Test drive—Mercedes S500L

The cliché “king of the road” is one easily thrown at every new large luxury car that comes along. But try as I might to avoid it, I couldn’t get it out of my mind as I found myself cruising down the M4 in the arms of the Mercedes S500L. Having spent an hour driving across London, ignoring the satellite navigation which seemed intent on sending me straight into the London’s worst congestion hotspots, it felt much better to be on a relatively open road.

Indeed, driving through the city had only served to highlight the stupidity of such titles—which self-respecting king of the road would be forced into an embarrassing U-turn simply because it was too big to fit through the width restrictions? Well, it might have fitted through, but I had only just set off and it seemed an unnecessary risk to take with such an expensive loan car.

In fact the whole test-drive experience hadn’t started well. The nice man from Mercedes had parked the S500L across one and a half spaces—and still it insisted on sticking it’s rear end into the next street. It was a problem all weekend. Clearly not intended as a car to pop to the shops in, it took up almost two spaces in the local Sainsbury’s and finding a place in our (relatively quiet) London street was tricky every time. But let’s face it, this is a car that demands a sizeable drive all to itself. And its sheer scale leads to the sort of driver confidence that can easily tip over into arrogance in the wrong hands. Whatever you do (and I can't think why you would) don’t don a peaked cap for driving and make sure someone sits in the passenger seat alongside you, because make no mistake, this is a chauffeur’s car. The day before mine was delivered I saw several driving along Pall Mall, only one of which was being driven by its owner.

But why you would let someone else drive it is another matter. This is possibly the ultimate expression of driving technology. But despite all this clever technology—and at one point I was pretty certain the car was driving itself—it is fun to drive. It’s also fun just to sit in. The interior is more first-class lounge than humble car and it's a veritable gadget-fest. From a DVD player (essential to stop the chauffeur getting bored) to massage seats, a cool infra-red, night-vision camera with a dashboard display, a cracking Harmon Kardon Logic7 surround sound stereo, to intelligent cruise control and assisted braking that leave you little in the way of driving other than a bit of steering, this car really does have it all.

And the downsides? Apart from being way too big in its long-wheel base version to nip around town in and carrying a price tag would give you little change from £100,000 (which includes a crazy £25,000 of optional extras), not much.

What is it? Mercedes S500L
How much? £73,000 (£98,000 for the model tested)
Where’s it headed? To the golf club or a board meeting
Who’s driving? The chauffeur