Luxury is often measured in excess. After all, you probably don't need a 32-room mansion with its own cinema, bowling alley and racehorse hydrotherapy centre. But we've been trained to want pointlessly lovely things. And the new Mercedes-Benz AMG S-Class Coupe is a really rather brilliant pointlessly lovely thing.
Starting with the obvious, the S-Class Coupe is - as its name would suggest - a two-door, four-seat version of the luxurious S-Class, replacing the now-defunct CL. Initially, it comes powered by either a 4.6-litre bi-turbo V8 with 450bhp and 517lb ft in the S500, or as an AMG, with a 5.5-litre similarly bi-turbo 8cyl with 582bhp and 664lb ft. Neither of which is particularly anaemic. There are 4WD 4Matic options available in other markets, but in the UK, we'll only get RWD, Merc citing the usual conversion to right-hand-drive cost versus take-up argument. But no matter, with the AMG hitting 62mph in 4.3secs (the AWD manages a faintly ridiculous 3.9), it's still a very rapid two-tonne behemoth. So we're talking a Bentley Conti GT or BMW M6 Gran Coupe rival, with a definite grand-touring bent.
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If forced to make a decision on which to drive across Europe, I think I might be more tempted by the straight S500, which still delivers strong performance without the slight straining edge of the AMG, which definitely tempts you to illegality. It's also £29k cheaper at £96k, which is still a decent chunk of change, even at this end of the market. But saying that, the S-Coupe is what a flagship is all about: every conceivable piece of edge-cutting in a beautiful, slightly over-the-top format. It makes very little sense in practical terms, but is nonetheless a rather wonderful car.
Which leads me to the conclusion that nobody really needs a huge 2dr coupe with Swarovski crystals in the headlights, 582bhp and more computers than PC World, but as pointlessly brilliant things go, it doesn't get much better than this.