Drowsy drivers may have met their match in new Mercedes-Benzes. The Mercedes-exclusive Attention Assist feature monitors driver alertness and if the driver seems less than attentive, the car sounds a chime and suggests the driver take a break. It's on both the E-Class coupe and E-Class sedan and it's part of the base price. Attention Assist is unobtrusive. It alerts you when you're tired and occasionally when you're not. Unobtrusive also means it's also easy to ignore. I drove an E350 Coupe and was impressed by Attention Assist, even more so by the sensational styling. It's a great car for two adults and two very occasional back seat passengers.

Mercedes-Benz says it identified 70 I'm-getting-drowsy behaviors it can measure by fitting an instrumented cap to the driver's head -- something that might make your hair look pretty bad when you take it off. It synthesized that instrumented yarmulke into a series of in-car algorithms  that monitor driver behavior, eliminating the need for the geeky headgear. The result is a monitor that sounds an alert and flashes an icon of a coffee cup if the car thinks you're tired. It uses the first 20 minutes of driving as a baseline for calibration of the current driver, then begins to monitor the driver indirectly through his or her steering behavior, use of other controls, acceleration, braking, lateral movements. On top of this, Attention Assist overlays information on time of day and duration of the drive. Mercedes-Benz researchers say alcohol- and drug-impaired drivers exhibit many of the same responses as a tired driver, so conceivably Attention Assist could help there, too. Assuming they don't crash the car the first 20 minutes, and thereafter will pull over and call a cab on the say-so of a small dashboard icon and a pleasant warning chime.

Does Attention Assist work? A couple times well into a 500-mile, eight-hour trip the Attention Assist alert sounded when I felt tired and my attention may well have been drifting. But it also sounded twice early in the trip when I was - I thought - rested and alert. Still, it's a soft warning and not that annoying, so false positive warnings are no big deal. And it's not a $1,000 or $2,500 option where you're pondering cost vs. benefit. Attention Assist is a great first step at monitoring alertness of long-distance drivers. I'd like to see more actively involved versions that could monitor a driver on the edge of falling asleep - perhaps a camera than notices almost no eye movement or blinking, among other things - and sounds a more forceful alert, or engages the driver in a dialog or game requiring concentration ("Let's play Trivial Pursuit or Jeopardy. Okay?")

Renamed. Gorgeous. Impractical. Great for Touring.
While it's called an E-Class, this two-door coupe is something of a cross between the C-Class compact and E-Class midsize (there's also the full-size Mercedes-Benz S-Class). Mercedes-Benz says a little over half the parts come from the new E-Class sedan, which suggests the bit-less-than-half part comes from the C-Class. Indeed, the front seat passengers seem to have the closeness more associated with a compact car. The EPA rates it a subcompact.

It's called the E350 Coupe (and E550 Coupe) to bring down the confusion factor in Mercedes-Benz naming when it comes to coupes. The predecessor model was called the CLK. While it's clear to many that a C-Class sedan is a compact Mercedes sedan that competes with the Audi A4, BMW 3 Series, and Cadillac CTS, buyers have long been confused by the other widely disparate MB C-something models such as the CL, CLK, and CLS. That could be annoying  to your ego if you have a $111,000 CL-Class (the gorgeous, big, four-door coupe) and you neighbor thinks it comes out of the same gene pool as the $57,000 CLK-Class convertible (which still exists, but not the coupe). Those not initiated in the Mercedes naming schemes may wonder why a car with more letters, the three-letter CLS-Class, is a mere $72,400, when the two-letter CL-Class runs almost $40,000 more. Thus: "E-Class Coupe" for simplicity. Technically, it should be a D-Class since it's halfway between the C and E.

All this naming quirkiness is forgotten on the highway. The car chews up the miles comfortably. The audio is quite good. Navigation is good, too. The console-mount control wheel, called Comand, works much like BMW's iDrive, although the current iDrive is more flexible and easier to use. BMW LCD displays are bigger, too. Fuel economy on a 1,000-mile, mostly highway trip was 27 mpg. The EPA rates it at 17 mpg city, 26 mpg highway, 20 mpg overall using premium fuel; the E550 is rated at 15-23-18. The V6 engine runs through a seven-speed automatic transmission and is more than acceptably quick. There's plenty of front seat and luggage room, even more if you fold down the rear seats. Two adult back seat passengers will find the seats adequate for a half-hour drive to dinner; for longer trips, this is the wrong car for four.

Options Packages: Have It Their Way
Where BMW offers options in packages or standalone so you can pick and choose what you want, with Mercedes you mostly have to choose packages. Many E-Class Coupes cars will come with the $3,950 Premium 1 package that comprises navigation, voice control, Logic7 surround sound music, hard drive for navigation data with 6GB left over for ripped music, satellite radio, iPod adapter, HD radio, rear view camera, heated front seats, and a power rear sunshade. A Premium 2 package ($6,350) incorporates Premium 1 plus ventilated front seats, steerable bi-xenon headlamps , LED running lights, and keyless go. All those are nice options, but if the only thing you want from Premium 2 is the excellent headlamps, you've got to take $2,500 in other options as well. Also bundled together are parking sonar (vital on such a costly car with modest rear vision) and Distronic Plus with Pre-Safe, a first-rate active cruise control system, that runs $2,600 together.

If you want to play iPod videos through the front navigation display, you can, for $480. Just read the fine print before ordering: It only works when the car is parked. One nice entertainment touch that works with the car in motion is a PC Card slot in the center stack. Plug an SD or CF card into a PC Card adapter and you've got hours of music available. A 16-GB CF card is $40; a 16-GB iPod Touch is $200. That's in case after splurging on a handsome but impractical car, you suddenly have a burst of economic conscience. 

Should you buy?
The E350 Coupe starts at $48,925 and with all options chosen, runs $66,773. The V8 E550 can cost as much as $69,720, but it will take you from stopped to 60 mph in 5.0 seconds, a half-second faster than the E350. It's conspicuous consumption, but in a very attractive manner. This is a car that looks so good and the economy is coming back; the Dow just topped 10,000 again. The E-Class Coupe is just shy of conspicuous consumption. It's safe, it's handsome (more so in darker colors), and it holds quite a bit of cargo for two for weekend trips. With the rear folding seats down, we found it will even transport a priceless 12-by-15-foot oriental carpet. (Actually, it was dirt cheap, all-purpose carpeting we found at Lowe's for a college student's Spartan dorm room, but "oriental carpeting" seems to flow better when describing a $65,000 car.) 

To me, the ideal buyer is a person who drives a lot of highway miles, in which case make sure to get the active cruise control package. Attention Assist could be a lifesaver is you're on the highway a lot. For around town driving, the V8 E550 Coupe makes sense since you won't be driving enough miles to be damaged by the lesser fuel economy, and the 550 badge may provide a higher level attention from the valet at your country club. It's a car nobody needs, especially when the eminently practical E-Class sedan may be the world's best midsize car. But in the realm of impractical cars that make a lot of sense, this should be near the top of your list. For the rest of us, Thank you, MB, for developing Attention Assist, and we await its migration to cheaper cars, just as anti-lock brakes and stability control did over the past two decades. Think of the wealthy not just as the greedy Wall Street pirates-in-neckties responsible for the current economy, but also as patrons underwriting the lifesaving arts.