FRANKFURT MOTOR SHOW: Mercedes S-Class Coupe

Mercedes-Benz will try to lock its German rivals out of the high-end coupe business with a futuristically styled two-door version of its new S-Class limousine.

The S-Class Coupe concept, which made its world debut today at the Frankfurt motor show, foreshadows a production version early next year.

Unveiled just months after the release of the latest all-new S-Class limousine, the large, pillarless rear-drive coupe arrived in Frankfurt powered by a 335kW/700Nm twin-turbo 4.7-litre V8.

Based on the architecture of the limousine, the big coupe has excited Benz’s designers like few cars before it and they’ve responded with the most extreme example of the new design language it first showed on the CLS.

It won’t be the first coupe to sit on the S-Class chassis, but the (only slightly) less wild production version will wear the S-Class badge to fit more neatly into the Mercedes-Benz model line-up when it replaces the outgoing CL next year.

More than five metres long, the extravagantly creased S-Class Coupe concept is barely 66mm shorter than the short-wheelbase version of the new S-Class limousine, even though it carries two fewer doors. At 5050mm long, it’s only 196mm shorter than the outrageously stretched long-wheelbase S-Class.

It has even longer overhangs than the big limousine too, because its 2945mm wheelbase is 90mm shorter than the SWB S-Class, indicating it should carry over a significant amount of rear legroom and back-seat comfort. Naturally, in the back of the four-seat S-Class there are twin DVD screens.

The S-Class two-door should be fast enough in production too. Benz claims both the short and long versions of the S 500, which shares the S-Class Coupe concept’s biturbo V8 powertrain, hits 100km/h in 4.8 seconds.

Besides the V8, the production S-Class Coupe will also swallow Benz’s 6.0-litre 36-valve V12 and a big turbo-diesel V6 is also in the pipeline, but will be launched at least a year after the S 500 Coupe goes on sale.

With plans to launch the S 63 AMG to journalists confirmed for next month, Daimler is also certain to slide Affalterbach’s more powerful biturbo V8 into the S 63 AMG Coupe as well.

It will feed its power through the S-Class’s seven-speed automatic transmission and the non-AMG models will use an electronic ‘locking’ differential or optional mechanical LSD to spread the drive to the rear axles.

It shares the S-Class’s four-link front suspension and five-link rear-end, then finishes it all off with 265/35 R21 front tyres and 295/35 R21 rear boots.

While it uses aluminium doors, don’t expect the S-Class Coupe to weigh significantly less than the S 500 SWB’s 1995kg kerb weight. While it lacks the limousine’s rear doors, it picks up every scrap of its safety and interior comfort features.

Like the S-Class, it uses stereo cameras mounted behind the mirror to constantly scan the road surface and feeds this information into a computer that controls the suspension movement, leading to what Benz calls Magic Body Control.

It goes further than that though, with the cameras combining with radar and ultrasound sensors to send a mountain of real-time data from up to 500 metres in front of the car to its safety computers, which control everything from its Pre-Safe system to its audible warning tones.

For all of that, it will be its languidly extravagant exterior and interior designs that will make or break its reception at its home motor show.

“The Concept S-Class Coupe combines tradition and emotion, and is a symbol for the embodiment of our design style of sensual clarity,” said Gorden Wagener, Vice President of Design at Daimler.

“The perfected design with self-assured style and the highly exclusive appointments make the coupe a true design icon and an expression of modern luxury,” he modestly claimed.

“Design needs the sublime because design is the best brand ambassador. At the centre of our work is sensual clarity as an expression of modern luxury, because this is precisely what gets to the heart of our brand philosophy – the bipolarity of intelligence and emotion,” he continued.

The car is dominated by its profile, with a very long bonnet and pronounced rear haunches, along with its domed roofline and power bulge in the bonnet.

The face is dominated by the S-Class Coupe concept’s full LED headlights, while the rear LED tail-lights are arranged in a pair of strips at each rear corner.

The interior of the coupe has been designed to remind drivers of an upper and lower wave of water joining to create a single shape, Dr Wagener claimed.

While the production interior will obviously be more conservative, a new, smaller airbag has allowed the concept car’s instrument panel to be more radical, with a highly sculpted shape to the bottom element in particular.

The instrument area is dominated by a pair of 12.3-inch screens from the S-Class limousine, though the concept status of the coupe allowed Dr Wagener’s team to make them slimmer and allow them to float more freely. Daimler seems particularly proud of a touch-screen clock on the centre console that has four world clocks in it, allowing drivers to choose which cities they want to keep track of.

Still, the CL coupe was always about extravagance rather than practicality, and the concept S-Class Coupe is already heading down the same path. The concept car has its instrument panel and seats wrapped in calf skin, while the floor carpets are made out of hand-tufted silk and the roof lining from hand-woven silk.