We Drive the Mercedes That Helped Shape the Brand’s Modern Luxury Sedans

In the pantheon of Mercedes-Benz greats, the W108/109 sedan flies below the radar, overshadowed by the glamorous and giant supercharged S models of the 1930s that came before it and by the generations of powerful, high-tech S-Class models that succeeded it. But the W108/109, launched in 1965, was a pivotal model. Just as the sporty and fun-to-drive 2002 became a touchstone car for BMW, this solid and discreetly luxurious sedan established a blueprint for the Mercedes brand that still holds true today.

Designed by Paul Bracq (who later went on to head BMW’s design studio), the W108/109 consigned to the dumpster the frumpy ’50s-lite design language of its predecessor, the W111/112 Fintail sedan. It’s a car that epitomized the clean, rectilinear design language Bracq had developed for the giant 600 limousine and the sublime SL Pagoda roadster. Compared with the Fintail, the W108/109 had a lower beltline and a glassier greenhouse—the windshield alone was 17 percent bigger—and rode 2.4 inches closer to the tarmac. Larger doors opened into an airy and spacious interior. It was a carefully considered car, one comfortably in tune with the modernist zeitgeist of the early ’60s but with a quiet opulence that appealed to the growing number of successful business managers and burgomeisters who could afford it.

More than 383,000 W108/109 sedans were built between 1965 and 1972. The volume selling model was the W108. The more luxurious W109 had a longer wheelbase and air suspension and from 1968 on would be available with the 247-hp 6.3-liter V-8 developed for the flagship 600 limo. While it accounted for just 6 percent of total sales, the W109 was the world’s fastest four-door sedan for a time and effectively formed the raw material for the birth of AMG.

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Designing a New Mercedes for a New Era

The car I’m about to drive, a 250SE built in 1967, is the fourth most popular W108 variant built, with more than 55,000 sold from August 1965 until January 1968, when its 2.5-liter overhead-cam straight-six was replaced with a larger 2.8-liter engine and the car rebadged as the 280SE. The E in the 250SE suffix stands for einspritzung, which is German for fuel injection (both the 2.5-liter and 2.8-liter sixes fitted to entry-level W108s were fed by a pair of Zenith carburetors). The mechanical Bosch fuel injection system boosted the carbed 2.5-liter engine’s outputs from 128 hp and 143 lb-ft of torque to 147 hp at 5,500 rpm and 159 lb-ft at 4,200 rpm.

There’s a delicious analog heft to the 250SE. You see it when you lift the hood to find an engine bay filled with industrial-strength machinery, not plastic shrouds. You feel it in the mechanical action of the latches when you press the button to open the door. It’s all around you as you settle into the XXL bucket seat behind a giant steering wheel and dash where all that glitters is chromed metal and all that looks like wood came from a tree.

So, the gear lever between the front seats comes as something of a surprise. It’s not just that it’s been decades since luxury cars were sold with manual transmissions—the last I can recall testing were the 2.9-liter Jaguar XJ40 I drove in Scotland 40 years ago and the E32 BMW 735i I hustled along a German autobahn at 140 mph just a week later—but the long and spindly shaft seems impossibly delicate for a car that otherwise looks and feels so solid. As I quickly discover, the 250SE’s four-speed manual is not a transmission that can be rushed. The shifter’s throw is l-o-o-o-ng and the gate wider than Montana, so it’s best to just relax and go with the flow.

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Contemporary road tests suggest that back in its prime, the manual 250SE could accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in about 11.4 seconds, which is awfully leisurely by today’s standards. That’s not to say the old Benz is slow, however. The engine’s power delivery is smooth, and for a 60-year-old sedan it flows nicely down the road, the supple independent suspension and high-sidewall Michelin MXV tires on 14-inch steelies endowing it with impressive comfort and enough composure to maintain decent momentum on a bumpy, winding road. And back in the day its 118-mph top speed not only aced that of any contemporary six-cylinder American sedan but also allowed it to cruise Germany’s autobahns at a relaxed 100 mph all day long.

The low beltline and thin pillars mean the view through the windshield is excellent, and those long and straight front fenders are perfect for aiming the 250SE through gaps in traffic or around corners. Unusually for a European car of this era, it has power steering, though the yacht-size steering wheel and old-school Mercedes-Benz recirculating-ball steering box means you’re moving your arms a lot more than you would in a modern car when wafting the old Benz through the twisties. That said, the 250SE is very easy to drive; this is not a tricky classic that takes a lot of getting used to. And although it feels noticeably more vintage than the W116 S-Class that replaced it in 1972, it’s still a classic you could comfortably use as a daily driver.

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The DNA of the S-Class, Still Intact

It’s fascinating to note engineers started work on developing the W116 S-Class within two years of this 250SE rolling off the line at Mercedes-Benz’s storied Sindelfingen factory. The W116 bowed several innovations based on work done at the Mercedes safety research department, which was established at Sindelfingen that year. These included a collision-protected fuel tank, a four-spoke safety steering wheel, A-pillars designed to keep the side windows clean, and dirt-repelling, ribbed taillights. In 1974, the 450SEL 6.9 model boasted a 282 hp, 6.9-liter version of the 600’s V-8 that, for a fully loaded luxury car with an automatic transmission, delivered a scarcely believable 0 to 60 mph acceleration time of 7.2 seconds and a top speed of 140 mph. In 1978, the W116 became the world’s first volume production car fitted with antilock brakes.

Contemporary XJ Jaguars may have been more raffishly sporty, but the W116 was comfortable and bulletproof. From the clear instrumentation to the shift gate that allowed you to manually select gears quicker than any other auto, this was a car created by engineers who cared about driving. Fast and safe, high-tech and lavishly equipped, the W116 S-Class made the famous Fintail launched 13 years earlier look and feel like a plodding dinosaur. The W108/109 sedan, with its quiet elegance and smooth, comfortable ride, was conspicuously premium in its approach. But to the newly affluent middle class of the late 1960s, it was also relatively affordable and a car that proved to be a key evolutionary step for Mercedes. You can feel the nascent S-Class DNA in its bones.

Though under threat from a burgeoning wave of luxury SUVs, the S-Class of today (the latest model has just launched) remains, as it has been for decades, the world’s bestselling large luxury sedan—a car whose core attributes continue to define the essence of the Mercedes-Benz brand. The W108/109 was the car that helped Mercedes figure out that winning formula.