If It's Not The Best . . .
by Ross Finlay (26 Jul 00)

It isn't just in its year-to-date figures that Mercedes-Benz UK is doing well - although 36,500 sales in the recent January to June period, compared with the record 62,368 for 1999 as a whole, suggest that it's about to hit the jackpot once again, and that the A-Class is really feeding in new business.

But it's not just the tiddler of the range that's climbing the sales charts. The flagship S-Class saloon sold around 2600 last year, and the way things look at the moment it may get close to 3500 this time.

People sometimes think, from its appearance and its reputation, that the S-Class is frighteningly expensive. Well, you can certainly pay £87,450 for a bog-standard (if you'll excuse the expression) long wheelbase S600L with the 367bhp 5.8-litre V12 engine and the kind of electronic equipment that wouldn't seem out of place on a Mars space flight. It will run with one bank of cylinders de-activated to save fuel at cruising speed, and it has fantastically efficient emission control.

If you want to perk up the specification a little, you can ring up something like £19,000 in extra-cost options. And that's even before riffling through the pages of the even more exotic designo equipment catalogue.

This is, remember, one of the few genuine contenders for World's Best Saloon Car honours. And the prices are quite modest compared with those being applied at Crewe. The entry level S280 comes in at £43,640.

But it's the new turbo diesel that's grabbed our attention. The S320 CDI at £45,840 is fitted with a stunningly good 3.2-litre in-line six-cylinder common rail engine, which peaks at 306bhp and slams out 346lb/ft of torque as low down as 1800rpm.

The S-Class is an entirely different kind of car from the old-style Stuttgart autobahn battle-cruisers. It's not just vastly more sophisticated, it's also lighter. So even the CDI will hit 62mph in 8.5 seconds, offer crushing mid-range acceleration and touch 141mph on an unrestricted autobahn, while running at rock-bottom noise and emission levels.

Guessing Game

You get restrained diesel sounds at tickover, but once the CDI is up and running you'd never guess what fuel it's burning. It's lively, responsive, quiet when cruising at 70mph, and able to produce a fruity engine note, as from a well-tuned petrol unit, when you floor the throttle.

The automatic transmission is one of the best in the business, with lovely slurred full-throttle change-ups. There's a balance of handling capabilities and ride quality, together with a feeling of plenty in reserve, which make you think of the old "you get what you pay for" business from the other side.

You're paying for Mercedes-Benz engineering, and it shows. Adaptive ride, electronic stability programme, Brake Assist, Speedtronic cruise control, electronic data highways, Keyless Go entry system which means you don't even have to have a key in your hand for the car to open the driver's door - they're all here.

If you can't nit-pick, you don't get a job on a motoring publication, and a couple of us felt that the park warning system - with a diagrammatic representation of what's going on behind the back bumper showing up on a neat little fascia-top screen - was pretty lethargic. We inched one of the cars slowly, in reverse, towards a solid stone wall, and there were no warning noises.

One of the Mercedes-Benz chaps pointed out, though, that at the speed we were creeping backwards the warning would sound when we were four inches away from a crunch. If we'd been approaching more quickly, the warning would have sounded when we were farther away. Oh well, OK.

Fine roomy passenger cabin, extremely comfortable seats, but I had the familiar feeling that if I was buying an S-class I wouldn't take more than three seconds to reject the pale grey trim option. I'm firmly of the opinion that no grown-up Mercedes looks right with that interior colour scheme. The light-coloured fascia graining takes about £5000 off the look of the car, and I think that has a lot to do with comments that the S-Class interior isn't up to scratch. Go for the dark.

Beautifully engineered, leading the field in mainstream automotive electronics, fast, clean, quiet and with appealing exterior lines, using the most impressive common-rail engine so far - if this isn't the World's Best (Diesel) Saloon Car - well, the best on the UK market, anyway - it will do me for the moment.

Back to Mercedes-Benz Launch index
Back to main Launch index