Review Car

2011 Mercedes Benz S500

The 2011 Mercedes Benz S500 offers a lot, as it should, given its price and reputation. The S500 gets glove-soft Napa leather seating surfaces in place of the premium leather, and it doesn’t get much blusher. The 2011 2011 Mercedes Benz S500 gets the glove-soft Napa leather in the other areas. The rear bench seat feels like an expensive sofa. There’s a cavernous 40.3 inches of legroom back there, just one inch less than the front. The rear seat reclines, too, if you check off that option. Four-place seating is available, providing rear occupants with bucket seats. Active ventilation is also available for the rear seats. Ergonomics-wise, the center console has great support for your right knee, bracing your throttle foot. But there’s nothing on the left, no real dead pedal, and not enough seat support for your thighs, so your legs get pitched during aggressive cornering. We know, the S500 is a luxury car, not a sports car, but if you offer a suspension that boasts level cornering, the driver should be expected to use it.

The Air suspension that comes on The 2011 Mercedes Benz S500 uses compressed air in bellows-like springs in each corner, to maintain constant ride height regardless of load. On the highway, the car automatically lowers itself by about an inch, which improves aerodynamics and thus fuel mileage.

Airmatic features adaptive damping, which allows the driver to adjust the shock absorbers according to road conditions, load and speed. This is not the same as the more complex active suspension, which is optional on The 2011 Mercedes Benz S500 and standard on the S600 and S55 AMG, and which virtually eliminates body roll in cornering, squat under acceleration, and dive during braking. 

Drop the hammer on The 2011 Mercedes Benz S500 and the V8 makes neat sounds. The car is most fun when it’s using its torque and growling. That’s when this big, elegant luxury car can feel like a hot rod. The specs say the S500’s engine produces its full 339 foot-pounds of torque between 2700 and 4250 rpm. It didn’t feel like the V8 hit its sweet spot until nearly 4000 rpm, though, and when you floor it at 3000 rpm, it kicks down a gear, as if to get more power when it should theoretically already be in the right gear for maximum torque.

The car is super-smooth and quiet again as the revs increase into the 5000-rpm range, so it’s easy to hit the 6000-rpm rev limiter in second or third gears when you’re in the manual-shift mode. It represents the state of the technological art of the high-performance luxury sedan. Its interior comfort is unsurpassed; its styling is aerodynamically efficient. It exudes status. The 2011 2011 Mercedes Benz S500 is a better choice for many of us than the new BMW 7 Series, which is marred by a driver interface that’s a real challenge to learn. The 2011 2011 Mercedes Benz S500 cars have a daunting set of features that requires some study of the owners manuals, but it isn’t insurmountable. We made a panic stop at 60 to test the ABS, and when we lifted off the pedal the brakes stayed applied for another beat. Yep, we got Brake Assist. It would have been nice if we had asked for it. There’s a brake release switch that takes a split second to activate, as a Mercedes engineer later explained to us. Chances are you may never experience this. Around town the brakes are smooth and powerful, easy to modulate for smooth, silky stops.