2007 Mercedes-Benz S550

Where else can you get the Aktion Gesunder Rücken's seal of approval?
BY JOHN PHILLIPS
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GREG JAREM
February 2006



Tally all the engine possibilities and it’s accurate to say that Mercedes-Benz currently offers—whoa!—43 models. Ask the average schmo on the street to name the most famous, and he might say, “McCambridge,” or he might say, “Gullwing,” but he’ll probably say, “S-class.” For more than 50 years, S-class Benzes have been the most succulent sausages in the Teutons’ tray of vehicular sauerkraut.

For 2007, the S-class lineup has been simplified. No more short- and long-wheelbase cars, just the 124.6-inch edition, 3.1 inches more majestic than its predecessor. The lineup now comprises the S550 tested here, whose $86,175 base price is actually $1650 shy of its S500 forebear’s, followed in April by a 510-horse V-12 S600, with a sticker close to $130,000. An all-wheel-drive S550 4MATIC should arrive in November, and the inevitable AMG variants will manifest when AMG and every F1 driver on the planet are damn well ready.



Apart from the S550’s swollen fender haunches—reminiscent of those hockey-puck shoulder pads that Larry King jams into his suits—what you notice first about this car is its seats. Really. They’re sumptuous without being saggy and offer 14-way “multicontour” adjustments that can even change the distance the cushion extends beneath your thighs, and there are optional multilevel fans blowing cold or hot winds up your keister, and there are side bolsters that suddenly stiffen in reaction to cornering forces, and there are center lumbar chambers that expand and contract to change your position twice per minute, and there’s even a vigorous Magic Fingers option that feels like small pine logs rolling slowly down the sluiceway that is your spine. We drove this S550 from Manhattan to Ann Arbor, stopping only to replenish 23.8 gallons of premium unleaded, and felt as if we should have continued on to Iowa. Similar praise can be heaped on the vast and comfy rear chairs, where you can tuck your loafers beneath the tall front seats, spread out, and fully open the Times’ Arts & Leisure section. These new seats are so good that they bear the seal of approval of the Aktion Gesunder Rücken, which is either a German outfit that rates products for spine-friendliness or a bunch of guys who look for life forms under rocks.

In the past, Mercedes expended a moderate load of warm air hyping its SOHC three-valve-per-cylinder V-8s but now has fast-forwarded to the world of twin-cam four-valvers, with superlative results. This new variable-valve-timing V-8 purrs out 382 horses at 6000 rpm but stockpiles all 391 pound-feet of its peak torque right there on the bottom shelf, ever accessible from 2800 to 4800 rpm. The engine is as smooth as a poetry major on Ambien—more than once we tried to start the bugger while it was running. Unlike your average poet, however, it is practically mute. In fact, the S550 is quieter at idle, at full throttle, and at a 70-mph cruise than a Bentley Continental GT and is exactly as quiet at 70 mph as that perennial exemplar of soporific tranquillity, the Lexus LS430.

Which somehow makes the S550’s accelerative thrust—right on the city limits of hot roddom—all the more thrilling. Apply a little brake torque and you can paint five unholy feet of Continental rubber on the deck. The S550 legs it to 60 mph in 5.3 seconds—0.8 second quicker than the last S500 we sampled and 0.1 second quicker than the new BMW 750i, the car die Benzkinder most fear. To 100 mph, the S550 lags behind the big BMW by only a tenth, but its quarter-mile ET is two-tenths quicker. Top speed for S550s fitted with M+S-rated tires is choked to 132 mph, 23 mph shy of the fun available with the optional Z-rated rubber.

Despite its aluminum hood, trunk, doors, and front fenders, the S550 is a 4688-pound luxury meteorite with handling to match. Which is to say, not much. On slippery surfaces, you can rotate the tail a Chihuahua wag or two until the unflappable stability control imposes discipline, but this Benz is otherwise hard-wired to plow like an Oshkosh H-series snow blower. The upside is a ride so plush that even the deepest potholes induce just a distant thump-wump, as if someone had dropped a tennis ball on the bedroom carpet. It’s wonderful: one soft compression, one soft rebound. And the wallowing body motions we’d normally associate with a ride so compliant are almost wholly extinguished by the optional active body control. At $3900, the ABC is dear but should be regarded as mandatory.
You’d think that any automatic with seven forward gears would be busier than the Starbucks at Sea-Tac airport. Instead, you’re almost never aware of its ministrations—one Benz dealer in New Jersey actually thought it was a CVT—and the transmission can skip as many as three gears as it downshifts. On the back of the steering spokes are rubber rockers that allow manumatic control. The pads are small and imperfectly placed, but it doesn’t matter because you’ll never use them. On its own, the automatic proved more prescient about gear selection than we ever were.

Brake feel is terrific, and the onset of ABS is subtle yet predictable. From 70 mph, the S550 stops in 11 fewer feet than an Audi A8L W-12 Quattro. The speed-sensitive steering is a tad heavy at all velocities. Tracking is fine, and effort builds in proportion to the load on the front tires, but the few road textures that are transmitted feel synthetically processed and puréed.

Speaking of beefs, we judged the side-view mirrors to be about two-thirds the size they should be, and the four window-lift switches are so flush and crammed together that you can’t operate them without looking. At tollbooths, we regularly opened the left-rear window. The overhead-light switches suffer the same fate, and Benz’s new column-mounted shifter demands that you push up for reverse, a “half push” down for neutral, and a “full push” down for drive. Yet to put the transmission into park, you must depress a button at the tip of the shifter, and none of these movements is accompanied by the slightest tactile or audible clue, so you dare not set off without first scanning the IP to determine what gear digit is aglow. Even the standard six-CD changer is tucked into a deep, dark cave whose entrance is guarded by a hinged door that, when opened, bangs into your drink in the cup holder. Why?

Thankfully, all of the S550’s HVAC functions can be controlled by 11 small chrome toggles arrayed in one horizontal lip across the pregnant bulge in the center of the dash. We say “thankfully” because other vital functions—turning on the radio, for example—must be summoned via the COMAND system



And that’s just the tip of the electronic iceberg. There’s an optional infrared system (part of a $6500 package) that delivers a crisp black-and-white image of what’s in front of you at night. It’s good at highlighting drunken pedestrians on the berm, but you can’t use the screen alone to drive because there’s so little depth perception. So it serves as an amusing novelty for a month and then is of the same value as the dusty NordicTrack stored in your basement. There’s also an optional color camera to reveal what’s lurking behind your S550. It frames the view with blue, yellow, and red hash marks that predict where the car will go with any given steering input. Stare at it long enough and your inner ear will explode. And then there’s the $2800 Distronic Plus double-dog super-duty triple-throw-down cruise control that accelerates and brakes as it paces the car in front. Should that driver come to a complete halt and start up again, so will your S550, all of this without your ever moving a single leg muscle, although all the muscles in your face will twitch the first time you try it. It works fairly well except in moderately heavy traffic, where it lags just far enough behind the lead car that the resulting hole becomes too tempting, and adjacent motorists dive in like penguins off a berg.

The average S-class buyer lays out $10,000 in options, which strikes us as an as-yet-unnamed mental condition, because the list of standard gear would nearly fill the greater-Chicago Yellow Pages: 14 speakers, a global positioning system, eight airbags, “waterfall” lights leaking out from seams in the dash, power rear sunblind, sunroof, walnut inserts, xenon headlamps that may be the world’s best—and that ain’t the half of it. Pop for the $3900 ABC and call it a day.

Like its S-class progenitors, this ninth-gen cruiser induces more contemplation and serenity than hot-blooded enthusiasm. It coddles, protects, and isolates. It eats interstate miles like a bullfrog eats flies. And its ability to gather felonious speeds remains magical. But the S550 is otherwise not hugely involving—you might be just as pleased to let a chauffeur seize the wheel, an arrangement not uncommon on the Continent.

This is the best S-class ever, still a stately and aristocratic institution, the automotive equivalent of the Budweiser Clydesdales in the Rose Bowl parade. But unless you absolutely need the fat-CEO back seats or the seductive pretense of that chrome “S” on the rump, well, uh, a 469-horse $84,575 E55 AMG comes rapidly to mind.



-Matt-

 

I love everything about it, except for the rear... Looks weird...

 

look similar to a maybach to me

 

That's because it is a Maybach (which is a Mercedes brand) in Mercedes skin...

 

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