6.5/10: Mercedes W140 S-Class. Crossing the engineering Rubicon.
The W140 raises the score because its absurdity is not merely excess. It is excess arriving just late enough to make the bill look indecent. Engineered by a team told, “Make it the best,” the W140 was less a car than a thesis on diminishing returns. Mercedes’ traditional bank-vault door slam was apparently no longer enough, so a soft-close system arrived. And was patented. The car launched into a global recession carrying the mass, complexity, and institutional confidence of a company still convinced history owed it deference. W140: come for the double-glazed glass, stay for the existential hangover.
Numbers? Reports cluster around nearly three billion Deutsche Marks spent on development, with serious money buried in silence, mass, and mechanisms nobody had asked for but everyone immediately understood as Mercedes. Dual-pane glass, a soft-close trunk, triple-sealed doors, and chrome parking rods rising from the rear fenders like periscopes on a doomed submarine all became part of the legend. Among the stories attached to the car, two tall engineers struck their heads on a prototype, the roof was raised, Bruno Sacco’s proportions suffered, and the body grew wider to recover the stance. Whether every detail of the lore survives cross-examination is almost beside the point. The W140 remains the last Über-Benz because it made the old Mercedes creed visible at full cost: engineer first, invoice later, apologize never.