Sun and Herr

Tech advances and new engines from the S-Class saloon bring an extra dimension to the big two-door Mercs

- Tim Pollard

Mercedes have a long history of making big coupés and convertibles, but it was only in 2014 that the giant formerly known as the cl was absorbed into the s-class range. Made sense on many levels: the S brand is pure blue-chip and the cars shared much of their technology and hardware. In line with Merc’s ever-shifting nomenclature, it positions these maxiluxe cars rather neatly.

And here we are, four years down the line, at midlife facelift time. Much of what you see here reflects the latest changes wrought to the s-class four-door — with a sprinkling of new engines, gadgetry, and very minor cosmetic surgery to give the range-topping two doors a fresh lease of life to take on the box-fresh Bentley continental GTrange.

Two-doors-classes are a rare sight on Britain’s roads. Merc predicts UK sales of a few hundred of each body style, with a small bias towards the hard-top.

Anoraks will need an especially high grade of gore-Tex to tell them apart from the models they replace. new for 2018 is a small rejigging of the front bumper/spoiler area, a few strips of brightwork here and there, plus some rather fancy new oled lamps which house 66 red rectangular slivers floating in the rear clusters. very natty.

In line with the saloon upgrade, most of the attention has been focused under the skin. The UK is denied the six-cylinders 450 option available elsewhere (and all-wheel drive, which is incompatible with having the steering wheel on the right), leaving a straightforward choice of two v8 engines and a wonderfully OTT 6.0-litre v12 if money’s no object (or, indeed, the object).