On Ocean Avenue in Carmel-By-The-Sea - that exclusive seaside enclave on California's Monterey Peninsula where the super-rich denizens drive mega-bucks cars with labels like Bentley, Aston Martin and Ferrari - we notice that more than a few of the sidewalk shoppers pay unusual attention to our vehicle with their heads turning and fingers pointing as we roll by.

What these spectators observe is a new kind of Mercedes that resembles no other vehicle in extensive Benz fleet.

It's large - stretching longer than the biggest full-size sedan and equally wide. It's bold in style, with a windswept face where the prow and windshield forge a raked plane sweeping up from front fascia and over a roll-top roofline. It has lots of doors. There's a pair of portals on each flank below what looks like one extremely long and narrow window stretching from the windshield clear back to the tail. Also, a top-hinged liftgate at the rear swings high for cargo bay access.

The profile vaguely resembles one of those big American mid-century station wagons, although the stance of this contemporary car seems to hunker on the pavement like a sports car and the beltline atop side doors rises like the raked face from a low point at the windshield to a high point in the rear corner.

Inside, there are three tiers of seats with a pair of individual buckets set in rows one and two and three. This is a first-class cabin, as appropriate for a Mercedes, with leather covering seats and appointments of the quality and caliber of a deluxe full-size luxury car. And overhead there's the optional panoramic sunroof with two large glass panels consuming most of the ceiling space stretching front to rear above the cabin.

The overriding concept behind this design seems to merge attributes of the station wagon, a minivan and SUV with a luxury-lined limousine. Germany's Mercedes-Benz constructs this new vehicle at its American assembly plant in Vance, Ala., as a 2006 model under the R Class label.

Consider it a new crossover vehicle - the platform comes from the mid-size M Class of sport-utility vehicles and the body resembles a low-slammed station wagon or an elongated SUV but the function combines traits of the wagon, sport-ute and limo-like sedan.

Mercedes even coined a new category for R Class cars -- Sport Tourer. The sport end of the title stems from performance characteristics and the driving manners of a tautly-tuned sports sedan. The tourer title comes from the European tradition of calling a wagon-type vehicle the touring model.

End result becomes a vehicle with practical attributes of a wagon but the fun-to-drive nature of a sports sedan and the refined cabin of a Mercedes big-class luxury car.

These two 2006 wagons -- R350 and R500 -- drive and ride like plush luxury Mercedes sedans and they feel as comfortable. Yet they also provide a surprising amount of cargo space in the back bay and can carry up to six people in first-class comfort in a vehicle with the sticky tire traction of a pavement-hugging all-wheel-drive (AWD) SUV. (CONTINUE...)