Luxury is hard to define, especially in the automotive space. It takes more than soft leather and a stylish exterior to meet the mark. In our case, we looked at a number of different factors when deciding on the best all-around luxury vehicle as part of our first-ever Motor1.com Star Awards.

Comfort played a big role in that decision, naturally, but beyond that, the winner of this prestigious honor needed to have the proper equipment, offer sublime ride quality, and pack loads of style with equal amounts of tech. We should note that we limited our finalists this year to vehicles under $150,000 – so no Rolls-Royce, no Bentley, etc. Although most everyone associates luxury with the best of the best, it still needs to be somewhat attainable, at least for our purposes. Maybe we'll have a "Best Uber Luxury Vehicle" category next year… we'll see.

With that in mind, we narrowed down the category to the two highest-scoring luxury vehicles we drove this past year: The 2021 Genesis G80 and the 2021 Mercedes-Benz S-Class. Both of these cars meet our definition of luxury and offer style, technology, and comfort in spades. But after vigorous testing in the hills of Santa Clarita, California, we editors gave the S-Class the Motor1.com 2021 Star Award for Best Luxury Vehicle in a near-runaway victory. Here’s why.