If you’re one of the few people out there in a dire need of both luxury and protection, Mercedes has recently started manufacturing their latest model from the bulletproof series, the 2015 S-Class Guard.
The special model’s production starts about a year after the “regular” S-Class started being manufactured in Sindelfingen, where the crown jewel of Mercedes-Benz car-building sites is situated.
For those interested, the S-Class Guard is hand-built on two floors of the Sindelfingen plant, where small-series production vehicles like the B-Blass Fuel Cell were also made until recently.
The car is currently manufactured along the still-in-production Mercedes-Benz S-Class Pullman (VF 221) and Guard variants of the E-Class (W212), M-Class (W166) and the G-Class (W463) – which until now benefits from the highest protection in the transparent areas, inline with ballistic protection levels 9 and 10.
Speaking of which, the new Mercedes-Benz S-Class Guard comes with armor that has the VR6/VR7 protection level, designated to withstand projectiles from military weapons that “travel twice as fast as bullets fired from a revolver,” plus shrapnel from hand grenades and other similar explosives.
To give you an idea, the windshield alone is about 10 cm thick and weighs about 135 kg (298 pounds), while 5 cm thick steel plates are added on most parts around the passenger cabin.
The new Mercedes-Benz S-Class Guard currently comes only as the S 600 Guard and it has an added cost of around 200,000 euros compared with the “regular” model.
By Alex Oagana
Photos: Daimler AG via MB Passion
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