I’d been trudging up to the Alps chalet, my feet stopped in their snowy tracks. A glimmering gold W126 Mercedes-Benz S-Class sat on winter tires, with chains on the rears. It looked perfect.
Instantly I was transported to a garage in Fargo, N.D., that belonged to my grandparents, Grandpa and Nonnie as I called them. It was like…an out of body experience. But it didn’t last long.
“Are you OK?” a German Mercedes-Benz spokesperson asked in what surely was less time than it felt.
“Yeah, I’m good,” I said. “This car, it takes me back to another time and place.”
But I wasn’t here for the classic S-Class. I was on the side of a mountain in Austria after sleeping in a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter RV van, to then ride in a 2026 Mercedes-Benz CLA EV prototype.
But throughout the day I couldn’t stop thinking about that W126. It’s part of my family history.
Joel Feder washing the 1991 Mercedes-Benz 350 SDL
Grandpa’s W126 goes into the farm fields
I was only five when my grandpa, Paul Feder, died. My memories of him are limited, but (shocking no one) most include his last car: A custom-ordered blue-on-blue 1991 Mercedes-Benz 350 SDL.
To this day, somehow, I have a digital copy (surely thanks to my father) of the car’s window sticker. The Ice Blue Metallic on Blue S-Class arrived in the U.S. at the port of Baltimore and was prepped for delivery in Chicago. When my grandfather died in November of 1991 the car had 8,408 miles on the odometer. He loved that car.
From an early age I held to some of the same truths: Cars were meant to be treated with respect and revered as incredible feats of engineering.
Paul and Joel Feder
My grandfather, an accountant, owned commercial real estate along with farm land when he died, and would drive that car everywhere through everything.
A formative memory includes a trip to the farm in his diesel-burning Mercedes. We were driving down the gravel road between the fields when all of a sudden he turned abruptly and we were suddenly driving through the fields. I lost my mind and screamed, “we can’t be driving through the fields in this car!” I was five.
Ever the calm, cool, and collected wise man that he was, Paul Feder smiled and said, “it’s fine, Kitchik.” He called his grandchildren Kitchiks.
It was not fine. I was not fine. My mind could simply not comprehend the fact we were driving this stunning blue Mercedes through the field. But my grandfather didn’t think twice. I got to ride in the combine that day.
Joel Feder standing on the combine
When my grandfather died my grandmother, Nonnie, kept the car and made it her daily driver with my father buying her 1990 Audi V8 quattro (what a machine in the snow on Nokian Hakkapeliittas).
My grandfather’s automotive legacy lived on through my grandmother and my childhood. Nonnie drove the car year-round with it riding on winter tires in the snowy and very cold Fargo winters.
She took my sister Hannah and I to a movie during winter break once, and to ensure the diesel fuel didn’t gel in the cold snap she left the car idling in the parking lot the entire movie. I freaked out, saying, “Nonnie, someone’s going to steal the car!” Always calm, she said: “No, Dear (everyone was Dear), I’m locking it with the spare key.” And so she did with the hydraulic lock system going “clunk,” with the precision of a bank vault.
Betty Feder’s 2001 Audi A6 with a vanilla and blue interior
When Nonnie moved on from the W126 to what would be her final car, a Ming Blue on vanilla and blue 2001 Audi A6 4.2, the 350SDL was sold to a family friend. I saw it two more times before it met its final fate: It hit a deer. A sad end to a spectacular vehicle.
1988 Mercedes-Benz 300 SE known as the Goldkäppchen car
The Goldkäppchen W126 proves the past set the future
The gold W126 that stopped me in my tracks in Austria was a 1988 Mercedes-Benz 300 SE. The Champagne metallic paint glimmered and its clean Euro-spec headlights and tight bumpers, looked so elegant versus the uglier headlights and larger bumpers mandated for U.S.-spec cars. It had a roof rack with skis attached to fit the location.
At Mercedes-Benz it’s known as the Goldkäppchen car, with Goldkäppchen meaning Golden Red Riding Hood. This W126 is owned by Mercedes-Benz Classic, but it’s not officially part of the 1,100-car collection. “It’s too nice,” Mercedes-Benz Classic spokesperson Peter Becker told me.
Only two people, Becker and a colleague, take care of the Goldkäppchen car. It’s like an off-the-books sort of thing, despite being owned by Mercedes-Benz. It’s also the only car in the collection to get fitted with winter tires.
1988 Mercedes-Benz 300 SE known as the Goldkäppchen car
The previous owner, a meticulous German, had a thick stack of receipts for all the maintenance. When Becker and the team purchased the car it had lived with its previous owner for 10 years, but the rest of the car’s history is fuzzy aside from being first delivered to a Daimler-Benz dealership in Mannheim on April 29,1988. That’s noteworthy in history as Mannheim is the city Karl Benz was from.
Being a somewhat off-the-books car, it’s not usually driven by the media. Another journalist and friend of mine, Eileen Falkenberg-Hull, happens to be friends with Becker and saw the look in my eye upon seeing the Goldkäppchen car. She texted Becker and vouched for me. Becker gave the green light and minutes later the keys were in my hand.
The second the laser-cut (a wild notion in 1988) key was placed in my hand I felt connected with my grandparents. Somewhere they were smiling down upon me.
I grabbed the driver-side door handle and it clicked with the same bank-vault-like clunk. Instantly I was transported again to the garage in Fargo. Memories.
As I slid into the front throne-like gold-cloth-covered seat, the classic Mercedes-Benz smell overwhelmed my senses. It smelled just like my grandparent’s W126. I closed my eyes and just remembered Nonnie on the way to pick up my buddy Mark for a playdate on Highway 7 in Minneapolis, Minn. This was the same day I realized Nonnie was older than my grandfather when he died and I told her, “Nonnie! You could drop dead any minute!” She laughed. I was a gem of a child.
1988 Mercedes-Benz 300 SE known as the Goldkäppchen car
Sliding the key into the ignition instantly brought the gauges to life. One turn, two turns, but no glowplug light or need to wait for the glowplugs to warm. This car didn’t have glowplugs because it has a gas-powered 3.0-liter inline-6. The straight-6 was rated at 179 hp and 188 lb-ft of torque sent to the rear wheels through a 4-speed automatic transmission. The turbodiesel-6 in my grandfather’s 1991 350SDL made 136 hp and 228 lb-ft of torque, also sent to the rear wheels through a 4-speed automatic. Today’s S-Class has a 9-speed automatic transmission with up to 791 hp and 1,055 lb-ft of torque.
As I situated myself in the car I realized how much smaller this W126 was than my grandparent’s 350SDL. The S stood for S-Class, D for diesel, and L for long-wheelbase. Most of that extra space was between the wheels for a larger rear seat. The 350SDL was a U.S.-spec only car that Germany never had. Goes to show at least once in history America got a cooler car than the Germans from Mercedes.
1988 Mercedes-Benz 300 SE known as the Goldkäppchen car
The front seats were the same, albeit covered in gold cloth rather than blue leather, as the ones in my grandparents’ car. I could feel the springs underneath the seat bottom as they squished under my weight. I was fully supported with plenty of thick support from the long seat bottom.
After maneuvering the car for some quick photos I headed down the mountain with Falkenberg-Hull sitting right seat. Someone had to take photos to document this moment in history. She made it happen.
After the shock and awe that I was driving a W126 wore off I started to really start paying attention to what it’s like to drive. Naturally I began to compare it to the 2025 Mercedes-Benz S 580e 4Matic I had just driven in the blizzard, which was painted in stunning China Blue with a Manufaktur Deep White interior. I would’ve preferred a Manufaktur Yacht Blue interior…next time, Mercedes.
The seating position in the W126 is more upright than in today’s S-Class, and there’s a huge amount of glass around the greenhouse. That plus the thin pillars made outward vision fantastic.
Driving the 1988 Mercedes-Benz 300 SE known as the Goldkäppchen car
Out ahead, the hood seemed like it was a mile long and a plane could land on it. It doesn’t flow down like today’s S-Class, so you see every inch of that front end right to the upright Mercedes-Benz star.
The 3.0-liter inline-6 did not have the thrust of today’s plug-in hybrid S-Class, which has 503 hp and 533 lb-ft of torque. Mashing the pedal in the W126 brought an achingly slow kickdown of the 4-speed automatic, albeit with a smooth but noticeably shift, and an increase in revs. The forward thrust came on slow and built. It’s all torque as the revs never go high into the upper reaches of the tachometer’s range. This is a momentum car.
Becker had the Goldkäppchen car on chains in the rear, so in an effort to not destroy this immaculate automobile I never went above 60 kph (37 mph) and kept it to an average cruising speed of about 45 kph (28 mph).
Inside the cabin the W126 seemed nearly as quiet as today’s S-Class as the wind whipped around outside. No thrum from the inline-6 made its way into the cabin. The only noise or vibration felt was the rhythm of the chains on the rear tires hitting the pavement.
The soft suspension blunted every road impact just as the 580e 4Matic’s adaptive air suspension smoothers road imperfections. Going around corners the W126 had more lean than today’s S-Class, but it was composed and never felt as if it were flopping all over itself. It doesn’t roll like the Lincolns and Buicks my other grandparents also had during my childhood.
Perhaps most shocking was the steering. It’s nicely weighted and felt as if I were moving the steering rack through honey as the wheel rotated. So smooth. There was a bit of on-center slop, but it wasn’t annoying like in a “modern” Ineos Grenadier with its circulating ball steering system. The W126 was precise and didn’t wander in its lane like the Grenadier does.
1988 Mercedes-Benz 300 SE known as the Goldkäppchen car
The similarities between the W126 and its vault-like experience and today’s S-Class are striking. From the proportions to the build quality and experience, it’s similar yet of a different era.
Above all else, driving the W126 felt like coming full circle in part of my automotive, and family, journey. My grandparents’ W126 left the family before I had a license. I never drove that car. Driving the Goldkäppchen car closed the loop on the past and reminded me that even today’s S-Class carries the weight of a flagship. Wonder what the current S-Class would look like in Ice Blue Metallic with a blue interior.
Mercedes-Benz paid for travel and lodging so I could drive the CLA EV prototype and sleep in a van on a mountain in a blizzard. I happened to drive the Goldkäppchen W126, too.
