2014 Mercedes-Benz S-Class Sets New Satisfaction Benchmark

It's taken four years, but there's finally a new leader atop the all-time leaderboard for the AutoPacific Vehicle Satisfaction Awards: The 2014 Mercedes-Benz S-Class has claimed that honor, dislodging the 2011 Hyundai Sonata after a four-year reign.

Now, on the odd chance folks don't remember the Sonata's surprising victory, it came as the next-gen model was just hitting the market, and AutoPacific's customer feedback that year made it the highest-scoring vehicle ever in the group's annual Vehicle Satisfaction Awards. The AutoPacific experts were so impressed that they created a new President's Award to mark the occasion, but no other vehicle was able to top the Sonata's score until the 2014 Mercedes-Benz S-Class came along.

Yet it's just one in a long list of honors for the car, which does a nice job in living up to its positioning as not just M-B's range-topper, but the industry's as well. The 2015 Mercedes-Benz S-Class is chock-full of just about every amenity imaginable, from a headliner that can mimic the starry night sky to a stellar new automatic damping system. The latter technology actually can adjust the car's driving dynamics in advance of changes in the road, courtesy of sophisticated stereo-camera technology that can "read" the driving surface ahead.

And if all that wasn't satisfying enough, the automaker also re-launched the 2014 Mercedes-Benz S-Class Coupe to cap off the roster. As explained by Ola Källenius, member of the Board of Management, Sales and Marketing for Mercedes-Benz Cars, the coupe is "As exclusive as it gets—the ultimate in aesthetic sportiness.

"The breathtaking design of the Concept S-Class Coupe marked by sporty-classic proportions and sensual purity is transferred to the series-production S-Class Coupe virtually unaltered. The large coupe has always been the supreme pinnacle of our model range and that's why it's now called the 'S-Class' again."

(Note: This year's AutoPacific Vehicle Satisfaction Awards were based on input regarding 50 different facets of the ownership experience, drawn from more than 92,000 survey respondents.)