Interesting. I recall when I was a teenager in the mid-60s we had a 220S
(or SE?)... (My late Dad had a very senior job for a German company outside
Europe. BTW we also had a large crate of spares shipped from Germany as
they were not available locally. Now some Mercs are assembled in that
country...)
Even from later times I only remember speaking about "an S", but it is too
long ago to remember details, and you (Jens) did say that "S Klasse" as an
expression was adopted in the early 70s.
Was it used in advertising?
I supposed the S in front was adopted at the same time when E, the suffix,
for Einspritz/injection became E, the prefix, for E Class, a completely
random designation but an elegant way of retaining the E, when the ubiquity
of direct injection rendered the description redundant. BMW similarly
droppped the "i" suffix.
DAS
--
To reply directly replace 'nospam' with 'schmetterling'
--
Post by DASWhen the "S" was a suffix on the number, did one actually speak of an "S
Klasse"?
DAS
To reply directly replace 'nospam' with 'schmetterling'
[..]
Right, the S- and SL-classes were called so for a long time. Others
were just the "standard" class until the 190 came. Then they started
calling the "standard" for the E-class and the 190 for the C-class.
And then looking backwards, the W123 was considered E-class (I have
seen a MB-poster lining up the various classes back in time).
Well, I am not an expert in these matters, but I looked i up.
The S stands for "Sonderklasse", which means something like
"Outstanding Class".
It began back in mid 1950's. Although the term S-Class was not
officially adopted at that time, it was used collegially when the
suffix S was used to identify the luxury models.
The so-called "Ponton" appeared with the same look in 3 body sizes
(W120-model180, W121-model 190 and W180-model 220). The S appeared
only with the largest model W180. It is discussed that W120 could be
considered C-Class, W121 E-Class and W180 S-Class of that time, but
since these class designations were not officially adopted, anything
or nothing is true or false.
The official adoption of the term S-Class came with the W116 in 1972
The official adoption of C- and E-Classes came in the 1990's when the
letter became prefix to the engine designation.