Crown Jewel

The two have treaded many a blow for over decades now and there’s no stopping them. While BMW had upped its flagship game a while back, arch-rival Mercedes sharpened its knife and launched a revised S-class. Which one’s better? We get both heavyweights together to find out who takes home the…

- Devesh Shobha

Old habits die hard, especially if you’re a motoring journalist. For the past decade, the first thing I’d do after approaching any new car was to occupy the best seat in the house – get a hang of the pilot seat, fiddle with a few switches in the cockpit and adjust the driver’s seat to suit my driving style. Which is exactly what I did one fine Monday morning. But with the baffled chauffeur still waiting outside the front right door, I feared I had done something wrong. A quick check of the surroundings and the backseat made me release my booboo – I was in the 2018 Mercedes-Benz S-class, supposedly in the best car in the world, unfortunately not in the best seat, which the chauffeur comprehended much before I did.

However, it was my quick thinking, ahem, that saved me from a certain mini-embarrassment of sorts as I pretended to be merely following the script – to get the driving duties out of the way first and save the best for the end. The man in the white suit was more than happy to swap seats and minutes into the drive, I already see him making the most of the opportunity by taking a quick nap. Agasti, who by now had been stretching his legs at the back seat of the other limo we have – BMW 7-series – seemed to have made the smarter choice. Who in his right mind would volunteer to drive a 5.2-metre-long limo in the pathetic traffic conditions the City of Dreams has to offer? Okay, I did. And I regret doing that, but that’s also a part of my job, letting you know the dos and don’ts of being in a luxury limo.