Lived for a year with the W220 S500 and have some things to tell you about it.
Most of them are with a very big smile on my face as the car is astonishing.
This car was a one one person car, owned and driven from the factory until i bought it. Only 160.000km with full servicehistory.
I had all the ordinary problems (issued) 🙂 to the 2000 modelyear (early W220´s), except for the airmaticsuspension.
Nothing to write home about, I fixed the faults as one should on a daily driver.
Airmassmeter, changed it myself, this is a 45min operation for a inexperienced mechanic. Just search on the Mercedesforums for detailed instructions on how to perform such an operation, it´s fairly easy.
Crankshaftsensor changed changed it myself. App.30 minutes. Same there search the forums on How-To.
The car is very quiet and well balanced, where you point it it goes. But you can feel that its a Cruiser not a Racer.
Xenon headlights delivers super nice lighting of the road.
I had bad, old, hard and studless wintertyres on so the grip wintertime was not much to hooray about.
Nighttime instrumentation is very sharp and well done. It is very intuitive and all the buttons seem to be in the right place.
I upgraded the Navigation software and it gave me good service at all times.
No ventilation in the seats though unfortunately. I have later owned many W220s and can tell you that it is a good option to have, BUT you can live without it.
There are fans inside the seat that drags air through the seat and creates ventilation around your body and thereby dissapates some heat.
NO ACTIVE COOLING (I had to say that because there are many people that are sure that there is an AC built in to the seats..)
I bought the car in Hamburg Germany and imported it to Sweden.
To bad the selfdimming mirrorglass is very expensive to replace (the price i was quoted from mercedes was around $400). When it works it is a very good feature in the dark when cars behind blind you with their headlights.
The Walnut wood is to die for
Built in phone and Distronic worked as a charm as well even i Sweden with GSMnet.
ZAS made the V8 very economic on the freeway. But if you are out for ecenomy this car is not for you.
The best instrument cluster is probably the most beautiful i have ever experienced.
The Airmatic (Shockbutton second one from the left) has 3 different settings
1. No lights on [Default setting]
2. 1 light on Somewhat harder setting
3. Very hard setting, the car also lowers by 15mm. This also happens when the car passes 120km/h or 140km/h.
Please write me a mail and tell me which speed is the correct one!
The next button [car with arrow inside] is rideheight, pressing this raises the car by 25mm for e.g.rough terrain.
The Airmatic system is NOT to be confused with the ABC system (Active Body Control) (ABC is more like a much more advanced kind of suspension that even adjusts settings on the move such as in curves, braking and accelerating)
The plate in the lower part of the grill is due to the car being equipped with the Distronic. The radar unit looks through this.
Button in gearselector is because of the KeylessGO option [Start/Stop]. Left front button is for sound on/off for Distronic´s acoustic warning signals and the adjustment below it is where you set the distance to the car in front of you.
This adjustment was later placed in the Tempomat stick (on the left side of the steering wheel, above the turnsignal stick) from 2003- (Later models have the Tempomat stick under the turnsignal stick)
