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Luxury-car manuals take on epic proportions
http://i.usatoday.net/money/_photos/...17/manualx.jpg http://i.usatoday.net/_common/_images/clear.gif http://i.usatoday.net/_common/_images/clear.gifMercedes S550's manual can have a 240-page explanation of the electronic control system, a 44-page service booklet and a 68-page maintenance booklet.

http://images.usatoday.com/money/_ph...de-manualx.jpg http://images.usatoday.com/_common/_images/clear.gifThe manual for the Mercedes S550 is stored in its own pocket in the passenger foot well.

By Chris Woodyard and James R. Healey, USA TODAY

Whether it's Gone With the Wind or former president Bill Clinton's autobiography, some books are known as long reads. But they aren't as long as the owner's manual of a new Lexus.
Luxury-carmakers are bulking up the guides that motorists are supposed to check if they can't figure out how to switch on the windshield wipers or load a CD into the audio player. Indeed, that they are supposed to read cover-to-cover before they even try to turn on the wipers or music.

The manual and two supplements for the $104,715 Lexus LS 600h L, a high-end hybrid on sale this summer, runs 1,097 pages — a four-figure stack of instructions for the brand's first car to exceed a six-figure price.
Coming in at just under 1,000 pages are the owner's manual and accompanying supplements for the Mercedes-Benz GL crossover SUV.

Some say hefty manuals are a wasted effort. No one reads them, and their growing length simply underscores that luxury cars are getting too complicated.
"It's unbelievable. What are these people thinking?" asks Dick Messer, director of Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. "The car becomes the enemy."
Adds Peter DeLorenzo, who comments on the auto industry at Autoextremist.com: "I'll bet 80% of the people who buy these luxury cars rarely, if ever, dip into the owner's manuals."
Manuals don't necessarily need epic length. Kia, the South Korean automaker, limits the page count to 256 for the entry-level Rio and 384 for the Sportage SUV. But those are inexpensive, relatively uncomplicated vehicles.

Entertaining reading?
The upscale Land Rover brand dispatches instructions for the LR2 in just 265 pages and for the Sport model in only 357. But if you get the rear-seat entertainment system, there's another 41 pages.
BMW says it was able to cram all the salient information about its 550i performance sedan into a breezy 253 pages.
"It's very concise," spokesman Tom Plucinsky says. Of course, there are the inevitable separate add-ons: a 25-page quick-start guide, an 80-page list of dealers, a 152-page road atlas, four pages of safety tips and a three-page invitation to join the owners' club.
The Lexus LS 600 hybrid's manual could have been worse.
"It's half as big as it would have been if we hadn't edited it," says Bob Allan, who teaches the intricacies of Lexus cars to dealer employees. "We were able to change the format, reduce a lot of the advisories and warnings — the legalese — and group it better."
Some manuals are so hefty, they need new housing.
Only the LS 600h's 74-page quick-reference guide is intended for the glove compartment. The rest — the 684-page manual, plus the 339-page supplement devoted to unraveling mysteries of the car's navigation system — go in the trunk. They come packaged in a leather folder, color-coordinated to the car's alabaster, gray or black interior. "We were a little worried people would think we were giving them the Bible. It kind of looks like one," Allan adds.

Another no-go in glove box
The 584-page manual for the $53,175 Mercedes GL won't fit in the glove box, either. It stows in a net attached to the transmission hump on the passenger's side. Packaged with the main manual are a 240-page explanation of Mercedes' Comand electronic control system, a 44-page service and warranty booklet, a 68-page maintenance booklet, a 24-page flier listing factory-approved products and another 14 pages promoting Mercedes-Benz racing and a brand of synthetic oil. The "Getting Started" quick-start manual for the speed-reading-impaired runs a mere nine pages. Total page count for all the literature: 983.
The owner's information for Mercedes' flagship S-Class sedan is a somewhat slimmer 758 pages, also nestled outside the glove box.
"Obviously, there's a lot more packed into vehicles now," Mercedes spokesman Rob Moran says. "People need a guide to look at that stuff."
That's just the problem, Messer says. Luxury-car gadgets run amok, and drivers can't figure them out. "It's getting out of hand," he warns.
Help could be on the way. Among others, Cadillac, whose Escalade SUV comes with 574 pages of information, is exploring ways to present more of the owner's information in handier fashion. It could be downloadable off the Internet or loaded onto the navigation system screen.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/...ual-usat_N.htm