New Cars Garage

Future of superior touring sedan
The future of Mercedes' touring sedan has arrived in its concept form at last weeks 2007 Frankfurt Motor Show. Now that Porsche has progressed immensely in developing its Panamera, Aston Martin has its luxury tourer Rapide in the works and archrival BMW showed their take on the four door coupe with the CS concept, Mercedes can not afford to lag behind.

The F 700 brings everything a luxury sedan should, it measures 5.17 meters in length and is packed to the rim with technological highlights from the Stuttgart automaker. Firstly the engine, Mercedes fitted a new 1.8 liter, forward pointing, four-cylinder DIESOTTO engine which consumes a mere 5.3 liters of gasoline per 100 km while emitting just 127 g/km of CO2. Next in line is the Pre-Scan suspension system which, as the name says, pre scans the road for uneven spots and will adjust the suspension accordingly for an even more comfortable journey.

Inside Mercedes fitted in a virtual operating assistant called the SERVO-HMI. This operating concept is the next sat-nav where you can 'discuss' the complex inputs like a navigation destination with an avatar or operate it by hand for more straight forward actions. In the rear Mercedes has introduced the Reverse seating arrangement so that the occupant can choose whether to face forward or backward.

Read on for the full press release.