Real World Review: 2008 Mercedes S550 Posted 2010/05/11 @ 07:00 AM By Spencer Woods
We receive fleet cars at MotoBullet and enjoy driving them to give official reviews. There are only two problems:
1. We only get them for about a week, so we can’t assess long-term value.
2. They are usually loaded with more options than the average consumer would purchase.
This is where our friends at Dealer Auto Exchange have come in. They are allowing us to pick late-model cars from their selection to give an honest review. These are cars that were bought and used by real consumers.
Now we can mix our impressions of how the car was when new, and how it behaves after being used by actual consumers. We can measure results of what can be expected after a few years of real ownership, and/or what you can expected to find on a pre-owned car lot.
THE CAR
It is a 2008 Mercedes S550 with Barolo Red paint and Cashmere color leather interior. The S550 comes standard with a 5.5-liter V8 making 382 and a seven-speed automatic transmission. This is the rear-wheel drive model with 72,000 miles on the odometer.
OVERVIEW
The unspoken rule of the S-Class is that it carries all the technology we’ll see in lesser cars for the next decade to come. So that puts our test car in an interesting place…It may be a few years old, but it is still possibly ahead of the technology curve.
The original base price for a S550 sedan is $91,600, but none leave a dealership for this kind of money. Mercedes specializes in offering a wide array of options, and by the time a car like our real-world tester leaves the dealership it has poked through the $100k barrier. For that kind of money a lot is expected.
The interior is the easiest place to show off where all the money goes from the initial high sticker price. Mercedes has had a lot of experience making customers feel like they got their money’s worth. Everything that is seen is premium: real wood, soft leather and durable metals. Two years later, the interior materials show no real signs of daily use. As long as the next owner doesn’t plan on using it as a day care family hauler, the interior should keep its premium appearance for the foreseeable future.
The centerpiece for the driver is the COMMAND center with satellite navigation. The entire car can be programmed from this screen and joystick combination. This center screen carries controls for everything from suspension adjustment to interior lighting intensity; from radio controls to DVD movies, and everything in between. It even gives real-time traffic updates. Just like BMW’s iDrive, the COMMAND system is the nerve center of the car. But unlike the iDrive this one is much more intuitive.
The COMMAND center is not the only TV screen in the car. The speedometer is actually a representation of a gauge on a small LCD screen. On our car we had helpful reminders and GPS directions flash in the middle of our speedometer. Those who paid an extra $5,000 for their S-Class got an optional package for a night vision system projected in that area.
DRIVELINES
Make no mistake, the S-Class is a large car. At almost seventeen feet long, it stretches for almost the same distance as a Hummer H2. But it behaves like a sports sedan.
Somehow Mercedes set up the driving dynamics of a much smaller car. The large engine, adaptive suspension and quick steering all make this feel like a car half its size. It doesn’t give up any of the luxury ride, but the driver has so much input from the road that it is the easiest car to park in its price class (aside from the self-parking Lexus LS.) Although this car has traveled 73k miles, it still feels as solid as new.
The S-Class is a very interesting breed of cars. It is one of the few vehicles to have enough interior space to be used as chauffeur driven transport, but the whole car is so intuitive that Rich Uncle Pennybags (AKA Mr. Monopoly) won’t mind driving himself around at all.
MINDFUL ITEMS
It is tempting to buy this car because it is well equipped S-Class for the kind of money that will barely buy the lowest level E-Class. It is good to remember there are a lot more bits of technology and engineering in Mercedes flagship sedan. This means paying a little more in maintenance. The cost gap between an S-Class and the E-Class can be as much as 20% annually. Depending on the year, this can be a difference between as little as $50 and as much as $500 in years when major items like tires need to be purchased.
The good news is that unlike almost every other car out there, the residual value never bottoms out of the Mercedes flagship. Even after 30 years and 300,000 miles, the S-Class is still able to command a few dollars on the resale market.
PRICING
Current price ranges for similarly equipped vehicles averages $55,900 – $51,500, this car is currently being offered by Dealer Auto Exchange for $49,600. For more details on this specific car visit Dealer Auto Exchange’s website.
THE CAR
The interior is the easiest place to show off where all the money goes from the initial high sticker price. Mercedes has had a lot of experience making customers feel like they got their money’s worth. Everything that is seen is premium: real wood, soft leather and durable metals. Two years later, the interior materials show no real signs of daily use. As long as the next owner doesn’t plan on using it as a day care family hauler, the interior should keep its premium appearance for the foreseeable future.
Somehow Mercedes set up the driving dynamics of a much smaller car. The large engine, adaptive suspension and quick steering all make this feel like a car half its size. It doesn’t give up any of the luxury ride, but the driver has so much input from the road that it is the easiest car to park in its price class (aside from the self-parking Lexus LS.) Although this car has traveled 73k miles, it still feels as solid as new.
