Actually, we took it to church yesterday. When we left home snow did not appear to be imminent. So, without intent I got to try out the 4 matic, which worked extremely well.
I was telling my wife of an experience some years ago with an E class which was not 4 matic. It was a weekend evening and an associate and I went to France for dinner, something we occasionally do to get a break from German heavy. We had dinner in Strasborg and on returning to our "home" well up in the Black Forest we found it was snowing hard. Climbing back was interesting in that the car had an exceptionally effective limited slip differential and it would alternate between wheels, which would slip the rear end in a swaying motion. We never were at a point that I doubted our ability to make the climb but it was both long and seemingly laborious. I have not had, before or since, such an unusual ride.
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” ---Sir Winston Churchill
"Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all." ---John W. Gardner
“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” ---C. S. Lewis