Mercedes S-Class saloon - Reliability & safety (2013-2020)

Mercedes finished in 28th place out of 30 manufacturers in our 2020 Driver Power customer survey, behind key rivals Audi and BMW. The S-Class itself wasn’t listed in the survey as not enough owners responded.

Part of the reason for the poor result seems to be the high running costs and expensive servicing. However, most of the complaints seem to be aimed at the brand’s smaller models rather than the S-Class.

36

Safety

You may ask how we can award the full five stars in this category to a car that hasn’t been crash-tested by the Euro NCAP safety experts yet. It’s because of the sheer amount of active safety equipment that’s on offer on the S-Class.

There’s loads of standard safety kit, including eight airbags, a traffic-sign recognition camera, a driver drowsiness monitor and a stability control system that incorporates Curve Dynamic Assist and Crosswind Assist.

You can also choose the £1,700 Driving Assistance Package, which adds blind-spot monitoring, lane-keeping assistance and adaptive cruise control, plus a night-vision camera and novel rear seatbelts that feature integrated airbags. If you want unbeatable safety – and can afford to pick up the bill – then the big Mercedes has it covered.

The S-Class is also one of the first production models to feature Car-to-X Communication, which can ‘speak’ to other cars fitted with the system and warn them (or receive updates) on traffic problems, accidents, hazards and changing road conditions.