MOTORS
FIRST CLASS It may look a little less ostentatious than a sports car or a hulking SUV with a six-figure price tag, but seen here is one of the most important cars in the world. Why? Because it’s the new Mercedes S-Class, progenitor of the next generation of in-car tech... Words: Rob Davis.
IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERSTATE the importance of the car you see here. It may be a fairly discreet looking saloon, but the Mercedes S-Class is the car that the whole industry - indeed, the whole world - looks to in order to gauge the future of motoring.
The last generation of S-Class debuted ‘magic suspension’ which uses cameras to detect then mitigate broken road surfaces in conjunction with its suspension and dampers. It also introduced active night vision assist and even heated armrests.
The S-Class was the car which either debuted or at least popularised features like anti-lock brakes, ESP, power steering, airbags, adaptive cruise control, voice control, and night vision.
Now, there’s a new generation of S-Class and the whole motoring industry was intrigued to see what new technical offerings would move the car on at its world premier in September.
Whatever you see on the S-Class today will become standard on all cars within a decade or so; it’s the firm’s flagship, and the model which gains all of the firm’s latest innovations before other models.
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Highlights of the new model include rear airbags, rear wheel steering and greater autonomous driving technology which will be ‘switched on’ as legislation permits in each territory the car is sold in. >>
