lease on my 2021 A8 L 55 is up in January and i am not keeping it. 39k miles and most of that is I-94 and I-90. Madison to the Twin Cities, Madison to Chicago, sometimes Des Moines. territory sales, so the car is basically my office four days a week.
the A8 has been fine. quiet, great seats. what i don't like is the 48 volt system, it threw an electrical system warning twice last winter below zero and both times the dealer found nothing. i do not want to learn what that is at 60k on my own dime.
shortlist for a two or three year old car, paying cash or close to it:
W223 S500 4MATIC, 2021 or 2022, 25 to 35k miles. i'm seeing 58 to 66k.
G90 3.3T AWD, first gen, 2020 or 2021, low 40s.
LS 500 AWD, 2021, high 40s to low 50s.
what i care about is noise at 75 on grooved concrete and how my back feels after five hours. and not getting stranded in Eau Claire in February. the back seat doesn't matter, nobody sits there. who has put real miles on more than one of these?
2020 G90 3.3T AWD here, 51k on it now, bought it at 20k. i do Cedar Rapids to Minneapolis a lot on 380 and 35.
honest take. it's the quietest of your three on coarse concrete. i've ridden in a friend's LS on the same stretch and the LS lets in more tire roar, probably the run flats. the seats are soft in a good way for about three hours and then my lower back starts talking. the infotainment is two generations behind the Benz and you will hate the nav after a week. in 31k miles i've done oil, tires, and one wiper motor under warranty.
the part nobody tells you: resale is ugly. you'd be buying on the right side of that, which is the point.
master tech at a Benz store in the cities, so grain of salt, i mostly see the broken ones.
W223 S500 is the M256 inline six with the integrated starter generator on 48 volts. good engine. the 2021 build cars had a pile of software updates, MBUX freezing, rear screens rebooting, some keyless entry weirdness. almost all of it got flashed out. if you buy one, run the VIN for open recalls on nhtsa.gov and have a dealer confirm the software level. a carfax won't tell you that.
for your use i wouldn't worry about the powertrain. i'd worry about the 48 volt battery and the 12 volt that lives next to it. cars that sit outside at -20 and do short hops get grumpy. cars that do 300 highway miles a day are the happiest cars i see.
ride at 75, the S on Airmatic beats the other two and it isn't close, especially with rear axle steering. more parts to break, though.
side question, sorry. has anyone priced running a Flying Spur V8 at those kinds of miles? 2020 and 2021 ones in Denver are listed at the price of a new S-Class and i can't tell if that's a trap or a deal.
for 30k a year it's a trap. brakes on those are a four figure day and tires for 21s wear fast. a guy i know in Hinsdale has a 2020 V8 and his first year out of warranty ran a hair under 9 grand with nothing broken, just service and consumables.
back to the A8 guy. whatever you buy, if it has air springs, budget for them around 80 to 100k. i did a front strut on my W222 last winter and that's the whole reason i'm on this forum. the first gen G90 has adaptive dampers on steel springs, which counts in its favor for you.
drove all of them over the weekend. the Lexus store in Madison had an LS, i found a G90 in Rockford, and a Mercedes store in Schaumburg let me take a 2022 S500 on the tollway for 40 minutes.
it's the quietest of your three on coarse concrete
agreed on concrete, the G90 surprised me. the S was quieter at 80 and far more planted in the crosswind on the Fox River bridge. the LS lost for me. seat is too firm and there's a boom around 1,800 rpm in 10th that would drive me nuts by Tomah.
leaning S500. but the gap to a G90 is 20 grand and that buys a lot of Airmatic struts.
any news? if you went G90, the lumbar thing i fixed with a 40 dollar mesh back support from Menards. embarrassing in a car like that, but the five hour drives are fine now.
