Luxury driving is typically defined by whisper-quiet cabins, glassy tarmac, and effortless highway cruising.
But to mark 140 years since Carl Benz patented his original Motorwagen in 1886, Mercedes-Benz is putting a radical spin on high-end travel.
As part of its anniversary celebrations, the automaker is dispatching two of its flagship S-Class sedans to 140 destinations worldwide, pushing its ultimate luxury model far beyond its usual comfort zone.
Named "Carl" (after Benz) and "Gottlieb" (after co-founder Gottlieb Daimler), the two vehicles recently tackled an ambitious African expedition spanning Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia, before reaching their final stop in South Africa.
Southern Africa, with its narrow, potholed, bumpy roads and stretches of gravel with heavy trucks, isn’t exactly an environment where you would expect to see a luxury sedan.
But for Mario Schneider, a development engineer at Mercedes-Benz who has been behind the wheel, the experience has provided an opportunity to see how a car designed around comfort behaves when the road becomes much less accommodating.
According to him, it went surprisingly well.
“We changed the wheels to all-terrain tyres, making it easier on the gravel roads we took,” he said
It is not something Mercedes-Benz normally needs to prove about its flagship sedan because the S-Class is designed primarily for the business of covering long distances in comfort, rather than tackling rough tracks.
But Schneider said that gravel is not unfamiliar territory during the development of a car.
“As a development engineer, we’re testing cars around the world. We have a lot of test driving on gravel roads, so we’re pretty sure the car can easily make it.”
A home away from home
The decision to take the S-Class into Southern Africa and around the world is not just about proving that a luxury sedan can cope with a rough road.
It forms part of a bigger idea behind Mercedes-Benz’s 140th anniversary celebrations.
The company traces its history back to Carl Benz’s patent for the Motorwagen in 1886. The anniversary journey began on January 29, exactly 140 years after Benz applied for the patent, with the S-Class chosen as the vehicle to carry the celebration around the world.
The journey is also linked to its idea of “welcome home”.
“As we decided the home of a Mercedes should be everywhere in the world, so we decided to do this awesome trip to give everybody in the world that welcome home feeling,” Schneider said.
That meant taking the car out of its familiar surroundings and putting it into places where luxury means something slightly different.
In Europe, an S-Class spends much of its life gliding along well-maintained motorways, but in Africa it can find itself sharing the road with trucks, negotiating narrow mountain passes or travelling along gravel roads which haven’t seen any maintenance for years.
The quietest part of the journey
It’s not so much whether it can handle a gravel road but also what happens inside the cabin once it does.
According to Schneider, many of the guests who have joined the journey settled into the back seats, often falling asleep as the car moved between destinations.
“We usually start early in the morning, and I look in the mirror, and they’re sleeping because it’s so cosy and silent inside.”
The S-Class may have travelled through parts of Africa, but its occupants still found themselves insulated from much of the journey.
The road less travelled
Driving an S-Class on African roads does inevitably present some challenges.
Schneider said the biggest differences are not necessarily related to the car itself, but to the environment in which it is being driven.
Left-hand traffic requires some adjustment for a driver accustomed to the opposite side of the road, particularly when overtaking on highways, as well as the challenges of narrower roads and rougher surfaces.
“The bumpy roads and narrow roads are usually challenging for the driver, but not really for the car,” he admitted.
There is an obvious comparison with Mercedes-Benz's G-Class, a vehicle built for the sort of terrain that would make an S-Class driver think twice.
“If you have a G-Class, you will do it easier,” Schneider admits.
“The G-Class has more ground clearance and is designed to deal with obstacles that would be outside the normal expectations of a luxury sedan.”
But the S-Class has a trick of its own.
Its air suspension can raise the vehicle when needed, providing additional clearance.
“So if it gets a bit rough, we just lift it up, and you’re good to go.”
Luxury with a view
For Schneider, the most memorable part of bringing the S-Class to South Africa has been the country itself.
“I mean, driving the Garden Route, driving Chapman’s Peak through Cape Town, seeing some penguins. It’s absolutely amazing.”
“The scenery and the landscape change every half an hour, so it won’t get boring here,” Schneider said.
And, despite the occasional gravel section, South Africa has also delivered the kind of roads for which the S-Class was built.
“Almost all the highways I experienced were perfectly made for that car; it’s just a pity that we had all-terrain tyres here in South Africa.
“After 140 years of developing cars, we’re not just celebrating where the brand has come from but exploring where it can still take us,” he said.
willem.vdputte@nationalmg.co.za