THE millionaires and super-wealthy of this world don’t get ridiculously rich by giving away money.

Far from it. They extract their loot from mugs like you and me, then worship it so much they hate to part with any of it.

Fair enough, they ease their consciences by giving cash to charities, but they spoil that by flaunting their wealth on cars which would be better fitted with a horn that shouts: “Get out of my way, pauper,” rather than a normal one.

That explains why these show-offs are usually seen in the back of first-class suites such as a Rolls-Royce or Bentley rather than something as common as muck as a Mercedes.

To be honest, it doesn’t make sense. When you reach the stage where you’re watching every billion, why spend ridiculous sums on a super-limo when it’s possible that for a lot less cash you could actually end up in the world’s best car?

I’ve just spent a week driving around in a vast Mercedes S-Class L. The letter L is German for Lang, which in English translates to Long. Oh you’d guessed that, clever clogs. Still, it makes your massive Merc just that bit extra special.

For starters it adds an extra four inches (10cm) of leg room for rear seat passengers, and in turn increases the normal 16ft 8in length of an S-Class to a mighty 17ft 3in.

Believe me, that’s long. It’s never going to fit into a parking bay, but it doesn’t matter because you don’t get a chauffeur to do your shopping. That’s a job for the housekeeper.

Just opening the rear doors to an S-Class L results in gasps of astonishment from people who see it. It’s like an Aladdin’s cave of luxury trimmed in two-tone leather, black wood and carpets stolen from a palace.

Needless to say the S-Class L that Mercedes loaned to me wasn’t expensive enough, at £75,000, so Merc had fitted it with a few extras that took the finished object to £100,000.

If I can explain one little extra, you’ll see why the S-Class L fell into the “world’s best car” category. For a piddling £6,695 you get a Premium Plus package that includes something called Energising Comfort. This system controls the car’s heated and ventilated seats, the overall heating system, including “wall heating” (I suppose that’s the one that comes from the doors), the S-Class’s fantastic all-round blue lighting strips, massage and fragrancing functions and even the car’s music “atmospheres” to allow users to “configure a specific wellness set-up to suit their mood or need”.

Choose from just the five settings, which are: Freshness, Warmth, Vitality, Joy, Comfort and Training (for the body). I’ve concentrated on this new system to show just how pampering and luxurious the S-Class can be.

For normal people like me, who actually had to drive the thing, I couldn’t believe the quality of its spaceship-sized dashboard, the speed and silence of its least powerful engine, a 3.0-litre diesel, or how ridiculously fuel efficient it was.

Averaging 50mpg in a car weighing 2,050kg is quite amazing.

That’s just a tiny part of the new S-Class.

If you want to know more about the 100 different electric motors in the car, send an office junior to the dealers.