maybach

Spent Sunday Morning at my brand new local dealer. Sanderson's Ruschcutter's Bay Sydney. Fantastic dealer with a great cafe run by the Sanderson family on site. An entire ownership experience! Anyway, test drove a two week old S350 and found compared to my 01' S500 the difference in power while noticeable was not as shocking as one would expect. Fantastic accelleration and pickup and super smooth delivery. The new interior is top notch with leater replacing a lot of the cheap plastics. Though one would expect that for $190,000 ($115,000 USD). Yes Merc's are very expensive in OZ. But that of course helps re-sale values a bit as the market is never flooded. The dealer also gave me a little gossip. Apparently Russel Crowe had been at the dealership during the week and purchased two black S600's, one for himself another for his future father-in-law. Thats $360,000 list a piece. Also had a chance to check out the new E-Class, rear leg room seemed noticeably lacking while the boot(trunk) space was larger than that of the S-Class.

Tezta

That S600 is expensive in OZ, is that in US dollars? here its $210,000 USD for an S600.

Mustard

Been hearing increasingly positive things about this new 3.7 litre engine - smooth, powerful and yet not well matched to the gearbox. And it sound great as a bonus.

I think, while not as powerful as the 500, the lower weight makes a lot of difference to handling, as well as nearly matching the power to weight ratio.

I'm a kiwi, made my first small fortune by taking a new s-class from Germany (in 1982) to Australia and because it hadn't even been launched there, sold it for enough to buy my first house!

boltonblue

alas, we won't get to see it stateside.
I'd be quite happy with a s350 4matic.

maybach

Thats 360,000 AUD a piece