Tokyo is 9400km away from Stuttgart and 10,300km away from Detroit, so both of these big beauties traveled about the same distance to end up next to each other. From this peculiar vantage point then, are these two cars’ obvious differences somewhat offset by their curiously similar fundamentals?
I encountered this unlikely pair sitting pretty, right next to a specialist garage that I pass by every once in a while to see if they have anything interesting. They usually do, but didn’t that day, at least not inside. The action was all outdoors this time, fortunately. I found the cars as night fell, but returned early the next morning – luckily, they were both still there.
So how can this massive hunk of chalk compare to the big block of cheese next to it? First, the differences. Chevy is and always was the bottom rung of the Sloan ladder, GM’s bread-and-butter. Sure, they have their own high-priced specialty models, such as the Corvette, but in the world of family sedans, Chevrolet was always the volume leader, not the luxury brand.
Mercedes-Benz, especially the top-of-the-line S-Class saloon, is automotive royalty. Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz founded the two halves of the company – and pretty much invented the modern motor car. Legends of automotive history such as Wilhelm Maybach, Ferdinand Porsche, Rudolf Uhlenhaut, Béla Barényi and Paul Bracq each contributed to keeping the marque at the very top of the heap for almost all of the 20th Century.
So of course, these two didn’t retail for the same price. The contrast would have been starkest in the US, I bet. The LS Brougham retailed at $17,525 in 1990, though one could easily add $2000 with the “preferred equipment group” that looks to have been added to this car.
The 560 SEL was somewhere north of $75,000 in 1990 – not even close to the same league. I have no idea how much these two cost in Germany or in Japan when new, but there was just no world in which the S-Class and the Caprice were in the same price range.
Technically, these two big berthas also have different approaches. Mercedes were proponents of the IRS since before the war and gradually switched to unit body construction for all its models in the ‘50s and ‘60s. The Caprice, on the other hand, still made do with a live rear axle and a separate chassis – a positively antiquated design by this point in time, even if Ford stuck with it for another couple of decades after that.
Interior-wise, the Mercedes is all about durability and austere elegance. The wood is genuine, the corduroy-like seat fabric is ribbed for everyone’s pleasure and the layout is über-functional.
In the Caprice, it’s still the late ‘60s. Column shifter and bench seat – even if said bench is upholstered in the finest maroon imitation leather GM harvested from their imitation cows, and faux wood straight from the refinery. The deep pile carpet matches the rest, at least.
Ok, but just pretend you don’t know anything about cars for a minute. These two barges, on a surface level, have quite a few points in common. Both are large four-door saloons with stonking great fuel-injected V8s driving the rear wheels via a 4-speed automatic gearbox. The sizes are close, too — sort of. The Chevy is longer by a good 25cm and wider by 10cm, but the Benz, in this SEL guise, has a longer wheelbase by 10cm.
And even style-wise, the comparison is fair game. Both cars were designed and born in the ‘70s, lived through the entire ‘80s and passed on – the Caprice in early 1990, the Benz a year later. Neither was made to be a particularly cutting edge design, by any stretch of the imagination. Stand-up hood ornament? Check and check.
I’m not sure if I’ve ever experienced the Brougham LS, but I’ve definitely had a few rides in an ‘80s Caprice. I distinctly remember the last time, which was a taxi in Geneva (the only place in Europe where that would be conceivable) just over a decade ago. Just like floating on a cloud, it was.
And I did experience a W126 fairly recently – it was back in 2013, when we just moved to Rangoon. The car was an older 500 SE, not the long wheelbase 560 SEL we have here, and it was quite a bit worse for wear. But the 30-plus year old S-Class still navigated those terrible Burmese roads like a trooper.
Honestly, from a rear passenger’s perspective, the Benz and the Chevrolet offer a comparable experience. At most, the seats are softer in the Caprice and the legroom better in the Benz. The style and ambiance are quite different: the Brougham is all gingerbread, while the W126 is more on the pumpernickel side of the bakery scale. But the end goal of separating the car’s passengers from reality by way of an elaborate and (very) heavy cocoon is entirely similar.
It would be disingenuous to pretend that anyone could ever fail it see the difference between a GM full-sizer in the fullness of Broughamitude and the oldest carmaker’s finest Autobahnpanzer. There might be some remote tribes deep in the Amazon or Papua New-Guinea who would not recognize the Mercedes grille for what it is, but even folks who have no clue about anything car-related can usually figure out that marque.
In the end though, the Chevy is probably the easier of the two to live with. It’s less prestigious, less modern and much less quick than the S-Class, but it’s also much cheaper to keep on the road and just as comfortable. Plus, it’s not something you see everywhere and every day, especially in this fancy trim, whereas old Mercs are almost common. I’m pickin’ the Brougham on this lot.
Related posts:
Curbside Classic: 1990 Chevrolet Caprice Classic Brougham LS – Embarrassing FWD Cadillacs Since 1987, by Tom Klockau
CC For Sale: 1989 Chevrolet Caprice Classic—Almost the Last Box, by Daniel Stern
CC Capsule: 1987 Mercedes-Benz 560 SEL – The Flagship Of The Eighties, by Brendan Saur
Car Show Outtakes: 1979-1991 Mercedes-Benz W126 And C126 S-Class – Timeless Autobahn Gliders, by Johannes Dutch
COAL: 1986 Mercedes Benz 560SEL – The Banker’s Hot Rod, by Importamation
Hey, I take issue with what you said about the Chevy’s leather. Whatever else was the case for the brougham LS, the cowhide seats they used are far beyond any automotive leather in use today. The grain, softness, and smell of 80s GM leather was nice.
I still would have checked off the dark blue velour box though. Just for the nostalgia alone.
The Caprice Brougham upholstery has leather seating. I think Tatra assumed it’s all-vinyl, which is a reasonable assumption given the Caprice price point. But vinyl or synthetic materials are only used on the backs and sides. The rest is true leather ( optional) in the Brougham trim package. Velour was standard for the Brougham.
Only the base wagon had all vinyl seating.
As a car-brochure collecting kid I was surprised to see it shown as an option when the Brougham was added; real leather hadn’t been an option on any non-Corvette Chevy in a very long time. Possibly ever if you don’t count convertibles/open tourers.
This was the secret sauce for GM for so many years. Fifty years at least.
The MSRP of the 1990 Caprice LS was $17,525.
The MSRP of the 1990 Mercedes 560 SEL was $75,300.
Was the Chevy as nice as the Benz? Of course not. Was the Chevy nice enough to get compliments when taking your spouse out on Saturday night to the restaurant district?
Yes. Yes it was.
GM doesn’t make anything like this anymore. It’s luxury offerings are priced the same or close to the same as contemporary Mercedes Benzes. That’s why GM “can’t (profitably) sell sedans” anymore. GM “lost” this recipe.
There are many reasons why, but there is no doubt that it has been lost. The most recent “mildly-successful” attempt at resuscitating this recipe was the 2003 Cadillac CTS. Slowly but surely, the base price of the CTS just kept climbing and climbing up until it too became an also ran against the similarly priced German and Japanese competition.
I had several friends that purchased new CTS between 2003 and 2005. When they went to trade in, either they were offered CPO Cadillacs or new Buicks for the same price as they had been paying. One bit on a CPO-Cadillac. Nobody brought a Buick.
I’m all for GM’s bottom-line, but it seems to me that by increasing the price of the CTS so dramatically in less than seven years Cadillac did more harm than good to itself by alienating a blooming customer base.
GM does just fine selling its actual luxury products (or at least how the public perceives them), the difference is that they are all SUV’s or pickups these days and Mercedes is the one chasing that now.
The sedan price parity perception (and it is more of a perception, GM does not sell a direct competitor to the S-Class and the CTS was always a “tweener”) is far more a long term result of Mercedes cutting their prices as a result of Lexus than GM raising theirs.
They both look so stately, something Chevy really fumbled with its successor and Mercedes lost as they got curvy and started putting SL grilles on *everything*. Chevy may have been the bottom rung of the Sloan ladder but its more restrained styling makes it a much better companion to the W126 than a Fleetwood.
Funny enough despite their massive price disparity when they were new, now a days they’re both worth about the same.
They might even be worth about somewhere close when new in Japan ( or China, or all Asian countries around them )
The price of those cars could double or triple even quadruple due to the massive tax, and in the end MSRP would be only a small fraction of the transaction price there. They would be equally ultra expensive status symbols after all.
Add forthcoming Mercedes-AMG S 63 e and S 73 e (W 223) as first S-Class with that dreadful Panamerica “Jet Engine” grille. No bonnet ornament or traditional Mercedes-Benz grille option anymore.
I do love the Mercedes-Maybach (X 223) grille very much. Perhaps the cottage industry outta there would offer the aftermarket kit, allowing the owners to replace the Panamerica grille with traditional one…
The interior shots say it all: Orderly elegance v. a hot mess. The Caprice may be easier to maintain, but the 126 is eternally stately.
The Caprice dash was designed in 1980 with very minimal updates. It was a scaled down version of the 1977 dash board. It may have been the same but I don’t see how it would have fit. Anyway, by 1990, that dashboard design was 10-13 years old.
As was the W126’s, being released for 1979.
in ancient times, internet-wise, there was a site devoted to Imperials called “the Imperialist”
gone as so many because Facebook centralized (destroyed) so much that made the internet fun
was that you?
I had no affiliation with that site. I wish I’d known it existed, though.
What a pairing, and while I can appreciate the Caprice (perhaps as a great example of the Broughamitude it carries) as an excellent artifact, as others have stated the W126 just sits (and is) so stately and solid. There’s a reason why people paid 4-5x as much for it back in the day.
That ribbed velour in the MB was the business too, rarely seen in the US it’s magnificent, all night long 🙂
Speaking of that M-B velour, I wonder if that’s the pattern of velour that was available in the US. I don’t think I ever saw an S-Class of that era without leather, but I just checked my 1990 Mercedes brochures, and sure enough it’s listed as a no-cost option.
And I did experience a W126 fairly recently – it was back in 2013, when we just moved to Rangoon.
Did you see any cool old cars in Rangoon? I only remember seeing and riding in only Japanese/Thai/Korean/Chinese vehicles there, although that was ten years earlier. I had hoped to see old Brit cars there, as there are old American cars in Cuba, but saw none.
I love both of them….equally. I’ve had various hobby car Benzes over the last 20 years, but I have mostly had GM products as DDs since I started driving in 1996. The old “GM cars run poorer longer than most cars run at all” saying is a favorite of mine. RWD, FWD, pickups, parts almost always in stock at shops, stupid easy to work on, junkyards full of them for scavenging, dash CELs lit up like Christmas….such is the blue collar beater life. Don’t get me wrong I am no super fan, Deadly Sins and all, but the General hasn’t let me down too much, I just need to get to work daily.
The MB’s however are a treat. Also easy to work on, precision engineering and assembly, a presence all in all….simply put a FUN automobile to work on/own.
And I admit, I still get a little kick out of running around in an ’86 c10 beater work truck M-F, but picking up a date in a classic Benz later on. Good Times
Enjoyed this, and great metaphor in the title. Seeing these two cars within the context of their surroundings makes their juxtaposition even more fascinating. Nicely done.
I always thought it was strange how the mid/late ’80s Caprice trim level names stacked (once they finally got all the B-body Chevys united under the Caprice nameplate). Fanciest to plainest, they were;
Caprice Classic Brougham LS
Caprice Classic Brougham
Caprice Classic
Caprice
Why it was never just “Caprice Brougham” or “Caprice LS” I don’t know. Also, those are the sedan trim levels; the base Caprice’s availability as a wagon (at least to non-fleet customers) was intermittent in this period and they alternated between referring to the upgrade from it as “Caprice Classic Estate” or “Caprice Estate”, with “Estate” mainly denoting fake wood paneling.
Of the two, the Chevy would be my choice. It’s just not a car we see in Australia, and yet would be serviceable by any Aussie mechanic used to GM vehicles. Parts supply here would be another issue, where I think the Mercedes might win – at a price!
I have no idea how much these two cost in Germany or in Japan when new
560 SEL for German market in 1991 started at DM 141,531.00 ($94,987.24 US or $183,816.54 US, adjusted for inflation). This price included 14% sales tax.
The pre-tax price would be $81,689.03 US ($158,082.23 US, adjusted). For many years, Mercedes-Benz consistently lowered the price for US models with higher level of equipment while raised the price for German models with lower level of equipment for many years. Germans were “willing” to pay more as to “subsidy” the American customers. For example, the dual airbags were extra-cost options at DM 4,500 ($5,800 US, adjusted). The automatic air conditioning system was DM 900.60 option. And several more safety and creature comfort options that are standard in the US models but extra cost in German models.
I don’t have access to the annual auto motor und sport Auto Katalog so I cannot look up the price for GM products exported to Germany.
Shame, you couldn’t try to take photos of the Chevy’s taillamps. As you know, Daniel Stern and I have this insatiable curiosity about the lighting systems on export models from Domestic Three and how they were done as to meet the local regulations.
I was on a hunt for a ’77-’79 Caprice bent rear glass 2 dr. in 2010 as a collectible when a friend had me check out an absolutely pristine white ’90 Caprice Brougham LS with maroon leather. Not what I was really looking for but the car was so nice I bought it. The only flaw was a paint bubble caused by trapped moisture the size of a penny just below the C-pillar Brougham style partial padded vinyl roof on both left and right side of the car. To do a proper paint repair required removing the vinyl top. I was shocked to see how GM, by way of a sublet to ASC (American Sun Roof Corp.) created the distinct Brougham LS roofline. They took the rear glass out , created a fiberglass frame around the glass and then re-mounted it upright in the rear window opening! Clever, but disappointing. Well I ended up selling the Brougham LS to a gentleman from the UAE in 2015 who still communicates to me how much he loves the car and found the Caprice 2dr. I was really after. So all good.
It’s funny to consider, in the US anyways, these cars are worth about the same amount currently (ie a reasonably well kept W126 and a well preserved Box Chevy). I know which I’d rather have (hint: it’s got a Bowtie)