(first posted 9/6/2018) Newton’s 3rd law of physics relays that “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” In the case of cars, that premise could be seen in the transition between Mercedes-Benz’s oversized, overpriced W140 S-Class and its W220 successor, which was repositioned as the “smaller, friendlier” S-Class. But in abandoning the “engineering uber alles” approach that had underpinned Mercedes’ success for decades, did Benz throw the baby out with the bath water?
The shift in direction was pretty dramatic. No longer were Mercedes flagship sedans showcased as aloof engineering triumphs designed for discerning customers. Rather, the first S-Class for the new millennium ushered in a wholly new trendy approach to make the most expensive Mercedes-Benz cars “more approachable.” Now rather than being just for titans, the S-Class was a car to tote tots: the perfect choice for a (rich) family car.
At Automobile Magazine, European Editor Georg Kacher provided an early glimpse at the new S500. And on a superficial level at least, the impressions were good. The new car was trimmer, sleeker and more dynamic. It was also much more complex and technically advanced, giving it more capabilities than ever, but often at the expense of intuitiveness and timeless simplicity, which had historically been Mercedes-Benz hallmarks. More troubling was the fact that the W220 showed notable signs of cost cutting, whether that was in valves-per-cylinder (from 4 to 3) or inferior quality plastics on some interior components.
“Diminished in size and price” was Road & Track’s lead-in to the new W220, and that was entirely accurate. The S500 looked smaller and drove like it looked. And the S500 base price dropped to $77,850 ($116,224 adjusted), 11% less than the outgoing W140.
R&T clarified that a key rationale for the 3-valves-per-cylinder was that the configuration allowed the 5.0L V8 to be classified as an Ultra Low Emissions Vehicle (ULEV). But it was undoubtedly cheaper as well….
The impact of the premium Japanese brands on Mercedes was apparent with the W220: to counter the likes of Lexus, the Benz was cushy, packed with gimmicky high tech features and more affordable, all in the name of “high value” for the luxury segment. While previous S-Class generations had been obviously engineered to last for the long-term, this one was seemingly designed to last for the length of the lease-term.
Car and Driver decided to channel their inner “Motor Trend” (gosh, it’s like the best car ever) in their fawning review of the W220. Driving from Ann Arbor to Chicago for lunch certainly would have highlighted the great cruising attributes of the big Benz.
The destination was a lunch at The Rosebud in Little Italy (still there and still good). Sadly, the snide comments regarding Chicago’s rough neighborhoods still apply as well—if anything they are worse than before. A tragic and disgraceful “record” that the Windy City currently holds is a homicide rate higher than New York City and Los Angeles combined.
Programming the complex COMAND system to make the journey was no easy feat—a separate owner’s manual was dedicated to deciphering the layers and layers of functions and their operation. Plenty of the other sophisticated and complicated features controlled other functions, some with driver input, some without. But it was clear that the “high tech gadget” car had arrived.
And Car and Driver loved, loved, loved the 4th Generation S-Class. The flash, glamour and gizmos combined with just enough residual Mercedes arrogance made the S500 a compelling choice for a new breed of Benz buyer. Unlike the over-the-top W140, the W220 certainly made a good first impression, and seemed very “au courant.”
But was it a great Mercedes-Benz? For a brand that had long prided itself on delivering robust timelessness through deep-rooted engineering excellence, the W220 offered lots of flash but turned out to be lacking in substance for the long haul. Consumer Reports gave poor rankings for reliability, and the complicated systems did not age well. Nor did the bodies: this generation of Mercedes-Benz cars (in all series) seem to be shockingly bad rusters (at least as far as modern cars are concerned). Perhaps eliminating effective rust proofing was one of the cost savings measures?
Like a developer’s spec house in a brand new luxury community, the W220 offered plenty of trendy curb appeal, but scrimped on timeless high quality. So, while the W220 was certainly an antidote to the “too much” W140, it proved the truth in the maxim: “be careful what you wish for.”
If working properly, the W140 is my preferred S class with the W108/W109 coming in a close second. Then W126, W116 and then more recent ones in a pile with the W220 at the bottom.
I don’t get the hate for the W140. I realize it was launched at an inconvenient time but as a car in and of itself, it seems a wonderful car. Criticisms include that it looks like a W124 only bloated, I’d say that’s a positive and phrase it, “like a W124, only more of all the W124s goodness.”
I guess it depends on your perspective, for me Mercedes aesthetic pinnacle with this basic design language was the W126. The W124 was nice of course, but itself was really just an enlargement of the more aero styling on the W201, so the W140 then was an enlargement of an enlargement, and just like when you do that with a jpeg, things get real blurry.
It’s miles better looking than this W220 though.
Yeah, it’s all a matter of perspective. I was 12 years old when the W140 came out. That probably plays a role as well
I loved the styling of the W220, and the few that I drove were impressive. The bad- they were notorious for top end engine issues (S500) and Air Suspension failures. I’m reminded of that every day when I pass a W220 resting on it’s collapsed suspension. Amazing how quickly a luxury car can turn into something not even economical to repair.
Funny, or maybe not…I saw one being loaded with redwood fencing, overhanging the open trunk, at Lowe’s the other day. As it was driven away, the decklid tied down with a bungee cord, it looked like it was bottoming on its suspension stops. Air suspension issue? If a pickup would be too crude, a Taurus wagon would have done a far better job of it but where is the “prestige” in that?
Must take the Benz to the hardware store…
It’s a shame these cars were not as good as they looked. The CL coupes were particularly nice – so much better than the porky and bland W140 generation.
Agree-still look good by comparison with the new ones. Perhaps not as much “presence”, at least on these shores, but a great looking car.
Still, when we get done beating on the S Klasse I hope someone more knowledgeable than I tackles the successive 7 series that competed with them.
I’ve got an article on the 2001 7-Series on the way…
Awesome! Looking forward to it!
I would gladly trade my ’04 CL500 for a W140 Coupe with the V12.
Still a pretty machine, designed by the guy who also did the equally nice original SLK. And, for today’s trivia prize, who also designed the Mad Max V8 Interceptors for the film. (Australian, Peter Arcadapane).
When I look at these all I can see is a company being propped up by the huge profits being generated by the Chrysler operation. Some claim that Chrysler was what took DaimlerChrysler down but I think the Daimler half pulled no less than its share of that load.
I was never a *huge* fan of Chrysler—never mind that I now drive a 2015 Grand Cherokee Overland—but it was definitely the Daimler side that was the issue. Chrysler was on an upswing and was starting to produce competitive, class-leading products, but Daimler just wanted a way into the mainstream US market that didn’t involve fleshing out whole new brands. So they got ahold of Chrysler, drove out its management and engineering talent, and then cost-cut the everloving crap out of the products.
You are absolutely correct.
That said, the W220 came out in 1999 as a 2000, not long after the Merger of Equals happened to form DaimlerChrysler. It would have been too late in its development schedule to have been particularly affected by the DaimlerChrysler merger. But the W220 does show what Daimler’s mission was at the time…which was to chase profit and new-money sensibilities at the expense of its traditional values.
Meanwhile, here’s an interesting bit of Mopar lore:
I read somewhere that Chrysler was developing the third-generation LH platform in the mid-late 90s. If you remember, the LH cars were the full-size models with the longitude-FWD arrangement (very similar to what Audi now calls its MLB architecture). Allegedly, the Gen.3 LH program was supposed to continue to support FWD, but would also accommodate RWD and AWD by way of a driveshaft that would come out of the rear of the transmission housing for cars so equipped.
Then, when the Merger of Equals happened, Gen 3. LH was scrapped and what Daimler set up in its stead was a traditional longitude-RWD platform that could use existing Mercedes-Benz bits, like the floor pan, suspension and 5-speed automatic transmissions, saving a lot of money. And that spawned the current LX platform (300, Challenger, Charger).
Like I said, this is all hearsay, but totally plausible.
I hate to break it to you guys, but it’s not nearly that simple or one sided. Chrysler sales and profits had just started to dip actually, and it was quite clear to Eaton that Chrysler was about to head into one of its difficult periods. Warranty costs for all the new cab-forward cars were very high, and the cloud cars never really caught on. The Neon’s initial burst of energy was quickly fading, and it had to be sold increasingly on lower price.
Chrylser enjoyed such huge profits for a few years for one reason: they lowered their development costs. Part of that was the very effective “platform team” approach pioneered by Castaing. But a big part of it was cost cutting. Component quality went downhill.
Let’s face it: all three lines of the cab-forward cars quickly turned out to be brittle, and they gained a bad rep pretty early on. Did Daimler design the disastrous 2.7 L V6?
These new cars gave Chrysler a big pop in sales and profits, but it was clearly not sustainable, and the sales trends and future projections showed that.
Eaton took the easy way out instead of accepting the responsibility of a product line that was petering out, and having to spend big bucks on revitalizing it. He dumped the future problems on Daimler, largely, and they didn’t really have a good idea of what they were getting into. I think they grossly underestimated the depth of Chrysler mostly still hidden issues that were all coming to fruition.
And yes, Daimler takes responsibility for much of what came later, and although they clearly made a mistake in this marriage, and didn’t either know how to fix Chrysler, or perhaps Chrysler’s problems were so bad they mostly beyond fixing.
Keep in mind that during this time GM and Ford’s passenger car business was crumbling too, fatally so. Chrysler’s passenger cars were not materially better than theirs, and certainly not anywhere nearly competitive with what the Japanese were now throwing at the Big Three. I firmly believe there was no real fix for Chrysler passenger car issues. Daimler just punted as best as they knew.
And Chrysler also benefited in many ways: the Mercedes 5 speed automatic is still being used today in a few FCA products like their police Chargers, because it’s so bullet proof. And the 300 benefited substantially from Mercedes components. Jeep benefited too. I could go on…
Chrysler loyalists will always find it easy to blame the whole fiasco on Daimler, but a closer look at the trends in their business as well as the rapidly changing market towards Japanese passenger cars makes it quite obvious why Eaton decided to just shove the problems unto a new partner, and cash in his substantial chips.
Chrysler was headed for an inevitable bankruptcy reckoning like GM (and almost Ford). Nobody could realistically have “saved” them from that.
I couldn’t disagree more with most of what you said. They could’ve solved their own problems more easily than being told what to do by a corporate parent that always saw it as Daimler first. It was irresponsible on Chrysler’s part to have such cash reserves, because it was their cash that funded the merger. Fear of competition from below kept Chrysler down when they really could’ve benefited from reaching upward. By the time Cerberus nearly finished what Daimler started, the amazing thing is that they’ve been carrying Fiat now for 5 years in spite of near ruin.
I maintain that Chrysler’s biggest problem was Robert Eaton. From all we know now about the inner workings of GM, that company had long since stopped developing management talent that could flourish outside GM’s insular and inertia-bound system. Robert Eaton, as a product of a GM system that had been in failure mode for some time, simply lacked the skillset to steer a smaller company through choppy competitive waters.
Some of the worst flaws of the cars in development under Eaton were due to a round of significant cost cuts which Eaton initiated. Better top management could have given the obvious quality shortcomings some attention while nurturing the creative and flexible structures that had resulted in some of the industry’s hottest products. But Eaton was not that guy. Lee Iacocca took a Chrysler that was a steaming pile and turned it into a success. The hard work had been done.
Jeep had Mercedes diesel engines for a while, best part of a crap car when they ran.
I just recall that for the first several years after the merger it was the Daimler side that was hemorrhaging money and the Chrysler side that was generating it. I agree with pretty much everything you say. And to give the devil it’s due, the big LX platform turned out to be a good one.
I think the rust was related to new mandates for eco-friendly paint, a technology which still wasn’t sorted out very well. If I recall correctly, a similar problem plagued Mazdas of this era.
This is my all-time least-favorite S-class…. by far. I recently rode in one with only about 70k miles, and I was shocked by the chintzy materials. These days, even the pudgy w140 is getting some love from collectors, but I think the w220 will never be anything more than a used car. Anything this car does well, the BMW e38 does better.
My uncle has a 2006 S430 (last year of the W220), and I have driven it a number of times (and been a passenger as well). It is excellent in terms of comfort, and drives much like an E-Class. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been cheap to repair, with Airmatic, mechanical, and electrical issues regularly.
These marked the point I asked “what ever happened to Mercedes?” I was 10 years old when I asked that. Awful materials, awful paint and anynomous amorphous blob styling. By 2000 this curvy aesthetic Mercedes had been rightfully bucking through most of the 90s was already being phased out in favor of crisp edges their timeless 80s design language through to the W140 already had.
Mercedes never recovered their previously instantly identifyable and imposing look after the W220, they look like old Hyundai’s still.
What bothers me is how slavishly the C-Class of this era copies the S. Flattering for C owners but surely irritating for those who splashed out money for the S. At least the design trickled down but still, they just look too close for my liking. Compare that with the prior C and S which had a similar, blocky design language but very different details, or the subsequent C and S which were really quite different from each other.
Mercedes is back at it now with the current C and S. It’s a very modern-day Audi thing to do and I don’t care for it.
+1 Couldn’t agree more! And the current E-Class also apes the S, so you have the same look in small, medium and large.
+2. I honestly can’t much distinguish Merc models now, admittedly partly from a yawnful lack of interest in their weak-chinned, blingy, derivative styling.
I remember when the W220 was launched, someone made the observation (only slightly tongue in cheek) that surely the top range model should have four headlights, and the lowest two: not entirely silly, when one considers how much classier the later 4-headlight job on the CL looked.
I really have to look twice to see if a newer Mercedes-Benz sedan is a W205 (C-Class) or a W213 (E-Class). The main way I can now tell them apart is with the twin LED signatures on the E-Class’ headlights, versus the single ones for the C-Class.
Those seat cushions are straight from brougham-land.
Enjoyable article. For me this is when Mercedes went full pop. This is their Invisible Touch album. Meh-tastic!
I remember when these came out. Indeed, tgey represented a higher-tech, svelter, and sexier S-Class, but ultimately a less-timeless S-Class.
I still love the styling of this generation S-Class more than any succeeding generations, but there was something that was truly lost with this generation, never to return.
This is an example of a car that (to me) looked really good new, neatly current and elegant, particularly as it replaced such a heavyset plonker, but which fairly quickly began to seem dated, then bland. A stern and intriguing look that doesn’t immediately strike one as necessarily beautiful, such as the W124 or even the W140, doesn’t suffer that fate.
The interior, though, always looked slapdash and unimpressive.
I never liked these at all. To me, at least from a styling perspective, this is the point where the brand doesn’t catch me anymore. It looks like just another generic Early 2000s luxury sedan, which considering it’s meant to be a Mercedes Benz, is the worst thing you can be. Generic to me is a worse sin than ugly, because at least people remember ugly.
The W221 that came after was a much nicer looking car in my opinion, heck almost anything from that period from 2005-2012-ish is a rather nice looking car in the Mercedes lineup. Then the W222 came out, and in my opinion, it’s trying way too hard to appeal to a younger crowd and it fails miserably.
And BMW then handily trounced them in the “computer-on-wheels” department with the 2001/2002 “E65” 7 Series, and the 2003 Rolls-Royce Phantom.
I would have been six or seven when the W220 came out. In retrospect, it’s interesting to see how Mercedes-Benz cut back during a time that was known for wretched excess. Then again, that’s just it: during the early aughts, the sensible values of 90s luxury were abandoned wholesale in favor of flashiness…and the W220 was flashy, more in terms of technology than its actual shape.
By all measures, the Volkswagen Phaeton was an example of what a traditional S-Class might’ve been like (not that it was necessarily reliable, either. But it was built to excessive standards). More interestingly, the revived Maybach models retained the W140’s over-engineered platform, rather than moving to the W220 architecture.
One thing is for sure, though: subsequent luxury flagships have been more about impressing buyers and onlookers with the latest gadgets than in preserving levels of build quality that would allow the car to be any kind of heirloom or family treasure. And the W220 was the first of that crop. A friend of mine, who is 20 years of age, inherited a W126 from his grandfather. I doubt if the 20-year-old of tomorrow would inherit a W220, W221 or W222 that was anything short of glitchy buy-here-pay-here fodder.
Can’t agree with any of that, considering the W220 with the M113 and 722.6 was probably the most reliable flagship MB in history… If it wasn’t in a cold climate. They had corrosion issues. Plenty of MB club members have cars nearing on 400k miles. They last, they are easy and fun to work on , and they’re just nice to drive. The E65/66 is the opposite.
I like the styling of this generation, and they have a good ride and very strong brakes, but the interior was really a letdown, they broke down a lot, and COMAND was either hilarious or infuriating depending on how seriously you took it as a navigational aid. (I thought it was regrettable that its English-language module didn’t have a ridiculous Frau Farbissina faux-German accent, which I think would have been wholly appropriate.)
Although I’m sure the S-Class are wonderful cars, so everyone says. Only the current CLS550 really makes me wish I could afford one. Before these, only the 250-280SE coupes and cabriolet were M-B models I’d lust after.
The W220 is a nice car but certainly the worst S class made. I run one as a daily driver, there is normally a monthly drama, luckily I wrench on it myself. The nice riding Airmatic is problematic, I’ve since dispensed with mine, PSE system plays up, it is complicated but you can work on it if you can find parts. Rust is a problem on lower doors and around the sunroof. Leather is very fine and lasts well, mine is still really tidy, rear looks like new. I find the car economical to drive with 7.5 l/100 km on the freeway.
KJ in Oz
The way the bodywork rusted on these very expensive cars was an absolute scandal which should have hurt MB far more than it did. So we have rust (Mercedes), scandal (VAG emisions) and general cheapening of the brand (BMW), and still the people flock in their billions to buy German cars. Will never understand it.
And at the dealer level, they still act like you should kiss their backsides to even look at the product.
I always thought this one looked too much like the then C-Class’ big sister – not enough distinctiveness in the styling, just like, as William mentioned earlier, the current C and E Class models.
The cars have gotten endless hate from angry owners in cold states with endless road salt. Various myths have been perpetuated since, but that was the only crippling flaw. They had an early form of water-based paint and non-galvanized body panels (Fixed for late ’04, ’05, and ’06). It was an oversight , but not one that prevents it from being a great car. The M113 and 722.6 combo is still probably the most reliable in the car’s history.
There are plenty out there that have been driven constantly for two decades. Just keep them away from the salt.
Count me one of the few who likes the W220 series. I like the unterstated body style as well as the clean interior design. They should have avoided the trouble prone air suspension – sometimes less is more. The poor rust prevention is unforgivable.
A certain slim down in comparison to the W140 was necessary and forgiveable. For those who wanted the real gorilla, M-B offered the Maybach.
I remember an article in the Aughts that a survey of German car buyers rated Mercedes as the most desirable brand–and also the worst ownership experience.