Mercedes S550: Could One Day Be the Best Car in the World

My dad always drove a Mercedes, but nothing like this.

Just watching the video I'm jonesin' to go out and get one right now, lol.

But see Dan Neil, at WSJ, "Mercedes S550: A Technological Tour de Force":

THE REDESIGNED 2014 Mercedes-Benz S-class, the serene, cetacean presence you see before you, this sack of krill, is probably the world's most technologically rich automobile.

The company's new flagship sedan/limousine/state car requires the services of 60 onboard computers, up to 100 servo motors (operating, among other things, the powered door and trunk closures, seat-belt tensioners, and the elaborate articulation of the seats), and more than 500 LED lighting units, from its taillamps to its (amazing, game-changing) headlamps. Under the flat, brooding instrument binnacle are two high-res, 12.3-inch TFT screens, arrayed cinema style in a single, broad bezel that, at night, floats in a pool of suffused LED backlighting, like something signed out from the Starfleet motor pool. Holy mother of awesome.

Gorden Wagener, Mercedes-Benz head of design, told me that the new S-class was the "best car in the world." I am not ready to make such a pronouncement, and I'd be unlikely to do so anyway about a car that looks like it was swallowed by a manatee. But the S-class is unquestionably a tour de force, a showy, almost arrogant display of auto-making genius (assuming it all holds together). The important thing here is Stuttgart's willingness to invoke "best car" verbiage, which historians associate with icons such as the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, Duesenberg SJ, Mercedes-Benz 300SL, Bugatti Veyron and—a late entry on the list—Tesla. Cheeky monkeys.

For four decades and five generations of the S-class, the car has traditionally been the company's technology icebreaker, introducing now-fundamental systems such as stability control and ABS braking, adaptive cruise control and adaptive body-roll control. In that time, S-class product planning has also become increasingly a victim of its own rhetoric, with each generation obliged to blow buyers' minds anew, sometimes with trivial, half-baked "technologies" (the shambolic first edition of the infrared night-vision system comes to mind).

This new car represents a genuine break with the past on several fronts, and they are, in descending order of importance: active safety; cabin materials and construction; in-cabin electronic functions and amenities. Indeed, the sheer weight of innovation in this car—more than 2,000 patents flutter in its slipstream—is itself theatrical, a message to consumers and competitors alike: A giant has awakened. Checkbooks, run for your lives.

Oh yes, the checkbook.

That's why my dad always bought pre-owned. And if I get one someday I'll probably go pre-owned as well.

In any case, continue reading. Clearly astounding, if not the best in the world.