S-CLASS vs A8

Is the new Mercedes S-Class still the king of the luxury car castle? Well, yes, basically

A properly luxurious limo can really cocoon you from the outside world – which is exactly what we need right now, so thanks new Mercedes S-Class

WORDS PHOTOGRAPHY

YOU MIGHT WONDER WHY MERCEDES PEOPLE GET SO WORKED UP ABOUT THE S-CLASS.

After all it’s just one of Merc’s odd body styles and less than one in of its total cars sold worldwide Yet trust me it so matters to them Talk to anyone in Mercedes engineering design or sales and their face lights up when the S Class is mentioned their body language gets excited their very souls become more animated Because it’s the S Class that animates this great old company

As the receptacle for the very greatest e orts of everyone in the Stuttgart monolith it’s their flagship Never mind the barking AMG GT Black Series the hulking G the sun blotting Maybach GLS Never mind the upcoming top end electric EQS saloon Never mind even the mythical AMG One It’s the S Class that is The One

Of course we shouldn’t fall down a car biz rabbit hole Is it important to you and me that the S Class is so important to Mercedes? Well yes Because as has been the case for decades what comes first to the S Class owner sooner or later trickles down to the rest of us Airbags ESP crash anticipation panoplies of driver assist widescreen displays active headlamps active suspension voice control Just a few o the top of my head Also little pop up masts in the rear wings to give a visual guide when reversing Your car does have those no? Oh

Now the S Class introduces itself to the driver via a genuinely entrancing pair of displays The main instrument cluster is full D without a pair of red and green cardboard specs perched on your nose A camera constantly reads the positions of your eyes instructing the display via matrixes of tiny masks to send a subtly di erent image to each Which means startlingly clear D maps and graphics Above that is a colossal augmented reality HUD At junctions huge swooshy satnav chevrons dance down the road you’re to take The driver assist systems project warnings and targets positioned so you reflexively understand surely hastening your reactions A glowing green UFO hovers right on the back bumper of the car in front building trust that the systems have the measure of the situation

The centre touchscreen is the size of a fishtank but remarkably operable and intuitive a leap ahead of the UX in other Mercedes The engineers freely admit that many of the folks who buy the S Class have shall we say reached a life stage when their minds have lost the flexibility to grasp new tech And yet if you go headlong into the menus the capability will easily satisfy the young tech billionaires of the world’s biggest S Class market China where for per cent of buyers the S Class is their very first car

Taken across the piece much of the new S Class tech is about what might be called well being A term hijacked by straw haired influencers urging you to insert a poultice of stoneground mung beans up some intimate orifice here it’s more about the way the car manages to anticipate you Much of that is down to sensors and cameras trained on you including those that enable the D display Waggle the door mirror joypad and it adjusts only the mirror you’re looking at Speak your height and it motors the seat and steering wheel to a suitable position Go for the doorhandle and if the radars detect a passing car or bike LEDs in the door flash red Reach into the passenger footwell at night and it turns on a spotlight unless the handbook assures you there is a passenger so a furtive fondle remains protected under a cloak of darkness There’s a fingerprint sensor in the console so several drivers’ adjustments and preferences stay stored

But it’s not just a brilliant VR headset in an ordinary car The S Class is pretty magical to drive and ride in This is without a list of radical dynamic innovations True in most places the S can be had with fully active suspension that raises and lowers each wheel in anticipation of a bump and can organise negative roll cornering But not here The UK gets a straightforward air sprung self levelling system that uses adaptive dampers It had that principle before but this has new parts lovingly and painstakingly recalibrated The engines have all the mild hybrid clean running tech you’d expect but they’re not actually brand new here

It all feels remarkably natural and analogue despite the fact that all around its internal networks Gb of data is being processed every minute Much of that is in building a perception from its forest of sensors of a model of the surroundings Sometime probably next year German law will allow the engineers to unfetter the car’s capability to drive itself on main roads and motorways at up to kph odd mph only calling you back to the job with about second warning when something untoward happens

Hang on though If we’re on about high tech can the S Class hold on to its position at the apex of the Benz hierarchy in the face of the upcoming slinkily styled all electric EQS saloon? Well it turns out whenever the S Class was taken to customer clinics they took an EQS too Apparently per cent of customers knew which of the two they wanted the ones who wanted one didn’t want the other “We can’t do one car that suits them both ” say the S Class team leaders

And they insist that won’t change any time soon I think back through the generations of S Class and ask if this will turn out to have been the final one The answer comes back in a nanosecond emphatic and monosyllabic “No ”