Here's Why the Mercedes S500 W140 Is the Best S-Class Ever

this is a 1994 mercedes-benz s-500 and it's an excellent example of the best mercedes s-class ever and one of the greatest luxury sedans ever built the s-class has always been the gold standard of luxury sedans and to me this version of the s-class has always been the gold standard of the gold standard and today i'm going to review this s500 i'm going to show you what i mean [Music] before i get started be sure to check out cars and bids which is my new online enthusiast car auction website with daily auctions of cool cars from the modern era if you're looking to sell something from the 1980s 90s and up check out cars and bids you'll reach a huge audience or if you're looking to buy something from the 80s and up cars and bids is the place we always have awesome cars listed live for auction right now check it out at carsandbids.com i've borrowed this s-500 from a viewer here in southern california and i'm going to start with a little history the s-class has always been mercedes full-size flagship luxury sedan dating back to the 1950s and given mercedes status as a luxury automaker the flagship model the s-class has always set the tone for the rest of the lineup and no car set the tone quite like this version of the s-class this car is known as the w140 model to mercedes-benz geeks and it came out here in north america for the 1992 model year you could get it as a coupe or as a sedan and here in the states it was offered with a cylinder a v8 or a v12 this one has the five liter v8 which made about 320 horsepower and about 350 pound-feet of torque but the most impressive thing about this car is its creation years ago mercedes-benz used to just let the engineers build the car they wanted just make the best and we'll worry about marketing and pricing later but then increased competition and the arrival of japanese luxury brands like lexus forced mercedes-benz to make cheaper cars and cut costs but this was the very last mercedes-benz built in the old philosophy just make the best car in the world no matter the costs and when this came out it was unquestionably that unfortunately all of the innovation and quality in this car made it far too expensive for most consumers and so for the next generation of s-class mercedes cut costs and made it cheaper and basically created a cut-rate nightmare although later s-class models have gotten things back on track but today i'm going to review this s-class and i'm going to show you around the standard of the world first i'm going to take you on a tour of it and show you all of the interesting quirks and features then i'm going to get it out on the road and drive it and then i'm going to give it a dug score all right i'm going to start the quirks and features of this s-class with a few of this car's innovations and some of this stuff is truly jaw-droppingly unbelievable which makes sense because this car was really engineered to be the standard of the world debuting new technologies that nobody had ever seen before and so i'm going to start with the interior rear view mirror seems like an odd place to start because in your car you just get in adjust the mirror and drive off but in this car it's power operated the control switch for the mirrors is in the center console looks pretty normal you have left mirror right mirror but if you turn it to the top position then you can adjust your interior rear view mirror using this little switch you move it around and the interior mirror moves around correspondingly to wherever you're moving the switch just like exterior power mirrors now you're probably thinking this seems like overkill just another expensive over designed complicated german part that's going to break but there was a benefit to it it was linked to your memory settings so you get in the car after your wife is driven your detailer has cleaned it your chauffeur has driven you don't have to mess around getting the mirror back exactly where you want it just press the memory button on the door the exterior mirrors go back to where you want them the seat goes back into your preferred position and the interior mirror returns to exactly how you want it and be honest how many times have you been annoyed after someone has driven your car that you can't quite get the mirror back into your perfect position well in this car you could and our next impressive s-class innovation is back here this car came out in the days before backup cameras or parking sensors made it easier to maneuver at low speeds but it's a pretty big car so mercedes wanted to make it easier somehow and they came up with this thing and actually it's these things you have one little chrome circle on either side of the trunk in the back now you might be thinking this is the radio antenna but no that's here pretty standard place for an antenna so what are these little chrome circles well when you shifted this s-class into reverse these little chrome circles had rods inside of them that would extend upwards and that was intended to give you a better idea about where the end of your car was when you were backing up so you knew exactly how far you could go because you could easily see the end of your car with those rods you shifted back into drive and the rods would go right back down into the car and you would never notice them until you needed their help backing up obviously this wasn't really all that helpful but it was something it was an idea to make it easier to drive and park this car and after that mercedes-benz developed parking sensors that went live in this car for the 1995 model year replacing these little rods but that was the first backup helping technology and next up another great innovation is with the trunk if you want to open the trunk when the car is unlocked you press this little silver button with a keyhole in the middle and when you do that you will notice a little handle extends from here press it and the handle comes out take another look at that you press the button and the handle pops out this handle was intended to make it easier to open the trunk without having to touch the paint so if you just washed your car you don't have to get fingerprints on it or if your car is dirty you don't have to get dirt on your hands you can use the handle instead and check this out when you close the trunk as soon as it's latched the handle automatically goes back into its home so that it doesn't get dirty when you want to use it this is a really brilliant innovation it's such a shame that modern cars don't have it because i would use it every time mercedes-benz thought of it almost 30 years ago and next up another innovative feature in this s-class it had soft closed doors that meant you didn't have to slam the door shut instead you could just gently bring it to nearly where it latches and then it would automatically do the rest and close the door and seal it up soft closed doors were not invented by this car but they were really uncommon before this car and frankly they're still pretty rare today this car was especially unusual it had soft closed doors front and rear and the trunk so everything didn't have to be slammed it would just close gently on its own and next up another impressive feature of this car comes with the windows on the windows in this position you can see it has this black stripe that goes down the top that's because this car had double paned glass and the black stripe hides where the two panes are glued together and you can see when you look at it from above the two individual panes in there now the benefit of this is that it makes the car tremendously quieter on the inside with two panes of glass but of course it's far more expensive and of course this was one of the very first cars to use double paned windows and next up more impressive interior innovations one relates to the seats and specifically the bottom part of the seats you go over to the seat control on the door and you can see the control for the bottom is split into two that's intentional because you can move the bottom part in two ways if you move the bottom half of the control the entire seat will move forward or backwards just like it does on your car and most other power seats pretty standard but if you move the upper part of the control then only the seat bottom will extend forward everything else stays in place this is a great feature for tall drivers with long legs who want more leg support they can just move the seat bottom forward to get it most modern cars still don't offer this feature but mercedes had it back then and next up another fantastic innovation next to the front seats between the seat and the center console you can see there's this little piece of like gray cloth actually that's a piece of foam wrapped in gray cloth and it's attached to the seat and it's intended to prevent you from dropping anything between the seat and losing it how often do you accidentally drop your phone in that space then you have to go rooting around in there to get it or you drop some food in there and you never find it again it's just stuck down there well this car has this little piece of foam right here to make sure that never happens it's a brilliant idea more cars should have it i never see it on modern cars but it's on this one and next up we move up to the front for another impressive feature this car had windshield wipers of course but it also had windshield wipers on the headlights just in case your headlights got mud or dirt on them you could wipe them and then you could see again this wasn't the very first car with wipers on the headlights but it was one of the first and it was considered a pretty cool feature back in the late 80s and early 90s and next up another impressive innovation back to the center console on that mirror switch if you turn the mirror switch to the bottom position so that it's facing down it allows you to fold in the mirror now a lot of modern cars have this feature you turn the mirror switch to the fold in position and they automatically fold in for you but in this car you actually have to hold the mirror switch down when it's in this position and then the mirrors will fold in corresponding with how long you hold this switch so if you stop pressing the switch the mirrors will stop folding you continue pressing again and they will start folding again so you can choose precisely the point where you want your mirrors to stop folding now the reason this feature operates in kind of a weird way is because this was one of the very first cars with power folding mirrors in fact i think it was the first so they didn't really know how consumers were going to use it but it was considered huge at the time a button that let you fold in your mirrors so that you could make your car a little narrower if you wanted to drive down a narrow street what a concept and next up another impressive feature to the left of the steering wheel there's a switch with a steering wheel on it you can use that to move the steering wheel up or down automatically which is pretty nice but there were a lot of high-end luxury cars that had that at this time the impressive thing here is that you can also pull or push the switch to move the steering wheel in or out so it wasn't just power tilt but also power telescoping that was a pretty impressive feature from this era and next up back to the center console another interesting control in here you can see there's a button with like seats and then arrows pointing to headrests that button allowed you to drop the headrests in the rear seats in case you were driving around you didn't have any rear passengers and you wanted better visibility now this feature is pretty common in mercedes-benz models but the impressive thing in this car is that if you push the button the other way the headrests will automatically come back up so you don't have to actually get out walk over there and put the headrests back in place now a lot of people are going to say this is over complicated and over engineered and overkill and the reason i'm not demonstrating this for you is because this doesn't work it's the only feature in this car that isn't working the power moving headrests so maybe those people are right and next up another wonderfully impressive feature in this car open up the center console and you have a phone in there well actually you have a handset for a phone with the mercedes-benz logo on it and a cord and that's where the car phone was kept in this vehicle but if you look around this phone you can see there's no keypad or screen or anything so how do you use it well i direct your attention back to the center control stack above the climate vents to the right you have a little button with an arrow pointing up you push that button and it opens up a hidden compartment and that's where all of your phone controls are you can see here's your keypad to dial a number you have your send and end buttons you have your volume control you also have a couple of memory buttons for your most frequently dialed numbers and you even have a dimmer for all of these controls in case they're just a little bit too bright for you and here's the cool thing it all works well the phone doesn't work the wireless network it was on was discontinued years ago but if you push this stuff you can hear it dial which sounds so cool you can drive along in this thing and really relive what it would have been like to be a titan of industry making important calls in your s-class almost 30 years ago and next up moving on from this car's impressive innovations and onto some of its peculiar quirks and features here's an interesting quirk for all of the development done on this car all the engineering all the money spent to make sure it was the best luxury sedan in the world it doesn't have cup holders no couple there's anywhere in here it just wasn't something that automakers thought about back then especially german brands the theory was if you were driving you were driving and not drinking stuff with that said there is one afterthought cup holder you access it by going into the glove box which is a bit of a quirk in itself in the center control stack there's this little button with an arrow pointing to the right it's pointing at the glove box you push that and it opens the glove box then you open this little cover on the inside of the glove box lid then you fold out this plastic piece and then you have the world's crappiest flimsiest couple there's something you would never actually want to put drinks in but it's there i guess and next up a few interesting climate control quirks one is how you control air flow to the vents usually there's a little dial underneath the vent that you can use to open or close it but here all of the dials are in the center you can see the one on the left has an arrow pointing to the left it controls the vent over on the left of the steering wheel the one on the right has an arrow pointing to the right and it controls the vent over on the passenger side instead of having these dials under each corresponding vent like every other car you control all the vents in the center and next up another climate control quirk is changing the temperature you do that with this little wheel that has colors on it blue white red for cold medium hot the interesting thing is that as you turn the wheel you can see the temperatures are actually changing on the screen right above the wheel these days basically every car has the climate control temperature printed on a screen but back in the early 90s it was completely unheard of i wouldn't be surprised if this was the very first car that ever did that and next up another climate control quirk above the main climate controls you have a little button with an arrow pointing to something and then there's another arrow so that's a little cryptic it turns out it's the charcoal filter or the air filter if you turn that on then the air that comes into the cabin has gone through a filter and so it's cleaner air so you might be thinking why would you ever turn it off who wouldn't want clean air i looked this up in the owner's manual and it specifically says you should turn it off if you want to heat or cool the interior as quickly as possible because if you have it on the air goes through the filter and you don't get as much volume of air but if you turn it off all the air comes through immediately so that's why you might want to turn off your air filter unusual button and next up another notable item in the center control stack you have a switch that has what looks like a sugar donut on it the sugar donut button this is pretty common mercedes-benz models from this era that's actually a tire with snow chains and if you had snow chains on you were supposed to press that button so the car knew you had snow chains and then i guess it would change the driving style a bit so that's what that's for and next up another quirk this one in the center console i already showed you the car phone inside the center console otherwise it just looks like an arm rest but there's a hidden trick you can actually move the entire center console back and kind of out of the way revealing a storage area so you have both a phone and a storage area in here pretty nifty little packaging situation and most people probably would never know that storage area is in here since this console doesn't really look like it moves back and speaking of hidden storage here's another item worth mentioning in the door panel you can see this little storage area in the bottom for small items but you go a little further up you have the armrest well it turns out that's also a lid you can open that up and you have another storage compartment in there where you can put whatever you want if you want to keep it out of sight you have that on both the driver and the passenger front doors and finally one more notable quirk up here over on the side of the front since you have a little dial that has some numbers on it that is your lumbar support you can adjust that dial depending on exactly how much lumbar you want from your front seats and next up we move on to the back seats of the w140s class where there are a few notable quirks for one thing the rear seat reclines you have a seat control in the door and you can move it forward or backward and recline the seat forward or back interestingly the bottom half of that seat control doesn't do anything it's just a blank switch maybe there are some of these where that does control part of the seat but not in this car very odd to see a blank switch on a seat control like that and next up another notable item in the rear door panel you can see there's a window control but below that you have controls for heated rear seats not too many cars had heated rear seats back when this was new but this one does and next up moving inside in the back i want to talk about the rear seat armrest this drops down in between the seats like most back seats for more comfort but you can also open it up where you will find another set of terrible cup holders they're really more just cutouts that kind of look like somewhere maybe you could put drinks they will not hold your drinks as you go around a corner but they're sort of headed down the idea of a cup holder and behind the seats you also have a feature worth mentioning on the rear shelf you have the first aid kit under this little first aid sign open it up and that is the original first aid kit to this car 26 years old i'm sure it's very useful now as for rear seat room back here these s-classes were offered in two body styles there was a short wheelbase and a long wheelbase most of the ones sold in north america were long wheelbase models with more rear seat room and this car has a lot of space back here the front passenger seat is really far back but i still have a lot of room to sit back and relax these are huge cars with huge interiors especially by 1990s standards and next we move outside the s-class and onto the trunk which i will open in the usual manner when you get in here you can see it's a fairly large trunk and there are a few interesting quirks worth noting one is you pull up the floor and over on the right you have this little hidden compartment that no one would really know about you can stick stuff in there if you want to keep it very private in that area you also see you lift up the housing for this little storage compartment and that's where the battery is which is unusual and it was particularly unusual for the early 90s so much so that there's actually a label in the engine bay that says battery in trunk to make sure that mechanics and s-class owners didn't get frustrated when they were hunting around in the engine bay looking for a battery that wasn't there another interesting item in this trunk if you go into the spare tire well in the middle you have a little case for the warning triangle and it has a warning triangle printed on it even a reflective warding triangle so you know precisely what's in there and next up we move under the hood where you can see this car's 5 liter v8 like i mentioned about 320 horsepower and about 350 pound-feet of torque now here in the states this car was also offered with a six cylinder about 230 horsepower or with a v12 which had about 400 horsepower you could choose between the three although the v8 was by far the most popular engine here in north america by the way fun fact about this era of the s-class mercedes was developing a v16 for it mercedes-benz really wanted to beat out bmw who surprised mercedes-benz by coming out with a v12 7 series before mercedes did a v12 s-class and mercedes wanted to one-up them and make a v16 it got pretty far in development but they cancelled it because this car came out in a slight economic recession in the early 90s they didn't think a v16 really made financial sense and next up i want to talk exterior styling when this car first came out in the early 90s it was actually criticized pretty heavily for its design specifically these kind of slab sides they almost went straight up it was unusual in a car at the time and people called it the box on wheels or the tissue box on wheels which is a weird insult but the germans were the germans frankly over time i think it's aged pretty well looking at this car now it looks old but not outdated it just looks of the time period and i like the fact that it's pretty understated it's not trying to brag but you see this car you can tell it's a little bigger than a regular mercedes you know this person got the nice one and next up i want to tell you about a few more innovations this car had that i can't really show you one is the orthopedic seats which were an incredibly expensive option i've never actually seen it but they were available they had little air bladders inside the seats that could be inflated and deflated to perfectly contour to the exact position you wanted pretty impressive it's also worth noting that this s-class was the very first mercedes-benz model with a navigation system that came out for the 1995 model year really early on and it was the first mercedes with a voice control system also came out as an option in 95. i bet it was terrible this was also one of the very first cars with side airbags volvo debuted him in 94. this had him just a couple of years later and this was one of the first cars with xenon headlights which were optional beginning in 96. and another impressive innovation this was one of the very first cars that ever had stability control it became available for the 1995 model year it is now mandated in the u.s on all new cars and this was one of the very first vehicles that ever had it and so those are the quirks and features of the w140 mercedes-benz s-class now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives all right driving the w140s class now there's a couple things i want to discuss before i get into driving impressions one is why i chose to review this car normally i review the very nicest examples of every car but if you've noticed this isn't really that few things aren't working the trunk has been painted and not all that well but i chose this one because it's an early model i get emails from people offering me s-classes from this era to review but they're almost always later models which are more common but the early cars had more stuff when this car came out in 92 it was far too expensive so mercedes-benz pulled out a lot of the cool weird features in order to make it more cost effective for buyers so a lot of the stuff i showed you isn't on the later models so i really wanted to try to find an earlier version of this car and one notable one by the way that power interior mirror they took that out i think 95 and i really wanted to find a car where it works which is rare because a lot of people would get in the car move the mirror around and that would break it if you didn't know what you were doing and how to adjust it it was common to break these mirrors so finding one where the interior power mirror actually works was really important and that's this car the other thing i want to discuss with this car very popular vehicles among politicians dignitaries you know princess diana died in one of these a w-140s class the sultan of brunei had station wagon models made they didn't build the station wagon but they did for him they put the e-class wagon back end on this and they sent him like 20 station wagon s-classes so this car is kind of famous for that which leads me into driving experience because one issue i always had with the w140 is there is zero attempt at making it feel sporty in any capacity in fact it almost feels like they've intentionally made it feel unsporty it's almost like they looked at the seven series and said who wants a sporty big sedan we're gonna do better than that and give the people what we think they want so the driving feel is just the steering response is so slow never feels anything other than full-size luxury sedan lumbering along does not feel all that connected even acceleration this car this engine pretty potent 320 horsepower 25 years ago but it's really i'm flooring it right now it's just not all that quick it was tuned for a more relaxed more luxurious more comfortable driving experience i will say road noise is tremendously muted very quiet in this car feels very quiet very reserved very comfortable the ride quality is comfortable even all these years later this car is 26 years old still has a very soft supple ride not like modern s-class models of course but it feels it feels good i actually really like the design of this car uh the chief designer on this project was guy named bruno sacco who did all the mercedes models from this era i always liked the boxy look of these mercedes models and and i liked all of his work this project though to create this s-class was a serious one and mercedes supposedly spent over a billion dollars developing this car uh unreal obviously amount of money the normal car development is maybe a quarter of that but they really wanted to create the world standard and they were facing with a shifting world the lexus ls 400 came out in 89 90 infiniti was coming out and buyers started to realize you didn't have to pay over a hundred thousand dollars for a car like this and so mercedes had to either make it cheaper or give people more they had already engineered a lot of it so they couldn't make it cheaper so they gave people more double pane glass and all the other features i showed you they were novel they were innovative at the time on this card anti-lock brakes big deal dual air bags and then later side air bags big deal ultimately for mercedes-benz to sell this and do well selling it they had to deliver the greatest car in the world and they did they really really did and i think this was the last s-class for a long time that truly set the world standard and so that's the w140 mercedes-benz s-class as luxury sedans go i personally prefer the e38 bmw 7-series which was built from 1995 to 2001 but that's mainly because the bmw was sportier more fun to drive and better looking but this s-class was better built and more luxurious and any list that ranks the greatest luxury sedans of all time should have this near the very top and now it's time to give this s-class a doug score starting with the weekend categories and styling i always liked how this s-class looked the designer bruno sacco hated the fact that it was too tall and he said the roof should have been a few inches shorter but to me it isn't noticeable still it's not a standout beautiful car and it gets a five out of ten acceleration is slow and it gets a one out of ten handling is fine above average nothing special like it's a three out of ten fun factor is low intentionally so that's not the purpose of this car and it gets a two out of 10. cool factor is only okay there are enough of these around that they still sort of feel like used cars someday their coolness will grow but for now it's just a 4 out of 10 which gives the w140 a weekend score of 15 out of 50. next up are the daily categories and features this had a lot of innovations but by today's standards most of it feels common so it gets a 4 out of 10. comfort is excellent and it gets a 7 out of 10. quality is fantastic both in terms of materials and reliability and it gets an 8 out of 10. practicality is normal for a car like this and it gets a 5 out of 10. value is high these are basically free you can get them for 5 to 10 grand in decent shape and it's fairly reliable and of course it was the standard of the world for that money it gets a 7 out of 10 for a total daily score of 31 out of 50. add it up and the doug score is 46 out of 100 which places it here against other luxury sedans from the period it scores lower overall than many mainly because the s-class just isn't very weekend friendly bentley and roles models are more fun and exciting and the toyota century is cooler to see where the s-class does well is the daily categories where it beats out basically everything on this list it's just a comfortable high-quality surprisingly inexpensive cruiser and it remains a highly impressive car

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 1,405,561

Rating: 4.8852496 out of 5

Keywords: mercedes-benz s500, w140 s-class, w140, s500, s500 review, mercedes s500, w140 mercedes, mercedes w140, mercedes w140 review, mercedes s-class review, s-class, w140 s500 review, w140 mercedes review

Id: oobtlyWxBvM

Length: 30min 33sec (1833 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 18 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

The S Class that was built when you were a teenager is always the best ever and has timeless design.

[u/ikilledtupac]

Somebody painted that car with a broom lol

[u/antoninscalia420]

Owner: alright, I emailed Doug and he's coming to pick up the S class for his review tomorrow morning, that should give me enough time to get the rustoleum spread on the trunk. Gotta look legit for the internet!

[u/TheUselessKnight]

Looking at this car makes me feel uneasy. The S600 W140 was the car of choice of the criminal elite in the 90's here in Russia. Many people buy and restore them now because it's a legendary car that one dreaded to see on the road, it was a symbol of being an outlaw, a merciless, amoral killer. Such a sad correlation for such an otherwise luxurious, sturdy machine.

[u/flisak]

OMG who painted this car? Is this even legal?

[u/khj24]

I can’t even watch or listen, I’m just too distracted by the paint job

[u/Adaris187]

Doug: "...and I'm going to show you around the Standard of the World."

 

[Cadillac shifts around nervously]

[u/Marcus_Brody]

Let's talk about that Lagonda Taraf in the opening.

Will we be lucky enough to see that in a future video?

[u/fucktrutin]

Has a lot of good qualities. Beauty isn't one of them. W126 is better.