"Oh my gosh," my mother said as I changed the ambient light setting in the Mercedes-Benz S550 we were sitting in the front seats of from white to red. "What is this for? A drug dealer?"
I switched to another option (her favorite color) and the entire cabin was bathed in a sea of purple. "Amazing. It's quite something."
But her reaction to the Mercedes flagship's lighting accents paled in comparison to what she thought of the car's massage function, which includes six options including two heated massage choices for the back and shoulders.
"I would just sit in the car and not move," she said as we sat in the car parked in the driveway outside the house I grew up in in Connecticut. "Are you still being massaged? I'm on the active workout one now."
In addition to the very satisfying massage function, I was struck by a couple of other nifty features. When parallel parking on the street outside a restaurant, I started to turn the wheel and back into a spot and the car asked if I wanted it to take over. I tapped a button and immediately felt as if I had entered the future. I gave the car a little gas and the wheel began turning on its own. When it reached its intended closeness to the curb, the car of the future asked me to put it into drive (a feature that's presumably in place to ensure the driver hasn't dozed off after a massage). I did so and it turned its own wheel in the other direction to pull forward completely into the parking spot. It was the same sensation as driving through a car wash when the conveyor belt takes over and guides your car through, but obviously on a much higher, more advanced level.
Steering Assist is another feature that makes a driver feel as if his job on the road is becoming more and more obsolete. Using cameras mounted on the windshield, an adaptive cruise control function reduced the speed of the car to maintain a safe buffer zone with a slower-traveling Hyundai that pulled out in front of me (I was testing the veracity of the car's estimated 0-60 mph time of 4.8 seconds), and on curves the steering assist actively guided the steering wheel to the right or left to get around the bend. At one point, I took my hands off the wheel completely to see how Genius Car would fare. It did fine for a few seconds, managing a slight curve in I-95 all on its own before displaying a stern warning on the dashboard (a symbol showing red hands and a steering wheel) to put my hands back where they belonged.
When I drove the car to my girlfriend's house, her parents had just seen it featured in a commercial during the Masters.
"What's the scent?" they wanted to know. We checked the glove compartment and discovered the perfume being pumped into the cabin that afternoon was Freeside Mood, which Mercedes describes as "an unobtrusive but present citrus scent, very rounded, without any rough edges." Other offerings include fragrances based on the themes Sports, Nightlife, and Downtown Moods, the last of which, the auto maker says, has a "transparent floweriness with a subtle metal effect, pleasantly sexy thanks to warm musk tones," and is "the most feminine of the scents with a hint of powdery, sensual tones."
In the couple of days I was fortunate enough to drive the top-of-the-line Mercedes, it surpassed all my expectations. It makes drivers feel as if they needn't worry about much of anything, let alone traffic concerns. Driving up to Connecticut after watching the Yankees play the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium, the car's GPS routed me north on I-87 instead of directing me straight to I-95. I thought the detour was strange, since I-95 is a direct route from the Bronx to my town on the shoreline, so I checked Google Maps on my iPhone. Sure enough, a major accident had delayed traffic on I-95 and the S550 had rerouted my path to avoid it and get me to my destination as quickly as possible.
Sitting with my mom on the night before I was to drive back to New York, I asked if she liked having the double moonroofs open while she got her massage in the fully reclined front seat.
"Yes, I could sit here forever," she said. "But we have to go inside. I have to go do the dishes."
