The Mercedes Benz S Class Review:
The S 350 Blue Efficiency
Nothing makes my job harder as a writer than trying to review a car that is priced high enough to make finding something wrong with it a challenge. When you spend upwards of a million rand on a set of wheels, you expect there to be little or nothing wrong with the car you choose, so receiving the S 350 Blue EFFICIENCY to review proved to be an excellent experience, as well as a challenge.
The S Class Mercedes Benz is a big car, so big in fact that squeezing it in and out of a shopping centre parking space took nearly as long as the shopping itself. It has a park-distance control system designed to warn you of nearby objects which does nothing more than terrify you and make you judge your own driving ability. It does give you fair enough warning as to how close or far you are from objects around you, but the car’s shrieking can often cause unnecessary panic. That massive size however is not wasted on this car as it is put to use in many effective ways. The boot is nothing short of gargantuan, able to fit four sets of golf clubs in comfortably, as well as the shopping. The massive boot however doesn’t encroach on the interior cabin space and you get first class seating space both as the driver and all the passengers. A four ball ready for a round of golf would be more than comfortable inside the S350.
Having all the space you would ever need in a car would be pointless if it wasn’t completely luxurious to sit and stay inside for extended periods of time. This is where Mercedes Benz beats all the competition – driver and passenger comfort. Generally Mercedes Benz may be slightly less edgy to drive than some of the more exciting brands out there, but from a luxury and comfort perspective, the S Class is leaps and bounds ahead of the competition. Inside this space ship on wheels is every gadget you may ever need and even some you don’t. The ones I found necessary were the ones that nearly every car on the market has nowadays; things like Bluetooth integration, satellite navigation and a decent sound system. Like many cars in the millionaire’s club, the gadgetry is not incredibly easy to operate at first, requiring more brains than common sense to operate, however once you familiarize yourself with the intricacies of the inner workings of this car, you could just about switch off your brain and let the car do all the work for you. The seats are cooled or warmed depending on your comfort needs; the dual-zone climate control system is so precise that you could create two different seasons with the switch of a button in the same car for two different passengers, without either one actually knowing what the other was feeling, or what was actually going on outside the Mercedes Benz’s cocoon.
You may be wondering why I said the S350 may not be as edgy as the competition, but in all honesty it is because the car is just too easy to drive. I described it to a friend as the perfect car to be driven in, rather than the perfect car to drive. This is good and bad. When I spend a bucket load of money on a machine to drive, I want to feel like I actually have to drive the thing. However, when I reach that point in my life where going fast and having fun is less important than the journey itself, then the S350 will be the car I would like to own. It is a very nice car to drive, you point it where you want it to go and it will effortlessly get you there. It can reach the impressive top speed of 250km/h without even testing the limits of what you feel is possible, and it can get you there in no time at all. The S Class is all you want in a true business sedan and despite the lack of edginess the car is both elegant and sexy to look at.
Another area where the S350 is making all the right noises is in the environmental and fuel efficiency stats. Because of the three litre diesel engine, you are able to get roughly seven litres per 100km driven, which for a car of that size is more than impressive. Weighing over two tons and being able to give you sturdy performance with well under 200g/km of CO2 emissions is responsible beyond what is expected in motoring today. The S350 also an ECO Start/stop function, tyres with optimised rolling resistance and improved aerodynamics to insure that everything is thought of before the car moves one inch off the line or out of your garage.
In the end it is up to the driver whether or not you think spending over a million rand on a car is worth it or not, but one thing you can be assured of with the S Class and every Mercedes Benz; they have thought of everything so that you don’t have to. The car is sophisticated beyond its competition, luxurious above all others and a class leader in nearly every measurable category. Exciting it may not be, but that doesn’t mean it is imperfect.