The middle life facelift that the W140 went through, as stated before, had two main reasons:

1/ To lessen the bulk look of the car, and

2/ To make the production of the car cheaper.

Any M.B. fan knows that the W140, in the design development, has been the the most overbudgeted project they have had in their hands. In fact, the head manager in charge of the project was fired at the beggining of production. Once in production, the new car was so much expensive (to recover some of the expense) than the previous W126, that at one point DaimlerBenz had over 2,500 units unsold sitting iddle in one parking lot.

Of course, those units had to be sacrificed at huge discounts, making things worse for M.B. That's when the plan to cheapen the car (the '95 facelift) came in.

Although I have owned a pre'95 W140, I am extremely happy with my 98 S320. And, as said before, I would never trade for a W220 in a million years.

A. Rosich
S320, 1998
E320T, 1995