Blimey - a proper Mercedes at last!

I used to be a real Mercedes Benz fan. I enjoyed the build quality; the ‘unbreakable’ feeling you got whatever you did. I had two S500s, one after another. This was the last of the ‘proper’ Mercedes in my eyes (the W140 version for those ‘anoraks’ amongst you). I drove more than 500,000 miles in those two barges, and I never once got out complaining of a bad back (even though I do have a bad back as a result of teenage folly when I had a coming together - whilst running across the road to catch a bus - with an MG doing 45mph past my school!). Wherever I went, and whatever I did, I only had one problem in the whole half a million miles, and that was a lambda probe packing up - but the car still went in to ‘limp-home’ mode and got me to the garage. So I was a fan, and I looked forward to the then upcoming S class - the W220.

Although I did have only one mechanical glitch in all those miles, I also had one prang. Early one Saturday afternoon, whilst driving my then 13 year old daughter somewhere she had to go, for the umpteenth time that week, we were ambling (or as much as I ever amble) round country lanes in Fryerning (a pretty part of that much maligned county, Essex) when an erratic Sierra came flying round the bend, on my side of the road, with the driver merrily pointing out something in the nearby shrubbery to his equally distracted passenger! Not a good moment. Well, to cut a long story short I decided that discretion was definitely the better part of valour and I tipped us into the nearside ditch (it seemed the sensible alternative to a head-on with ‘Essex Man’). The damage was mostly underneath and, to be fair to ‘Essex Man’, he held his hands up to his responsibility (being a smart-arse I did manage to ‘tape’ his confession on the Dictaphone - just in case) and we crabbed off to the garage to survey the damage.

Now those nice people at Bristol & London, who offer like-for-like replacements for no fault accidents, stepped in to the breach and had a shiny CL500 whisked down the motorway from Bristol in just a few hours as a replacement. Right up my street - someone else’s car to play with, and a chance to live with the coupé version of the new ‘S’, and see how it compared over a few weeks to my old ‘S’ (Mercedes do not mend cars very quickly). But it broke. Two days in and the suspension packed up. And I hadn’t even driven it that hard. So off it went to the local Mercedes dealer and they fixed it. Back again for three days - same again. That’s when I fell out of love with Mercedes. To be fair to Bristol and London they offered me a brand new 911 for the rest of the time (which turned in to 3 months - I told you Mercedes aren’t very quick!), and that 3 months helped me decide that Porsches were built like my old W140 - to last.

So for the last few years I’ve driven a Cayenne. It really is the perfect ‘compromise’ car. It does everything so well. It drives like an M5 (none of that pitching and rolling you get in most SUVs), you get the high driving position, great performance and handling (really astonishing handling for such a car) and the bullet-proof build quality. And, short of running a Range Rover and an Aston (no, Mr Bank Manager, I’m not seriously considering it) it seemed I would stick with the Cayenne for some time. But blow me down, Mercedes have once again built a car that feels as bullet-proof as my old S500.

The new CL600 is a magic-carpet, grand tourer aimed fairly and squarely at the Bentley Continental GT, and a remarkably good car it is too. Unlike its V8-engined counterparts, this silky-smooth V12 wasn’t designed to snort and growl. Instead, it has the ability to generate warp-mode at the merest touch on the throttle. No fuss - no noise - just instant blurred scenery. It’s even got that old Bentley favourite - column-change (or at least the modern version of it), and it feels like it’s made from a solid piece of Titanium. It handles, it’s well built and it’s astonishingly swift. Oh, and quite remarkably for big Mercedes coupés, it’s very pretty (from most angles).

Hats-off Mercedes. You’ve actually built a car that seems as well-made as the reputation you so deservedly once had.