German luxury carmaker Mercedes-Benz today launched a variant of its flagship S-class sedan, the S 400, in India at Rs 1.31 crores (ex-showroom, Hyderabad). The carmaker also announced that the sedan will be assembled at its plant in Chakan, Pune.

The S 400 will replace the S 500 long-wheelbase sedan in the carmaker’s line-up for India with the latter now only being available in the Maybach guise.

The S 400 comes with an extensive scope of equipment such as 7-colour ambient lighting, air suspension, four-zone automatic climate control, a 1,540 watt, 24-speaker Burmester sound systems, rain-sensing panoramic sunroof, seat memory and massaging function, and parking assist as standard.

Safety features include eight airbags, electronic stability program, brake assist, hill-start assist and Mercedes' PreSafe safety technology along with attention assist.

While Mercedes does offer the powerful V8 and V12 options in its S-class range in India, the S 400 gets the relatively ‘modest’ V6 petrol unit from the E-class cabriolet. This 3.0-litre twin-turbocharged unit produces 329bhp and 49kgm of torque.

The S 400 misses out on the nine-speed automatic transmission which comes as standard in the GLE (including the GLE 450 AMG Coupe) as well as the recently launched C 250d, and instead is fitted with Merc’s 7G-Tronic seven-speed automatic gearbox.

The sedan is the carmaker’s third launch so far this year. For 2016, Mercedes-Benz India has  plans to introduce 12 new products to its portfolio.
 

The carmaker’s S-class line-up in India is as follows (prices, ex-showroom, Delhi):