There are cars in this world that seem larger than life, that
tap into our subconscious and stay with us for the remained of our
lives. The S-Class is one of those cars. It’s the reason why all lesser
Benz motors are cool and why people pay extra for the privilege of
owning any model with a three-pointed, even a van.
May 15 will go down in history as the day when the W222 S-Class
generation was officially unveiled. Heralded as “the best car in the
world”, it’s without a doubt nice to look at, well engineered and filled
with the latest technology. It got me plenty-excited, but in the same
way I got excited when the Toyota GT 86 came out… maybe even less.
The S-Class is far from being an amazing, intangible creature that
people dream about. It’s just a really big sedan that’s available at
about the same money as a top-spec E-Class and with 200 horsepower
diesel engines. It’s what people who take Viagra and don’t know how to
use their iPhone drive.
I think there’s nothing wrong with Mercedes as a brand, it’s just the
way things are done these days. The problem is the consumer market,
which doesn’t like originality that much. How many cows are killed to
make an inter ior? How many buttons are inside? How much horsepower does
the engine make? How much this?… How many that?… With that kind of
mentality, you can have yourself a Hyundai and think it’s luxury, but
it’s not.
Luxury is when you can afford to use real chrome, 20 pounds of brass for
the ashtrays, real crystal for the champagne glasses and 20 layers of
lacquered wood to make a single button. Mercedes has a very good idea of
what “ultimate” means, since they make the G-Class.
That thing is the epitome of being a badass rockstar on the road and
off it. It’s why the G-Monster exists after all these years. The S-Class
has’t been like that for decades. It’s just one of those “amazing right
now” cars that is very good at everything and brilliant at nothing and
I’m not sure three or four years from now people will still think it’s
cool when they see one on the road.
Does the S-Class need a range of small diesel, hybrid and petrol engines
to be cool? Arguably not. Choice is good, but the one thing the really
wealthy people of the world don’t have enough of is not money or power,
it’s time. That’s where I think the S-Class reveals itself as being just
another car. Because they’ve made such a big deal about fuel economy,
they’ve revealed that the S is in reality the best company car and
nothing more.
What? Think about it! Why else would you combine luxury with a small
displacement diesel engine and force yourself into the lowest emissions
levels possible ? Everybody makes cool hybrids for rich executives,
BMW, Audi, Porsche and especially Lexus, but Mercedes is the only
company to make one that doesn’t go really fast, which just screams “I
just want to pay low taxes and have legroom”.
It’s the same story with the 2014 model’s design. Everything is nice and
simple, like a minimalist sculpture. If you wanted fictional, not
functional, look at a Bentley. If they hadn’t told us what size it is, I
would have believed it’s a C-Class with LEDs. There are no fintails, no
exagerations and nothing to make you feel like a celebrity on the red
carpet, nothing to say “oh, the queen has one of these”.
For all the niggles I have with the S-Class, it’s a nice car and will
remain the standard in the “luxury” car world. But “standard” is never
the way to make a flagship.