Bürgermeister is indeed the Mayor of a town or city.

When the W 140 was introduced, it was a pretty big car and earned a lot of criticism for that. Mercedes also was surprised, that sales to official customers was slow and BMW 728 were preferred (at that time the A8 was not at the map and the Audi V8 wasn't a real competition)

It took a while to figure out, why: A general budget rule did not allow the purchase of a car with a higher sticker price than DEM 80.000 and an engine bigger than 2.8 Liter.

So they dropped the 2.8 into the engine bay, lowered the entry price just under the magic line and sales picked up again.

The W 140 still had a hard time with these clientel, since the W 140 had the stigma of beeing oversized and the people on the street always thought it is a 500 SE anyway.

Kind regards
Eberhard