IV. Tough Crowd
The competitors expose the limits of treating expenditure as an engineering result. A buyer might value BMW’s driving response, Jaguar’s low proportions, Lexus’ refinement, or the formal atmosphere of a Bentley more than the particular benefits Mercedes had pursued. A more elaborate answer is not automatically the better answer to a different question.
The E32 had already made that point; the E38 sharpened it. BMW’s larger sedan could combine a less imposing body with the attributes expected of a flagship. The tempting shorthand puts the BMW’s owner behind the wheel and the Mercedes’ owner in the back, but neither manufacturer arranged its customers so tidily. Both cars had to satisfy the person driving. Their differences concern emphasis rather than assigned social roles.
In Car and Driver’s August 1995 comparison, the S500 finished second to the BMW 750iL, ahead of the Jaguar XJ12. Its refinement did not produce an automatic overall victory. That contemporary result is useful precisely because later admiration cannot revise it: the W140 competed against serious alternatives, not a supporting cast assembled for its coronation.
The LS400’s challenge was especially awkward because refinement was supposed to be Mercedes’ home territory. Its smooth V8 and carefully resolved cabin asked how much of the luxury experience required the S-Class’s price and elaborate specification. More cylinders and heavier hardware were answers only where their effects mattered to the customer. The W140 could make a compelling case for them, but Lexus had made it necessary to articulate the case.
Jaguar made the physical tradeoff visible. A low roof and a long, flowing body can be more graceful than the W140’s upright enclosure, but grace and cabin volume compete for the same inches. Preferring the Jaguar’s proportions does not require denying the Mercedes’ accommodation. Preferring the Mercedes does not make the Jaguar insufficiently engineered.
Audi’s D2 A8 pursued luxury through an aluminum body. Weight reduction could itself be a luxury technology, reducing the burden that acceleration, suspension, and brakes had to manage. That does not make the W140’s mass meaningless. It does prevent mass from functioning as a universal measure of quality.
The S600 offered a different calculation again. Its additional cylinders did not buy a different basic silhouette. They bought the engine’s character, performance, and equipment within a familiar body. To an owner who valued that combination, the extra expense could be entirely rational. To someone already satisfied by a V8, it might purchase little that improved the journey. This is where excess becomes a preference rather than a measurable obligation.
Regular W140 sedan production ended in 1998, while special versions continued beyond it. The C140 coupe also ended in September 1998, with Mercedes’ archive recording 26,022 examples. The model was neither a brief experiment nor an uncontested market victory. It sustained a substantial range through a full production cycle while the competitive definition of a flagship continued to change.
The W140 remained recognizable even as the flagship market changed around it.
The W140 remains unusually convincing as a car designed around the integrity of the passenger compartment. That is a narrower claim than being the last Mercedes to pursue excellence in every dimension. The surviving cars still demonstrate the passenger space, control, and isolation priorities described by the original hardware. The glass, seats, doors, and body proportions all participate in the same argument.
