Mercedes-Benz S280 | Shed of the Week

Things can't be all bad if you can still buy an S-Class for Shed money - right?

By Tony Middlehurst / Friday, 3 July 2026 / Loading comments

Resisting the temptation to live the S-Class lifestyle on a Picanto purchasing budget is getting harder with low-mileage, one-owner, long-MOT examples like this one bobbing about on the sub-£2k used car swamp.

The car you’re warily examining here has the same £1,990 tag as the Almandine Black 144,000 mile 3.2 Shed featured here in March, but this time around it’s a fresh-looking 2.8 in what Shed thinks might be Blue Quartz metalliic with an interesting odometer reading of under 87,000.

The 201hp 2.8 is routinely slagged off for being underpowered. Was it, though? The 220hp 3.2 petrol maxed out at 149mph with a 0-60mph time of 7.9 seconds and a 24mph average. The 2.8’s top speed was only 5mph down on the 3.2’s and its fuel burn figure was the same. Yes, it was more than a second slower over the 0-60, but did that really count in S-Class world where trying too hard was never on the menu?

We’ve mentioned Kia purchasing costs but there’s a strong chance that the running costs will be more Pagani than Picanto. The ad talks AI-ishly about the W220 S-Class’s ‘enduring quality and sophisticated engineering’. Few would argue about the second part of that claim – packed with gizmos, the W220 was the first car to offer radar-assisted adaptive cruise – but others will justifiably say that the sophisticated engineering was directly responsible for the kind of quality that, if you were unlucky, was the opposite of enduring.

All W220 S-Classes had electronically-controlled Airmatic suspension, a system not averse to leaving you in the poo, but perhaps the most troublesome item of sophisticated W220 engineering was the hydropneumatic Active Body Control. ABC ran at pressures of up to 200 bar. When (not if) it went wrong, you could end up in 200 bars drowning your sorrows. Luckily, ABC was only standard on the S55 and S600. Most low-spec Ss like our shed weren’t saddled by it.

Our shed did need an MOT retest in April to allow for some tightening-up of parts in the exhaust and front suspension departments, plus some fettling of the SRS warning light and non-functioning horn. They didn’t bother clearing the thin rear brake pads advisory, but from the MOT history it looks like at least one front disc has been replaced in the last year. The cloudy headlamp lenses that were mentioned on (and then apparently cleared from) the list of advisories on the initial fail certificate still don’t look all that great to Shed, but there again most things don’t look great on his Amstrad’s screen.

Some say you should always buy a W220 on condition rather than mileage. This car looks solid enough but it could certainly do with a general cleanse. Air suspension sensors and struts do fail and the electronics are unlikely to improve over time as connectors continue to crisp up, but there are no turbos to worry about with the S280 and this one does have the bonus feature of some string or wool wrapped around its steering wheel.

Who cares about the prospect of expensive repairs anyway because according to the ad this car is protected by the UK’s best used car warranty. It does say ‘terms and conditions apply’ in quite small writing down in the corner of the pic but let’s not be too cynical, eh?

See the original advert