger car instead of a utility vehicle. With SUVs and crossovers now dominating the landscape, will we ever see jump seats return to popularity?