2016 Mercedes-Benz S 500 Cabriolet review

That means you don’t really want to go quickly. The S 500 feels best in Comfort mode, driven smoothly and without fluster, with the roof down and the smug factor turned right up.

Ride comfort – even on the optional 20in alloys fitted to our car, and on UK roads – is very impressive. The vast majority of the time it cushions you from the road’s scarring, while big bumps and undulations are soaked up with soothing long-wave suppleness, and not too much dip and dive from the body. Only occasionally, and normally with cornering forces thrown in, do you get a big enough disturbance to unsettle the big Merc. This is also when you’ll notice a slight shake and shudder through the body, a tell-tale, albeit barely noticeable, hint that losing the roof has taken its toll.

Still, there is a strapping V8 and some world-class chassis tech at play, here, so it’s no surprise that the Merc can be hustled with remarkable finesse for a 2.1-tonne car. In Sport mode the steering is a bit heavy and loses some of the organic-feeling progression that you enjoy in Comfort, but the extra bite does give welcome added reassurance as you point the S-Class’ nose through surprisingly pointed direction changes.

Overall, it has a satisfying willingness to respond directly and with precision if the mood takes you. Even the body roll and pitch is well-controlled for such a huge car, so it’s actually the fairly slow steering and soft pedal responses - designed to aid smooth rather than fast driving – that keep you conscious of the bulk you're wielding around.

That V8 is a delight, with a power delivery that builds progressively but with real zealousness, making it easy to hit just the right blend of rapid but un-taxed progress that really suits the car. Sometimes the gearbox delivers a little more shunt on kickdown than you want in such a soothing car, but it’s a small criticism for the nine-speed auto, which otherwise blurs shifts very well.

Inside it’s as indulgent as you’d expect of something that has the option of Swarovski crystal embellishments in the LED headlights. If you could fit a chandelier in there, it wouldn’t look out of place.

The seats are substantial and supportive, electrically adjustable in every direction you could want, heated and cooled, and with a memory function all as standard. We might want them to drop a touch lower, but otherwise the driving position is faultless and allows you to survey the dash in all its glory. This is the tweed of interior car design; totally defined by heritage, yet somehow also at the peak of minimal designer trendiness.

Certainly, you’re not short of modern convenience. The 12.3in screen and nav system, complete with digital dials, online functionality, live traffic updates, voice control, hard drive, automatic emergency call system, DAB, and all the connectivity you could want is hard to fault for sheer capability. It is frustratingly difficult to action some simple commands, and the touchpad is mostly redundant to the more intuitive rotary controller, but it’s an easy system to enjoy once you’ve got to grips with it.

In the back, there’s room to seat two adults comfortably, with particularly impressive head room. You can even get a fair amount of luggage in the boot, but only if you’re willing to sacrifice the hood-down ability. Just two cabin bags use up most of the available space with the roof folded (which takes around 20sec and can be done at up to 30mph).

A standard electrically-controlled wind deflector can be raised even with four people in the car, at which point buffeting in the front is minimal. Those in the back will still find it uncomfortably blustery at higher speeds, though, despite the wind deflector that raises above the windscreen to try and further protect rear passengers.

Roof up, this is as quiet a cabriolet as we’ve experienced. There’s a distant rush of wind and tyre noise at motorway speeds, but otherwise you can have a whispered conversation with your passenger no problem.