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The 2001 Mercedes-Benz S500 had the job of carrying on the legacy of being the best sedan in the world for the past 40 or so years. It failed miserably. Not only was the design a soft, mushy shape, but the materials inside were less than stellar. Thanks to unproven things like Airmatic suspension (as opposed to hydraulic), reliability wasn’t great and legacy buyers were jumping ship for cars and SUVs from rival brands. Don’t get me wrong, people still bought these but the S-Class was no longer than the standard of full-size luxury and technology and more-so just another blob sedan in a now very crowded market. So why am I featuring such a forgettable car today? Well the interior, of course.
Welcome back to Fail Friday! Today we have a 2007 Mercedes-Benz S550 that you can probably take one guess as to why I am taking a look at it. This first-year W221 has all your standard custom S-Class ”enhancements” with oversized wheels, custom interior, blacked out taillights and headlights, a color change but the biggest thing that sets this S550 apart: suicide doors. In today’s world, the full-size suicide door is only reserved for various Rolls-Royce models, but thanks to some actually really nice work, you can have them on your highly depreciated S-Class too. But is it worth it?
As a send off to the Mercedes-Benz W140 S-Class in 1999, Mercedes gave 600 S500s the treatment of the Grand Edition. All painted black, these cars had 18 inch AMG Monoblock wheels, the same hand stitched seats and steering wheel from the S600, a special birdseye maple woodgrain trim, privacy screens on the rear and back windows and illuminated door sills on top of all the standard things you got on the S500. Sticker price for these 600 cars was $89,500, a mere $2,000 more than the regular S500 — which is totally worth it in my eyes. Most of the time these older Mercedes-Benz ”special edition” cars haven’t had any impact on their value once they are past their warranty limit. But for this W140, it has been just a little different.
The final year of 1999 for the W140 Mercedes-Benz is one of those “hindsight is 20/20” things. At the time, no one probably had any…
In my opinion, the W140 coupe didn’t age particularity well. That isn’t a huge knock on it because not a lot of cars from the…
