• Not a cheap car to buy or run
• S500 is the most reasonable
• AMG cars will prove far costlier

The Mercedes-Benz S-Class Cabriolet is not going to be a cheap car to insure, tax or fuel, whichever of the three variants you choose.

Cheapest road tax comes courtesy of the S500, which is also the most frugal with a promised 32.5mpg. Pick the S63 or S65 and this number drops to 28mpg and 23.5mpg respectively, along with a hike in VED costs.

Regardless of which badge your S-Class comes with, you can expect that fuel economy figure to plummet if you drive it the way it was intended to be driven.

The Mercedes-Benz S-Class Cabriolet is not a green car. Even the S500 puts out 204-212g/km of CO2 (depending on wheel choice) and the AMG cars clock in at 237g/km and 272g/km for the S63 and S65.

• Solid build quality
• Lots of gadgets to go wrong

Mercedes-Benz has a good reputation for reliability and while the S-Class is often seen as a groundbreaker in terms of technology, lots of the gadgets used here are present in many other cars too.

The only major recall for the S-Class as a whole so far is for the stop/start system, and the AMG powerplants are hand-built with a meticulous attention to detail.