Let's think big for the next few pages.
Big sedans sized for four fat-cats. Big engines dishing out 400ish horses. Big price tags ganged near $100,000. And, most important, BIG egos in the driver's seat. See, regular sensible rich people have plenty of roomy and luxurious sedans to choose from with window-stickers around $80 grand. Therefore, we hoi polloi can only assume the high-rollers forking over a $CK note for one of these are trying to tell the world something. Maybe they're letting their subordinates at The Firm know "the corner office is mine for keeps;" maybe they're marking their neighborhood as the alpha dog on the block; or maybe they're showing the boys at The Club who's Mr. Big without visiting the steam room. Whatever the message, we decided to sample the best means of enunciating it in English, Italian, Japanese, and German.
Selecting the best $100K sedans from those first three countries was easy. From Japan, there's the freshly minted ne-plus-ultra Lexus. Invoking V-12 nomenclature, the LS 600hL marries a direct-injected 5.0-liter V-8 with Hybrid Synergy Drive to produce 438 combined horsepower (tops in this test) with the convenience of 444 miles of city driving range between fill-ups (who cares about gas mileage in this realm?). Standard techno-toys include intuitive park assist, fully adaptive LED headlamps, a 19-speaker Mark Levinson audio system, and all-wheel drive with a Torsen center differential.
From Old Blighty comes Jaguar's all-aluminum Super V8-the stretch-limo version of the supercharged XJR and the polar opposite of the Lexus. Sure, similar tech is available here, including radar cruise control, voice control, and a touch-screen nav/computer, but this car, mildly restyled inside and out for 2008, is all about olde worlde charm. It's stuffed to brimming with the sort of inlaid wood and leather furniture that decorates St. Andrews Hall. Italy's exotic entry is the Maserati Quattroporte. Introduced for 2004 with perhaps a bit too much Ferrari DNA, it finally gets a civilized six-speed automatic, though masochists can still choose the herky-jerky robotized manual Duo-Select option. We went for the Sport GT version, with its more athletic 20-inch footwear, but this car is all about having it your way. There are three model series available with myriad paint, leather, and wood trim choices. Germany's entry was tougher to pick. BMW's Alpina B7 was an option, but the current 7 Series is on its way out and recruiting voter/drivers willing to contend with its cantankerous iDrive was difficult, so it was axed. Audi's Lambo-V-10-powered S8 is another compelling choice, but its 59/41 weight distribution and all-wheel drive mute the handling a bit, and its bodywork is perhaps conservative to a fault. So we invited the tech-savvy and slightly outr Mercedes-Benz S550. New for 2007, it pushes the tech envelope with a seven-speed automatic and options like Night-View Assist and Distronic cruise control that'll brake to a stop and accelerate off again automatically in traffic.
So with that introduction to the players, let's strap on an attitude and hit the highways to see which of these bucks-up bruisers gives our ego the biggest boost.
Our quest started off in southern Orange County with a long freeway slog offering plenty of time to soak up the ambiance of each car, fiddle with the controls, and sample the sound systems. It didn't take many miles for these cars to imprint their unique personalities on us. Thanks to new acoustic glass, an air-tight seal around the hood, and improved sound-dampening materials, the Jaguar's drawing-room cockpit was noticeably quieter than the others. Yes, quieter even than that of the Lexus, which wears summer-rated Dunlop SP Sport Maxx 101 tires that generate noticeable road noise and go clippity-clop over expansion joints. (The Jag was alone in wearing four-season footwear.) Lexus and Jag both use touch screens to control navigation, while Mercedes and Maserati opt for the mouse-knob approach. The Lexus may be the easiest to work with, because of the large number of auxiliary buttons provided, but these clutter the center stack and console for a busy, less luxurious appearance that's not helped by the LS 600hL's strange maroon-hued wood trim. Cruising at 75 mph, the Lexus's econo gauge needle rests on the border between "Power" and "Economy" as the 19 Mark Levinson speakers delight the ear with perhaps the sweetest tones in this group.
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