2021 Mercedes-Benz S580 review: The benchmark once again

Picture the pressure of generating a new Mercedes-Benz S-Course. This car is supposed to be the peak of Everest for consumers who want a entire-body fat luxury car, and just about every successive era really should include a lot more to the pile without having forgetting its raison d’être, which implies you can find a great deal using on just about every new model. All that tough function has paid out off, however, because the 2021 Mercedes-Benz S-Course is an absolute banger, when once more placing the common for all other luxury automobiles.

The 2021 Mercedes-Benz S580 is damn near the excellent luxury car, whilst styling is subjective, and I will be the first to admit that the most up-to-date iteration of Mercedes’s layout language isn’t my favourite. My sole grievance is that the rear conclude is Eeyore-tier droopy, with a chrome unibrow spanning the width of the trunk, which is my absolute least favourite 21st-century prosper.

The rest of the S580’s exterior is all about course. Irrespective of putting on the a lot more aggressive bumpers and facet skirts of the $4,three hundred AMG Line package, my tester is however rather demure. The 21-inch AMG alloy wheels have a fairly trad-luxe glance to them, much too. This car doesn’t have to have outrageous angles or slash lines to make a statement — it truly is just a huge, fancy sedan, carving its way by website traffic with a correctly old-college hood ornament main the demand.

If for some explanation I really don’t truly feel like a million bucks strolling up to the Mercedes S580, I certain truly feel like it when the doorways open — basically, no, prior to, many thanks to electronic doorway handles that pop out from the system as I approach. The S-Course has extended had  the plushest interiors in the automobile marketplace, and that carries on with the 2021 model. The black Nappa leather is comfortable, and not only are the front seats supportive as heck, on the S580 they occur common with an excellent multi-contour therapeutic massage operate. The rear seats are roomier than prior to, with a good deal of headroom and legroom for me to splay out.

The S580’s interior layout borrows greatly from the Vision EQS notion, with a massive swath of wooden trim managing the width of the dashboard, punctuated by pairs of vents on both facet. The twelve.eight-inch OLED infotainment screen rises up from the heart console, leaving adequate room behind it for an additional storage tray. The include beneath the screen moves to expose two ordinary-sized cup holders, a wi-fi charging pad and an added tray for masks, keys or other pocket detritus. Less than the armrest, you can find adequate room for a tiny purse, while the doorway pockets are just huge adequate to keep some massive drink containers. There’s no significant binnacle bordering the twelve.three-inch gauge exhibit, which implies the dashboard stays great and reduced, generating for excellent forward visibility.

Plunk down an added $three,000 and the room in front of the gauges turns into a giant projector for 1 significantly extraordinary head-up exhibit. Not only will it produce the normal facts readouts like velocity and way of travel, it can also function with local automobile-to-infrastructure tech to exhibit the time remaining on a purple light. My favourite component, however, is the augmented-fact integration that the S-Course shares with its electric powered EQS sibling, exhibiting forthcoming turns as arrows that expand closer as the intersection does, as well as highlighting website traffic when adaptive cruise management is active. The facts is generally the place it demands to be, much too, many thanks to eye-tracking cameras designed into the gauge exhibit, which can operate in a trick 3D Mode for a tiny added visual flair. Flipping by the quite a few obtainable layouts and menus is produced straightforward many thanks to touchpad-style buttons on the steering wheel.

The huge ol’ screen in the center of the S580 operates an updated version of the MBUX infotainment technique we’ve observed in just about every other Merc, and it performs as well as at any time in this iteration. It’ll run wi-fi Apple CarPlay and Android Automobile, but there are also four USB-C ports in the heart console for front-seat occupants to use. The touchscreen collects smudges like no other, but it truly is responsive, and it truly is fairly darn extraordinary, much too, primarily when it truly is managing a fullscreen map. The bottom component of the exhibit generally displays climate controls, with a smattering of bodily buttons beneath that for shifting driving modes, turning up the volume, participating the hazard lights or reading my fingerprint to pull up my individual settings (not required).

The only controls that frustrate me are found overhead. This S580 has two sunroofs, 1 for each row, and they are controlled with the most infuriating contact slider identified to guy. I used an full week striving to determine out the logic behind how it performs, but no make any difference what directions my fingers go, it does everything — opens and closes the front panel, tilts the front panel, engages the front panel’s sunshine shade — besides the 1 operate I basically want it to. I despise it on the EQS, and I despise it in this article.

What is actually unachievable to despise, however, is the 2021 Mercedes S580’s experience. It is, merely set, the greatest in the section, with an adaptive air suspension that preternaturally removes nearly just about every inch of undesirable street underfoot, sensation pillowy smooth almost all the time. The S-Course floats down the street, and merged with thick glass, driver and travellers alike will be all but shut off from the entire world on the other facet. The suspension lowers and stiffens when set into Sport or Sport As well as method, and while the S580 does a fairly great impression of a entire-measurement sport sedan, I would advocate ready for an AMG variant if you definitely want to give it the ol’ what-for. This issue may corner well, but what it definitely wishes to do is luxuriate at all achievable alternatives.

The S580’s powertrain is great and smooth. Less than the hood is a 4.-liter twin-turbocharged V8 manufacturing 496 horsepower and 516 pound-feet of torque, augmented by a 48-volt mild hybrid technique that can toss one more 21 hp and 184 lb-ft into the mix, usually when leaving a halt or pushing the accelerator into the firewall. The V8 is a good deal powerful on its possess, but with this bit of electrification, the S580 feels like it operates on a under no circumstances-ending well of motive force. A nine-velocity automated transmission does its issue with near imperceptibility, and optional rear-axle steering (4.5 degrees, $one,three hundred, whilst 10-diploma steering is also obtainable on some variants) implies it truly is fairly darn straightforward to navigate parking a lot and other restricted confines. The EPA premiums the S580 at 17 mpg city and twenty five mpg city, and while the city estimate would seem location on, I’m ready to squeeze out anything closer to 30 mpg on the freeway.

If a V6 feels like overkill in the twilight several years of the internal combustion engine, the S500 could scratch your itch, alternatively. This model ditches two cylinders, opting for a turbocharged straight-6 generating 429 hp and 384 lb-ft. It, much too, has the EQ Enhance mild hybrid technique, as well as common all-wheel travel and the very same nine-velocity automated. It really is a tiny a lot more effective, however, coming in at an EPA-estimated twenty mpg city and 29 mpg freeway.

There are some extremely capable driver aids ready to lend a hand. Typical entire-velocity adaptive cruise management brings together efforts with lane-retaining support to maintain the automobile centered in its lane at the tempo of website traffic, reducing the tedium of for a longer period commutes but however requiring hands on the wheel and eyes pointed down the street. Although active, however, the driver aids make comfortable inputs and maintain the experience comfortable. For parking, the infotainment screen can exhibit a 360-diploma region about the car, which I can twist and spin on the screen to make certain I’m remaining in all the lines. Parking sensors combine efforts with the ambient lighting to give me an additional layer of warning in scenario I get much too near to a wall or one more car.

It should not occur as a surprise that the 2021 Mercedes-Benz S-Course ain’t cheap. The S580 starts off at $117,350, and a restricted selection of aesthetic and useful enhancements bump my tester’s price tag up to $131,500 — and you can find however an AMG variant or two that will live over this 1, in addition to the huge-boy Maybach. The S500 and its straight-6 engine are luckily a tiny a lot less high-priced, coming in at $a hundred and ten,850. Thank goodness.

Mercedes’ closest competition, the BMW 7 Sequence and Audi A8, are equally higher-quality luxury automobiles in their possess correct, but it truly is tough to advocate just about anything other than the S-Course. The common bearer continues to be at the front of the pack, and really should keep there for a while.