30---Well, Actually 90---Minutes With: The 2018 Mercedes-Benz S560 Cabriolet

The 2018 Mercedes-Benz S560 Cabriolet.

Publisher's note: Normally, the cars you read about here at TireKicker are loaned to us by the press fleets of the various manufacturers for several days. Seven is typical.  Occasionally, we'll get a longer period of time, and sometimes it'll only be three or four days.  Our "30 Minutes With" series features cars we spent half an hour driving during the just-concluded Western Automotive Journalists Media Days in Monterey, California.

Day one of Media Days is a driving program, with journalists taking cars from the staging area at Quail Lodge in Carmel Valley to Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca via Laureles Grade.  Once there, you swap cars with another journalist for the drive back, get a different car at The Quail, and repeat. Apart from an hour's lunch (this year sponsored by Nissan), this is the day from 9:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m., although heavy rains forced us to call it a day at 2:30 this year, reducing the number of cars we could drive.

Car number two for the day was the most exclusive and expensive car I'd sample (and possibly the most exclusive and expensive of the 60 or so available for drives that day), the 2018 Mercedes-Benz S560 Cabriolet.  The run: From the Quail Lodge to Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca (and, as it turned out, back to the Quail).