A luxury saloon car

Model R 320 CD1

Price From £42,970

Top 134mph

Acceleration 0-62mph in 8.8

Consumption 30.4 mpg (combined)

CO2 246g/km (road tax band G)

At the Jürgen Klinsmann

On the stereo Last

En route for Baden

They’d rather walk Sir Charlton

You would call the R 320 a carrier, if that didn’t to be lowering its tone. After there are people and there are and this all-new six-seater Mercedes seems to have designed with only the kind of chauffeuring in mind. It make a suitable minibus for a exclusive Swiss private

Or you could see it collecting a footballer an airport. Either way, it is to convey its occupants in conditions of and space more conventionally with five-star hotels.

that a suite, in fact. The R 320 is – brazenly vast, in and in these notionally concerned even in an automatic diesel it pumps its carbon dioxide a rare insouciance. Parked on a street, the car appears to have from the Planet of the Eco-Unfriendly

Pedestrians seem to step round it, as if worried about might emerge from it, or in of being sucked into its

Yet the R 320 isn’t even pretending, to be some kind of rugged, stonewall-climbing, cross-country tractor. no spare wheel tagged to the boot, no fat around the wheel no nature-resistant cladding plastered to the end. It is, quite simply, disguise, a whopping great saloon car for six.

Or, as Mercedes prefer to put it, a Grand Tourer, though it’s not where sports come it, unless you specifically mean the of truck-racing. Touring, too, seem much to the point. likely bankers will buy the R 320 for wives, and their wives take their children to in it and then, having stopped off at on the way home, tether it carefully electronic gates.

All Mercedes loudly announce gladness to be German, but the R 320 is glad to be plus. I toyed with this noisy message by the flag of Germany from my model’s rear windows. that would be a statement to on English streets, as World Cup grips the land.

But I backed figuring that the people at would appreciate my returning the car a full set of wheels and at least of its glass intact.

This is, all, an expensive item to go putting in the way of danger. By fitting a few oddments, Mercedes managed to the value of my R 320 to just south of As they say in Germany, ker-ching.

That works out, at a cool £8,000 per passenger.

the R 320 doesn’t hide its costliness. it chats openly about capacity to afford it, which is what you want, if you are spending much on a car. Its interior is a spread of carefully graded and leathers.

Everyone gets a and four of you get access to fastidiously air and business-class legroom. The twin in the third row are, inevitably, cramped, but even these feel like Wyoming to who has recently flown with Airlines.

And, of course, in the now gesture towards adaptability, you can those back seats to some boot space, or the lot of them, in the event of I don’t what. Needing to stage an indoor basketball match,

All of which would surely only one’s rueful if the R 320 wasn’t, at the same time, so ugly. One wouldn’t want to go so far as to that this was Mercedes’ bid to the SsangYong Rhodius, notoriously Britain’s ugliest car in an online There is no arguing, though, the R 320 is no Brad Pitt.

I looked at it every angle I could and couldn’t make its ponderous and swollen lines add up to anything halfway attractive. I tried at the car through a squint, to see if it cohered any No joy.

This car is only handsome if you at it with eyes clamped and think of another car.

All the reason to be on the inside looking basking in the soft acoustics, on the cushy suspension, dimly the engine tug through its seven without drawing breath. The needless to say, is a peach achingly precise with bottom end to halt a charging Frankly, the R 320 only wants a TV and a bathroom and you could live in it.

At prices, you may have to.

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