The new S-Klasse is the absolute star of the 1991 Geneva Motor Show, where the press days begin on March 5th. Meanwhile, preparations are underway for trail-driving in the south of France, journalists registered in the Geneva halls will be able to travel to Cannes in the coming days to experience the freshest S-Klasse.
The 61st Geneva Motor Show opened on Tuesday, many journalists have already witnessed the new S-Klasse on the stand, but it is static. Don’t worry, Mercedes knows how to satisfy thristy journalists and is ready to quickly drive and silence picky critics. The venue far away in Cannes Carlton Hotel will be under construction until the weekend, and it will become the camp for the trail-driving launch. The reason for choosing Cannes may be simple. It is March and needs a warm place. Cannes is famous for its film festival, but right now instead of movies come two months later, the spotlight is on a state-of-the-art Mercedes.
The Schedule
The trail-driving launch is a two-day, one-night journey. The first day is pretty short. According to arrangement, the journalists will arrive at Nice Airport northeast of Cannes at 16:30 on a Mercedes flight, where dozens of new S-Klasse are waiting in the parking lot, eager to be driven. After 10 days of construction, the first group of reporters arrived on the afternoon of Monday, March 11.
They get the keys and cars at airport then travel to the Carlton Hotel in Cannes via motorway, B roads and along the coastline. Flights were just a form of transportation provided by Mercedes, some of the automotive journalists also chose to show up directly at the hotel, bringing their teams or even fleets. Yes, some journalists drove all the way from Munich with their competing products borrowed from BMW. Some even brought Lexus.
After a rest in the hotel, there will be an S-Klasse exhibition with welcome and cocktails in the lobby at 18:30. After a short static appreciation, a press conference and discussion will be held at 19:00, and dinner will be served an hour later. If the journalists are still energetic, there is a Mercedes-Benz bar on the beach opposite the hotel. With cars on the hotel lawn, even tourists can be lucky enough to spot new stars.
More driving possibilities began the next day. Journalists will have breakfast and check out in the morning. Starting at 8:00, test cars shall be waiting in front of the hotel and are to be driven on arecommended test route to the west. The selected test track in the Maritime Alps around Le Muy offered ideal conditions: narrow, winding, with transverse waves, depressions in the ground and steep gradients and inclines. The destination is the Pennafort relay station. The route Mercedes recommends is a circuit around Pennafort and by motorway to Puget toll, with provision for turning.
From there journalists will be able to test drive a variety of different vehicles or visit, along with Mercedes engineers, the small technology exhibition situated on the groundfloor of the relay station. From 11:00, buffet lunch at Pennafort relay station. For this event, Mercedes involved in the rebuild of a restaurant near Draguignan, north of Saint-Tropez, with a new kitchen and new furniture, creating a coffee break station. The address is Gorges de Pennafort, near Callas, the old dedicated stage for the Monte Carlo Rally a few years ago. The restaurant is still busy today.
In 1989, Maurice Garrassin bought the estate with from the Army. In early 90, he decided to create a hotel restaurant and entrusted his daughter with the restoration. The establishment first opened for the launch of the new S-Klasse: the journalists from around the world left the Carlton in Cannes to discover the qualities of the sumptuous limousine and met in Pennafort to enjoy a snack. In 1994 Hostellerie des Gorges de Pennafort became a Michelin-starred restaurant.
Bruno Sacco took a photo here during the Cannes trail-driving launch 1991. Just outside the windshield is the Hostellerie des Gorges de Pennafort.
At 14:30 return with test cars on recommended route to Nice airport (yesterday’s starting point) . Hand overtest cars to test carpersonnel. 17:00 Farewell in the Restaurant “Pullman- Bar” at Nice air-port. Approx.17:20, return flight. In the slightly more than 24 hours of interaction with the new S-Klasse, the journalists were able to get enough first impression.
The event runs for two weeks. This means that every day, journalists arrive and leave on the same plane as the previous day’s arrivals. More than 800 are registered in Geneva. Mercedes’ press department has done quite a bit of hard work for this event, including getting the support of the French police on traffic-related issues – their gaze on the new S-Klasse will be unnecessarily harsh, as many journalists want to drive aggressively to see what progress Mercedes has made.
The Fleet
A few months ago, the press department and Sindelfingen plant had clarified all the incalculable issues. The vehicles were carefully prepared for the event: 53 new S-Klasse with various engine and equipment variants were ready on time in Cannes. Each journalist must be guaranteed a car to drive every day, so 53 cars can guarantee 53 journalists. This actually determines that only 800 lucky journalists can drive the S-Klasse in two weeks, and the others can only visit Stuttgart later.
Producing these cars was almost the first task after the ex-R107 plant received all the necessary parts, the earliest of them were produced in December 1990 and the latest in January 1991. Semi-manually rather than mass-produced, each car was carefully calibrated. The specs of each car were chosen by the press department, different colors, different engines, different options. From manual 6 cylinders with fabric trim to V12 leather 4 seaters, everyone’s imagination was satisfied as much as possible. Of course, the power distribution was quite ideal, 12 of 300s, 7 of 400s, 17 of 500s, and 17 of 600s. To be fair, it is only possible to change to other models at the Pennafort relay station. There were enough V12s to fight for, as for which journalists could get a V12, luck was the key.
However, the “final development” was not yet completed. After some failures in the early version of the oil pump, the Cannes team had to dismantle all 44 automatic transmission vehicles overnight and replace the early version of the oil pump (400 bar) with the latest version (440 bar). The main team processed 8 cars per night, so after 5 nights the fleet was safe.Maintenance work was carried out by the Mercedes branch in Nice. Of course the site was full of development staff who were involved in both maintenance and technical presentations. The Mercedes press team also took the opportunity to focus their cameras on the cars to get more photos.
All vehicles were assigned license plates from S-KV 9001 to S-KV 9053, colors and options of each vehicle can be easily seen through the table corresponding to the license plate number. Although the routes were relatively fixed, in order to avoid similar content, reporters tried their best to go to different places to do different types of reports within a limited time. A few days later, many of the cars photographed in Cannes appeared on the covers of magazines around the world.
Peter Viererbl, head of the domestic car press office, summed up his impressions as follows: “The journalists were surprised by the outstanding driving qualities of the S-Klasse on the test track that we had deliberately set out to be demanding, and quickly corrected any critical comments that had been made beforehand. What was particularly surprising was the vehicle’s maneuverability, which reminded many journalists of the way we handle our middle class.”
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