Consider the plight of the company that has to replace what it likes to call the "best car in the world." How do you top that?Well, if you're Mercedes-Benz and the car in question is the S-Class sedan, the answer is to make it bigger and fill it with more technology and more powerful engines. It's a methodology that's worked before for lots of cars from lots of companies in lots of segments, after all, including Mercedes with previous S-Classes.It's particularly interesting to watch Mercedes serve up more technology, since the German firm has made it plain that it was that very same process that raised the level of complexity and caused its quality standards to crash in recent years. It's to be hoped that they've got the latest cluster of technologies under better control, since more than one of them involve taking control away from the driver.
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| Mercedes-Benz S-Class (photo: DaimlerChrysler) |
The first thing you notice about the new S-Class, which will arrive early in 2006 so might be billed as a 2007, is that it's noticeably bigger than the sleek model it replaces, which itself was made small to seem less ostentatious than the model it replaced. As for the new technology, it is supposed to make the S-Class "an example for others to follow" and make "pioneering safety features and exemplary comfort the outstanding attributes of the S-Class."For the most part, the new technology is about helping the driver to not run his or her new S-Class into things, at low speeds while parking as well as during highway driving. There's also a simplified COMAND centre to work the car's interior controls, and air-suspension seats with a massage feature.But if you think the new model sounds too much like a car for someone losing his motor skills, Mercedes also claims that it "sets standards in driving dynamics with its agile handling, while offering even more driving pleasure with new, more powerful engines."The V-8 in the base car (now called the S 500) will be brand new and larger than the engine in the current S 430, but upscale S 600 will only get a revised version of the 6-litre V-12 with more power. We aren't likely to get either the diesel or the gas V-6 engines in Canada, both of which are new.Pricing from $106,050 for the S 430 short wheelbase to $190,050 for the S 600 Long Wheelbase.The S 500 will send 388 hp and about 400 lb-ft of torque to the rear wheels through its seven-speed automatic transmission, which should move the car along from 0 to 100 kmh in 5.4 seconds.For this new model, the V-12 goes to 517 hp and about 615 lb-ft of torque.
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| Mercedes-Benz S-Class (photo: DaimlerChrysler) |
Perhaps because of all this power in the S-Class, Mercedes-Benz engineers spent a lot of time coming up with ways to help it stop. The technology that gets pride of press release place is Brake Assist PLUS, but there's also Distronic PLUS and Parking Assist.The PLUS size technologies use sophisticated systems to maintain the S-Class's distance from other vehicles at street or freeway speeds, while the parking program does its best to stop those embarrassing low-speed bumps.