In the unlikely event that you weren’t aware of the significance of recently emerged markets, where luxury car buyers tend to be passengers rather than drivers, consider the following: this is the first Mercedes S-Class to have been developed as a long-wheelbase saloon first, with the short-wheelbase variant spawning from it. Usually it’s the other way around.
Doing things this way, Mercedes says, has allowed it to endow the long-wheelbase variant with an unprecedented level of torsional rigidity, namely 40,500Nm/deg (its predecessor’s was 27,500Nm/deg).
The body itself is a mixed-metal monocoque with much high-strength steel around the passenger cell, but with such a high aluminium content (more than 50 percent) that Mercedes calls it an aluminium hybrid.
Thus it’s claimed that the body itself hasn’t, despite impressive increases in stiffness and safety for occupants during the past 20 years, increased in weight. The overall weight of the car, though, inevitably has; one we tested weighed 2215kg, spread almost evenly between front and rear axles.
Those axles, incidentally, are the same distance apart as previously. The standard-wheelbase S-Class has a 3035mm wheelbase (and is 5116mm long), but this variant has a 3165mm one and measures 5248mm in length.
