Category: Large Executive 
Price Range: £57,490 to £148,290
Remarkable refinement, especially lack of road noise. Agile for its size, rapid, fun to drive, laden with understandable and useful technology.
Looks brash and may date quickly.
With beauty on its side it would be a five-star car.
We'll begin with Comand (COckpit MANagement and Data), because it's central to making the S-class work properly. As well as the central turn/push/prod wheel, comfortably operated by a hand resting on the padded cover for the built-in telephone, Comand is also at least partly controllable by two five-way rocking switches on the steering wheel plus direct-access buttons for the functions you're most likely to need often. One of these buttons is like a blank Scrabble tile in that you can programme it to do whatever you want. Where the system scores over iDrive is that the screen (whose graphics are impeccable) has menu strips at the top and bottom which you can reach by repeated pushing of the Comand button in the right direction. So the screen is fully and intuitively navigable. It also looks good, a continuation towards the centre of the giant one-piece instrument panel. Ahead of you is a speedometer which looks normal but isn't - it's a facsimile created on a high-resolution screen, whose 'needle' dims in the centre when information - sat-nav directions for example - is being displayed.
To make the Mercedes go, you press a shiny start button (your Keyless Go key is still in your pocket), move the 'Direct Select' column-mounted selector down for drive, and move off. You could release the electric parking brake but there's no need because it does this itself. The transmission selector is ultra-simple: down for drive, up for reverse, push in for park, with no need to pull it towards you first as you confusingly have to do in the rival BMW 7-series. The transmission is a seven-speed automatic with quick but very smooth shifts, but you can play it manually if you like by using the buttons on the back of the steering wheel's spokes. We're delighted to report that Mercedes has abandoned the confusing pair of horizontal rocker switches here; instead there are simple buttons, left for down and right for up as is normal with these things.
On the move, you're struck by how quiet everything is. You're almost is a hermetically-sealed capsule, the serenity disturbed only if you goad the engine. Yet the S-class steers quickly and tidily, it grips hard and flicks from direction to direction as if it weighs half of its true mass (1910kg in the case of the long-wheelbase S500 we drove). The steering's weighting is convincing enough to make you feel in touch with what's happening under the tyres, and the damping - ours was a regular Airmatic DC car - is impeccable.
The Comfort settting gives a pillowy ride without sogginess in corners, which is an impressive achievement, while Sport firms things up a bit without ever letting the S-class jar over bumps. Sport lets the engine rev higher between gearchanges, too, and gives a keener kickdown. Manual mode sets the suspension to Sport, but even in one of the automatic modes you can still intervene manually with the shift buttons. To return to auto, you hold the upshift button until D reappears in the instrument cluster. The air suspension automatically lowers at speed, by up to 20mm in Sport mode.
All very impressive. Just one problem. The S-class is so effortless and capable that there's a real danger, when you're forced to crawl at the timid pace of too much of today's traffic, of falling asleep. Better turn the stereo up, then.
The new 5461cc V8 in the S500 has four variably-timed camshafts, and its valve-phasing is slightly different between the cylinder banks to improve exhaust extraction and muffle the V8 beat. Power is 388bhp, torque is a hefty 391lb ft available all the way from 2800 to 4800rpm. So you just put your foot down and go, letting the engine climb its way rapidly through the seven gears and six smooth upshifts. From a standstill to 62mph is claimed to take 5.4 seconds whether your S500 has a regular or long wheelbase. Few cars accelerate as quickly with so little drama, although the engine makes a good, meaty V8 sound in the process: never loud, just tuneful. Then you ease off to a cruise, and all is near-silent again. Top speed is limited to 155mph, by the way; we didn't get beyond about 140mph on our German test drive, but the Mercedes felt predictably rock-steady.
