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Oh Lord, won't you buy me two...
This is not just some electronic trickery modulating the pedal force and interpreting the effort you're putting in; it's a system that actually reads the road ahead and puts everything in order for you.
In this respect the S-Class is like the world's best butler, surely the most potent symbol of a truly luxurious existence.
Even the music sounds better in the new S-Class, since the digital media we are now used to is complemented by a digital stereo and TV set-up.
The satnav stores its maps not on a removable DVD, but on a hard drive, speeding up route calculations while leaving half of its 20GB free for future applications. So you've even got an excess of memory.
And this sort of thing is exactly what the S-Class is about: pushing the outside of the envelope of true repose on every conceivable level - including fair few that the rest of us hadn't thought of - but the S-Class is only Top Gear's Limousine of the Year...
'Style is a totally nebulous attribute, but we all recognise it when it's there, and it's here in spades'
For our true luxury champion, we have to look for excess in an area that cannot be quantified at all - style.
A four-door car with all the trappings of its luxurious sibling yet wantonly compromised - albeit only faintly - by the conceits of a man who wanted to build a coupe has to be the greatest indulgence going. That'll be the CLS, then.
To our minds, no car has ever struck the balance between capability and devil-may-care good looks quite as well as the Mercedes CLS.
The faux coupe is hardly a new idea - Mercedes achieved something like it with the previous S-Class, in fact - but it has been done so convincingly with the CLS, that it still comes as a surprise to find two extra doors and decent legroom at the back.
It's also a truly superb- looking motor, with not a single clumsy angle. And even the Maserati Quattroporte has one of those.
Style is a totally nebulous attribute, but we all recognise it when it's there, and it's here in spades. It's possibly life's least essential little luxury, and therefore its greatest.
Read Mercedes S-Class Car Review
Mercedes S-Class road tests
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