Five Luxury Sedans, One Throne: What the Year 2000 Really Wanted

There’s a moment in every ambitious professional’s life when the economy car just won’t cut it anymore. The corner office is yours, the bonus cleared, and your old sedan is starting to feel like a participation trophy. In the year 2000, if you’d finally made it to the top of the ladder and had the cash to prove it, Car and Driver rounded up five of the world’s most prestigious luxury sedans for a definitive shootout: the Jaguar Vanden Plas, Mercedes-Benz S430, Audi A8 4.2 Quattro, Lexus LS400, and BMW 740iL.

This wasn’t a budget comparison. These cars existed in the stratosphere where depreciation barely registered and leather wasn’t just an upholstery choice—it was a statement of intent. Each represented the absolute peak of what its brand thought a luxury sedan should be at the turn of the millennium.

The Contenders: A Snapshot of Automotive Excess

The Mercedes-Benz S430 brought German engineering wrapped in signature understated elegance. The S-Class has always been the benchmark for the segment, and in 2000 it wielded that authority without apology. Dual overhead cams, a 4.3-liter V8, and the kind of interior that whispered rather than shouted.

The Audi A8 4.2 Quattro countered with Quattro all-wheel drive as its trump card—a technology that would eventually become table stakes, but in 2000 was still a genuine differentiator. The aluminum space-frame construction was cutting-edge materials science, the sort of thing that made you feel like you were driving a spaceship from Stuttgart.

BMW’s 740iL played the long-wheelbase game, stretching the already impressive 7-Series platform to offer back-seat opulence that rivaled the best first-class airline cabins. The “iL” designation meant extra rear legroom, perfect for executives who preferred to be driven rather than to drive.

Jaguar’s Vanden Plas was the exotic wildcard, a car that promised British sportiness wrapped in boardroom propriety. It was faster-looking than its rivals, with a sleeker profile that suggested performance rather than just presence.

The Lexus LS400 was the quiet overachiever, Japanese precision engineering in a form that some found either perfectly restrained or aggressively boring, depending on your personality. Reliability and refinement were its calling cards, not flash.

What 2000 Meant for Luxury Sedans

The early 2000s represented a peculiar moment in automotive history. SUVs hadn’t yet completely devoured the luxury sedan market. Kelley Blue Book data from that era shows sedans still dominated the premium segment, before the crossover revolution fundamentally rewrote the playbook. These five cars were the last gasps of an era when “luxury” meant a sedan, not an elevated platform with all-wheel drive as standard.

Each of these machines was built for a different kind of executive. The Mercedes was for the traditionalist who believed in German engineering’s historical dominance. The BMW appealed to the performance enthusiast who refused to sacrifice sport just because he needed a back seat. The Audi seduced the tech-forward buyer who wanted gadgetry alongside elegance. The Jaguar tempted the romantic who valued style over substance. And the Lexus wooed the pragmatist who’d rather have reliability than bragging rights.

The Real Story: Why This Test Still Matters

Flipping back through this comparison nearly a quarter-century later reveals something profound about how the industry has evolved—and how static some fundamentals remain. These five cars operated in a world before CVTs, before turbocharging became the default performance solution, before electrification turned the entire segment on its head.

The Audi’s Quattro system is now standard across the lineup. Mercedes’ S-Class continues its reign as the segment leader, having evolved rather than been dethroned. The BMW 7-Series grew heavier and more complex. Lexus eventually pivoted aggressively toward hybrids and electrics. And Jaguar? Well, that’s a tragedy for another article.

What ties them all together was the fundamental promise: you’ve made it, buy one of us. In 2000, that promise meant something specific—a V8, naturally aspirated and thirsty; enough leather to fill a small tannery; technology that felt genuinely advanced; and the unshakable certainty that you were at the top of the luxury food chain. No apologies, no hybrids, no crossover compromises.

The real value of this comparison test isn’t in declaring a winner (that’s what Car and Driver did at the time, and honestly, declaring any of these as objectively “best” misses the point). It’s in understanding what the luxury sedan aspired to be when every badge still believed sedans would define the segment forever. They were wrong about that prediction, of course—but for one shining moment in 2000, these five cars represented the absolute pinnacle of what automotive luxury meant.

Sources: Car and Driver