Modern history is littered with glorious technical failures. Huge new leaps that got the full backing of Judith Hann on Tomorrow’s World and then wound up as an oxbow lake, stagnating as the river of progress found a new and better course.

You may, for instance, remember the laser disc. It was a 1ft-wide silver record which, said the geeks, would replace the videocassette. I damn nearly bought one, at vast expense, even though there were a few drawbacks. Like you couldn’t record anything on it, and any fast-moving image always “ghosted”, which was a bit of a problem because the only film originally available on laser disc was the very fast-moving Top Gun.

Before this, there was the saga of Betamax. Technically superior to the standard videocassette, it is still used by television companies as the medium on which programmes are recorded. Many people bought Beta machines, but then the American porn industry decided to go with the VCR and as a result they were left with square holes into which the round peg of expedience wouldn’t fit.

Even the dawn of television was similarly blighted. To begin with you had a choice of buying a Baird set, which at the time cost quite a lot more than a car, or an electronic television that had been spawned in the mind of Philo T Farnsworth in America.

Even the BBC couldn’t make up its mind and decided to show both. One week you had electronic TV and the next you got Baird. So which was the public supposed to buy? You had to hold your finger up to the wind to decide, though it might have been more prudent to smell it instead, because then you might have caught a whiff of the fire that destroyed the Baird studios and handed the airwaves to the (superior as it turned out) American system.

Do you mind if I slide in one more example? How were Thomas Telford’s investors to know as he designed and built the world’s first suspension bridge across the Menai Strait to Anglesey that lurking in the mind of a northern inventor called George Stephenson was the steam train, and that the new bridge would be rendered useless by the weight of a locomotive.

Oh, how Stephenson’s son must have gloated as he built the world’s first box-girder bridge slap next door to Telford’s pretty but useless original. Useless that is, until the car came along.

Today the pace of progress is so fast that it’s almost impossible to keep up. I, for instance, bought an early MP3 player because I sort of knew a computerised pocket jukebox was bound to be The Next Big Thing. And I’m not joking about this, I hadn’t even got it out of its box before the iPod breezed into town and rendered it obsolete.

I have one grey box with a plug and flashing LEDs in a drawer in my office. I bought it three years ago, I have never used it, and now I have absolutely no idea what it was supposed to do in the first place.

Of course, there are many magazines on the shelves that attempt to keep us abreast of what’s about to happen with computers and cameras and so on, but they don’t know any more than we do. Tomorrow’s World, for instance, never saw the mobile phone coming. They were too busy enthusing about an engine that ran on dung.

Happily, in the world of cars there is no need to waste your money on fads that are going nowhere, because there is a comforting pointer that explains to us all which trends are here to stay and which are a waste of money. It’s called the Mercedes-Benz S-class.

The S-class was the first car to be fitted with antilock brakes. It was the first with traction control, disc brakes, three-point seatbelts, crumple zones, airbags and power-assisted steering. When a new S-class hoves into view, you need only look at the technology that lurks under its vast bulk and you’ll know precisely what will be fitted to the Ford Fiesta 10 years down the line.

So what are we getting on the new S-class that will arrive in Britain next spring? Well, infrared headlamps, for a kick off. This idea was tried by Cadillac recently but it didn’t really work because a rock is exactly the same temperature as the road. So if there was a boulder dead ahead the Caddy’s infrared wouldn’t “see” it. The system on the Mercedes can.

When you’re driving on dipped beam, and on average at night you’re on dipped beam for 98% of the time, the infrared is seeing way beyond the range of the conventional light.

It’s seeing through the glare of oncoming headlamps and what it’s seeing is shown on a screen on the dash.

Other than this, you get a safety system that boggles the mind. Apparently there are so many airbags in a modern car that if they all go off there’s a serious problem with air displacement. The pressure becomes so high so fast that everyone walks away with burst eardrums. If you have an accident in the new S-class the windows are lowered slightly so the air can escape. Unless you have the accident when they’re down. As soon as you hit the brakes hard and the car senses a crash may be imminent, the windows will begin to rise, thus reducing the chances of an arm or a child being thrown out the car in the impact.

Already BMW, Jaguar and Audi will be working away trying to incorporate similar technology on their flagship cars.

And each will undoubtedly succeed just as the next S-class comes along. The S-class, then, is always ahead. And yet...

It’s been said that the Vauxhall Corsa is what you buy if you want to demonstrate you know nothing about cars. I disagree. What you want is the Mercedes flagship. I was tooling around in a long-wheelbase twin-turbo V12 S 600 last week and it completely failed to tickle my tickly bits. I felt like a chairman in a tool. And that made me feel like a tool in a chairman. I felt like I was in a car designed to be as comfortable and as quiet and as safe as is humanly possible, but by chasing these goals the essence of car-ness has been lost. Oh, sure, the air-conditioned seats massage your back and the on-board computer reacts to your voice commands, but something’s missing.

I note that BMW has recently launched a Sport version of its enormous V12 750i and obviously that’s stupid. Who wants a sporty limo? But we do want some element of sportiness, some sense that we are in a car. We need to be reminded why it was that, as boys, we stuck pictures of cars on our bedroom wall and not pictures of computers and wiring.

Technically speaking, the long-wheelbase Jaguar XJ8 is about 100 miles behind the current S-class leave alone the next one, and yet emotionally it’s more satisfying. It’d be this I’d choose if I were squandering shareholder dividends on a big set of wheels.

Let me put it this way. Mercedes talk at great length about the trailblazing wizardry of the new S-class but don’t make any mention at all of its heart and soul: its engine. It’s almost as if they admit it’s gone as far as it will go and that no further development is possible.

But hang on a minute. If the S-class really is a pointer to the future, and history teaches us that this is certainly the case, then why is it not fitted with a hybrid engine under the bonnet, one of those part-electric, part-internal-combustion units that’s wooing Hollywood’s right-on elite at present.

We can only deduce that this technology is a non-starter. And that those who are buying Priuses and the new Lexus RX400h are actually buying eight-track Baird TVs with an inbuilt Betamax player and a slot for a laser disc.

You have been warned.

VITAL STATISTICS

Model Mercedes S 600 L
Engine 12 cylinders, 5513cc
Power 500bhp @ 5000rpm
Torque 589 lb ft @ 1800rpm
Transmission Five-speed auto
Fuel 19.1mpg (combined)
CO2 355g/km
Acceleration 0-62mph: 4.8sec
Top speed 155mph
Price £94,255
Verdict The future face of motoring ... yawn
Rating 3/5

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