Mercedes-Benz S-Class: Best Car In The World!

Not without reason does the S-Class carry the 'best car in the world' badge.

- Sirish Chandran

I was at Mercedes-Benz’s plant in Pune last month putting together a story on how affordable, or otherwise, luxury cars really are, watching S-Class after S-Class roll off the production line. Do people still have the same enthusiasm for the S-Class, I wondered, now that the stretched E-Class has nearly the same amount of rear legroom? Why don’t you come over to Switzerland to drive the updated S-Class replied my hosts. This is the car I drove and I’ll forgive you for wondering why the Driven section of this magazine starts with a car that is an all too familiar sight in the business districts of Mumbai and Delhi.

So here, let me focus your attention onto the headlights. Do you see the three LED strips in each one, eyebrows as designers like to call it? That’s the most visually prominent of the 6500 updates to the new, oh well facelifted, S-Class – and a much needed visual differentiator now that the C-Class looks like an E-Class which in turn looks like an S-Class. The C gets one eyebrow. The E gets two. The S, cementing its perch at the top of the food chain, gets three. Now you know how to pick out a new S-Class (when it comes to India in the early part of next year) from the pre-facelift W222. And if you want to show off– of course you do! – you can also inform your amazed audience that the headlights are 25mm slimmer.

You might or might not notice that the S-Class in these pictures looks a little shorter. If you do, well done. This is the regular wheelbase S-Class that is not coming to India. We might have our differences over Dokhlam but as far as the wheelbase of our cars go we think the same as the Chinese –