INSIDE MERCEDES’ NEWEST UBER-LIMOUSINE
The phone rang in a middle of a meeting. Realizing it was from one of my best buddies, I excused myself for a minute and took the call. “I got the newest Mercedes S500 for a test drive this weekend. Want to join me for a ride to the north”. The invitation was the equivalent of receiving “an offer I couldn’t refuse” from the Godfather himself. Being the nice guy that I am, I said, “YES.” This is what I found out driving the best car in the world.
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As a die-hard motorhead, I don’t normally fall for heavy, bloated executive carriers. Having said that, Mercedes S-Class is not your usual, run-of-the-mill, plutocrat-mobile. Audi, BMW, and Lexus may claim to have competing offers, but these are just smokescreens. There’s only one “Grosse Limousine” and it’s coming from Stuttgart. The S-Class is a beacon above the rest. It’s where the world’s oldest car empire puts the newest technologies on the road for the very first time. If you’d like to know what your average 2031 SUV feature list will look like, enter the Uber-Class today and find out for yourself. Speaking of entering, the S-500 door handles are concealed. You need to swipe the bar on the door for them to gracefully ease themselves out.
Reaching out to grab the exposed door handle, I can’t miss the fine engraving on the bright chrome finish. It says “Mercedes Benz” – just in case you forgot which limousine door you were about to enter. And if you happened to miss that subtle hint, the large engraving on the door sill leaves nothing to the imagination. I guess Mercedes’ product managers figured their target audience must have poor memories mixed with a fine dose of cognitive issues. Well, as long as they can pay the bill, they can probably afford the amnesia. Anyway, pulling the handle pops the heavy door open. Rest assured, an electric motor will take care of sealing it shut quietly behind you. No need to strain a muscle.
Love me, love me not
Experiencing the S500, however, starts before swiping any hidden door handles. Its long, dark, swooping shape greets you from afar. Stretching over 5.3 meters, it has a presence that goes beyond the simple numbers of its XL measurements. Like BMW’s 3 series and Volkswagen’s Golf, The S-Class is the most important car in Mercedes’ line-up and was always designed with great care. After all, it should thread a very fine balance between the respectable and the visible. It should be restrained but not boring. Glitzy but not gaudy. Affluent but not vulgar, classy but in an almost effortless way. It’s not an easy task, and sometimes the designers at Stuttgart get it just right.
The 2nd, 4th, S-Class generations were beautiful with all the right proportions. The previous S-Class, the 6th generation added a lovely, slightly retro charm to the mix. It was, in my eyes, the most beautiful S-Class to date. Other times, however, the designers get the dish overcooked. The 3rd and 5thgenerations were unproportionate, loud, and disharmonious. In keeping with the numerical trend, the current 7th generation isn’t as beautiful as the 6th. The lines are not as well proportioned. The front of the car with the narrow line of headlights is especially ungainly. The wheels look like cheap knock-offs, and the rear is bland and uninspiring. It’s not an ugly vehicle, just one that took an unnecessary step backward from the greatness of its predecessor.
Start me up
I leap over the threshold and land into the lush, beautiful, red-brown fine leather seats. The first thing I notice is the dashboard or rather lack of it. In keeping with the times (and Tesla?) Mercedes engineers decided to do away with it. Instead, you get a wide, thin screen that jousts straight up from the fine wooden dash. Pressing the “Start” button on the right, lights up an additional, much bigger screen between the two front seats. We’ll get to that later on.
There’s a faint soft hum coming from the front-mounted 3-liter, turbocharged straight-six engine. It used to be that 500, signified 5 litters. It also used to be a V-8. But things are changing, and an ever-increasing pollution regulation has forever broken the gordian connection between a model number and its engine displacement. Another novelty is the additional electric-powered supercharger that spins to 70,000 RPM to eliminates any turbo lag from the main charger. It works flawlessly, as I will soon find out.
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I nudge the accelerator, expecting a wave of silent torque to waft me away but find none. Somewhat disappointed, I press the gas pedal a bit harder until the engine finally revs high enough to pull the S500 out of its stationary position. Clearly, this engine is not built for low-end power, making it the wrong engine for this type of car. The result is that at low speeds the German limo exposes every kilo of its two-plus tons weight. I have to say it right here, right now – THIS CAR NEEDS AN ELECTRIC ENGINE. There I said it. Now let’s drive.
Look, Mommy, no hands!
James May from Top gear once said he hated Nürburgring – the famous German racetrack – because it became the industry yardstick for testing and developing new cars. “If something was designed on the Nordschleife to be able to put the fastest lap there, it was unusable for daily use. If you make suspensions stiffer and lower to go faster on the Ring, then you lose comfort and practicability for daily use.”
I’m reminded of this as I drive the Merc on slow and broken city tarmac. Our car is equipped with ultra-sophisticated air suspension, but I can still feel every tiny bump and crevice. And while the ride is not exactly a back-breaking experience, it’s nothing like the silky-smooth ride of 1970s Citroens. “James May was right”, I say to myself – rather disappointed, as I steer the German behemoth onto the highway.
As soon as the road straightens and the speed starts to climb (and with 430HP, they climb rather quickly), all this car’s faults instantly disappear, and the S500 starts to shine. The smooth-revving engine, the subtle ride, the marvelous 9 gears auto-transmission, the planted composure.
Everything about this car is effortlessly superb. There are quite a few cars that claim to be able to cover long distances at ease. None comes even close to this. You can drive it at 90Kph, 120kph, or 180Kph, and wouldn’t know the difference. You can drive it at 250kph all the way to prison and wouldn’t miss a heart-bit. The way this car cover distance falls no short than awe-inspiring. There’s an ambulance behind us, full of blinking red lights. I see it but hear nothing. Only when it overtakes us do I hear a faint siren coming through the double glazing glasses into the insulated cabin.
Speaking of driving. You don’t need to. The car can drive itself. Sure, it has all the usual autonomous driving aids, but then it adds so much more. How about stopping at a stop sign? Slowing down to tackle a round-about? Overtaking when possible? And other self-driving features we were not brave enough to try. There’s this stupid childish smile you can’t control creeping up your face when you take your hands off the wheel and playing “chicken” with a two-ton, $400,000 worth limo. Sublime
Hey Mercedes, activate massage seat!
Of course, the S500 has massage seats, and of course, they are almost as good as a trained Shiatzu therapist. You’d expect no less. But to ask the car to activate it, and have it recognize your voice and activate only YOUR massage seat, now that is something special. You can do almost anything you’d like using voice activation, we didn’t have enough time to explore all opportunities, and besides, there were so many other gadgets to play with.
It seems there’s almost nothing you can’t tinker with inside the S Class plush cabin. Adjusting the amount of pressure the side of your seat applies to keep your torso balanced in turns? You got it! Playing with the colors, intensity, and locations of the inside led lighting? But of course! Adjusting each and every one of the 31 Brumster speakers? You can if you dig deep enough. Mercedes calls it 4D surround experience. I have no idea what that means, but I can tell you Billie Eilish never sounded so good.
And then there’s the Head-Up Display (HUD). It is so good it humbles any other car-mounted HUD I ever saw (and being CMO of an Augmented Reality company a few years back, I’ve seen a few). Using it in combination with the embedded NAV system creates such a futuristic experience to make Waze and Google Maps seem like Industrial-Revolution relics. Other innovations are a little stupid but still adorable. Take the 3D dashboard, for instance, which, unlike the 4D surround system, is really 3D. The forgotten Nintendo 3DS portable gaming console may have been the first to offer an unassisted 3D vision on a flat display, but the one in Mercedes really perfects it. Expect to have it onboard your lowly Nissan Micra in ten years or so.
Controlling the enormity of setups and options is a large central console made of a clear, bright flat display. No doubt inspired by the one at the Tesla Model S. The UX experts at Stuttgart did an excellent job at making it very user-friendly and easy to navigate. Their choice of materials, on the other hand, could have been better. The glossy screen may look great in the showroom, but as soon as you start applying your greasy fingers on it, it stops looking fancy and starts looking like something a two-year-old toddler played with.
The limo that zigs
In 1996, Cadillac was desperate. The average age of a Caddy owner was 65. The brand was dying along with its customer base. The guys in GM headquarters realized they must grab younger Baby Boomers to survive. But Baby Boomers flocked to luxury brands from Germany, not Detroit. In a rare “a-ha!” moment, Cadillac executives went to Opel (then owned by GM) and asked them to rebrand their existing Open Omega. Thus the Cadillac Catera was born. The marketing guys called it the “Caddy that Zigs!”, hired supermodel Cindy Crawford, and put lots of Dollars on promotion. It didn’t help. Cadillac buyers were not interested in a Caddy that can handle twists and turns. The Catera was scrapped.
I think about the Catera as I navigate the heavy Mercedes off the highway and into two of my favorite hill climbs – Beit Oren & Nesher. I wrote about them as part of my Israel’s 10 best hill climbs post a while ago. It’s not that I expected the S500 to excel in a road better designed for Cayman or an M2. After its targeted plutocrat buyers are probably more interested in luxury and comfort. If they happen to be car buffs, they would probably have a Porsche or a Ferrari parked next by for exactly such occasions.
With that in mind, I press the unnecessary “Sport Plus” virtual button on the central consul, flick the wheel-mounted gear lever down a few and start tackling the first few tight corners.
My, oh my.
Words would have failed to describe the expression I had on my face. This Mercedes CAN ZIG! And it does so astoundingly well. It breaks, accelerates, and changes directions like a true bread compact sports car. It’s like someone miraculously eliminated half a ton and a whole meter of this car’s dimensions. The all-wheel-drive (and all-wheel steering) S500 is not just fun to drive for a big uber limousine. It is fun to drive, period!
After a while, I find out that manually playing with the 9-gears auto-transmission is redundant. It’s the best auto transmission I’ve ever driven and does the job of selecting the right gear so much better than me. The smooth engine pulls the behemoth like a Chita on a dose of Red Bull. The massive, drilled breaks do a stupendous job at stopping the mass before each and every turn and never fade. The wheel is direct and full of feedback, and so is the chassis, completely betraying its enormous size. Would I take this car to the Nordschleife?
Believe it or not, but yes, I would!
But is this a good thing?
Conclusion
I corner the large Mercedes into a tight parking spot. It turns on a Dime, like a tiny Fiat 500. A super sophisticated all-wheel-steering system takes care of it. It turns the rear wheels a whopping 10% opposite to the front ones. The car’s telemetry system and onboard radar can complete the whole parking thing for you if you so wish. In a way, this sums up the whole philosophy behind the New S Class – ridiculous amounts of technology and computing power that can rocket a man to Mars, just so you can even more lazy, careless, and spoiled than what you already are.
Is this the best car in the world?
You don’t need to drive a Rolls or a Bentley to know it is.
No car company can invest the amount of resources Mercedes does on an uber Saloon very few can afford. The result is tour-de-force of applied technology that can bend the laws of physics while dazzling its passengers with an endless list of gadgetry. Would I spend $400,000 (the price of this car, including taxes in Israel) to purchase an S500? No, I wouldn’t. Not just because spending so much money on a car that will depreciate to half that amount in four years is silly. It’s that, for me, the 7th generation of the S Class misses the mark.
It’s trying to be everything for everyone when it should focus on doing one thing very, very well. While I’ll be delighted to take the S500 for a lap of the Nürburgring, no real S Class customer will ever explore its dynamic capabilities. Why? Because it’s pointless.
The S-Class should be the most comfortable, smooth, effortless wafting machine known to man. It isn’t. It’s close, but sometimes close is not good enough.
