MOM'S TAXI TEST - MERCEDES-BENZ R300:
When I was younger, I used to see frazzled looking moms driving station wagons around town with hordes of kids in the back. Often I'd pity them: what a life! How suburban the whole scenario looked, why would anyone subject themselves to that…
Ja well, hurtle forward a couple of decades, and there's me, trundling around in a station wagon, hordes of kids in the back. With me looking frazzled, in the driver's seat. How ironic.
The difference - the big difference, mind you - was that I was cruising silently in the upgraded Mercedes-Benz 300 R-Class. It's a vehicle I hadn't experienced before, so was an entirely new kettle of fish.
It's astonishingly big, and long: apparently the previous six-seater set-up has been done away with, and the car is now offered in short-wheel-base five-seater and long-wheel-base seven-seater configurations.
When I looked at pictures of the previous model, I thought this latest version a whole lot nicer, though, with a friendlier face, slicker butt (new lights and bumper), and a heck of a sleek profile.
Although I loved the actual driving experience, with the car being so incredibly silent and smooth (you'll find it very fast when you put your foot down), and handling so beautifully, I'm not sure it's the type of vehicle I'd opt for. Even if I had five kids.
I would probably go for something sportier, more practical. Despite the excellent turning circle, I really noticed the length when manoeuvring into parking slots at the supermarket, and the rear tended to jut out quite a bit.
It's an expensive boat, the particular R300 I was driving coming in at around R585 400, with the top of the range R500 4Matic going for a rather whopping R858 340.
The 3-litre petrol V6 petrol engine is magnificently powerful (170kW at 6000rpm, 300Nm at 2500-5000rpm), the car's interior, as you'd expect, boasting top-of-the-range opulence, and brimful of everything that opens and shuts, complete with all of the safety features you need.
Say the folks at Mercedes: "Building a generously dimensioned car is one thing. But combining legendary standards of comfort with high agility it not something very many manage at this level. The new R-Class impresses with dynamism of a calibre you wouldn't necessarily expect of a car with these proportions. But a Mercedes is the exception."
I'm with them on that. And I agree with them when they say "there are palaces aplenty, but only a select few have four wheels".
Truthfully though, it might be a mind-blowing family car for long-distance travelling, from say Durbs to Cape Town, but as a daily family runaround?
Yet the school moms loved it. So did the children. In fact my daughter was desperate for us to keep it forever.
So who knows? When my ship finally arrives, I might consider the "palace with four wheels" as a second car. That's after I've bought my first one, which is likely to be sized more along the lines of a bachelor flat than the Taj Mahal!