6.5/10: Mercedes W140 S-Class. Crossing the engineering Rubicon.
Engineered by a team told, “Make it the best.” They listened, and what they built was less a car than a thesis on diminishing returns. The development budget could have funded a moon landing. Mercedes’ traditional bank vault door slam was deemed gauche, so a soft-close system was introduced. And patented. The W140 launched into a global recession and left a trail of abandoned development projects across Germany. This is the car that broke Mercedes’ will to innovate. A straight line runs from the excess of this project through Chrysler, Stellantis, and the tragic sighting of Jürgen Schrempp in Texas. W140: come for the double-glazed glass, stay for the existential hangover.
Numbers? Reports of nearly three billion DM (about $1.8 billion at the time, adjusted for inflation: around $4 billion today) spent, a quarter-ton of sound-deadening, and triple-sealed doors. Dual-pane glass and a soft-close trunk set new standards, as did the chrome parking rods rising from the fenders like periscopes on a doomed submarine. When two engineers, both 6’3”, whacked their heads on the prototype, the roof was raised several centimeters. That change wrecked Bruno Sacco’s perfect proportions and upset the handling, forcing the team to make the car even larger by widening it. Stung by BMW’s V12, Mercedes stuffed in the 6.0-liter M120, then discovered that a fully loaded W140 could exceed its own GVWR, leading to a quiet rash of “reassignments” in the engineering department. The W140 remains the last Über-Benz: the endpoint of engineering excess, and the start of a hangover that still hasn’t quite worn off.