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It is an expensive car for older people. Young throttle-jockeys need not apply.

It is not so much that the CL550, which replaces the CL500, moves slowly or handles poorly. Not at all. Despite its factory weight of 4,485 pounds, the CL550, a two-door derivative of Mercedes-Benz’s S-Class sedans, moves from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 4.6 seconds, according to the company’s engineers.

I have reason to believe that the engineers are right, but I am reluctant to say more than that other than to certify that, yes, the car is exceptionally fast. And it handles marvelously, thanks to an array of computerized suspension technologies, including a system Mercedes-Benz calls “active body roll.”

I would have chosen a different name, because active body roll removes the rock and roll often exhibited by heavy cars during high-speed maneuvers, such as changing lanes abruptly or steering around unexpectedly sharp corners.

Body roll occurs as a vehicle pitches from side to side in the manner of a yacht on a troubled sea. It can be unnerving. And if the swaying motion is violent enough, it can contribute to loss of vehicle control.

The Mercedes-Benz system uses a series of computers and sensors to mitigate the potentially unhappy results of high-speed steering exuberance. The car is amazingly smooth and stable in sharp turns and wonderfully stable in emergency driving maneuvers.

Some of my peers in automotive journalism have remarked that the active body roll system, a kind of super-sophisticated electronic stability control, “bends the laws of physics.” But Mercedes-Benz engineers are quick to point out that nothing yet invented by human beings can do that. Instead, within the boundaries of the laws of physics, active body roll gives the driver a substantially better chance of emerging from a stupid driving decision unscathed. But an excess amount of stupidity, or just plain bad luck, can trump that system and lead to a seriously injurious or fatal crash.

The automobile industry long has held the notion that any car that runs as fast and handles as well as the CL550 must also treat its driver and passengers harshly. Expressed as a marketing theory, that notion translates to “hard rides for young bottoms,” because those are the only bottoms that can withstand the motorized assault of many high-performance cars for 100 miles or more.

But the CL550 runs contrary to that fast-and-furious marketing approach. For example, unlike many high-performance cars, the CL550 is library quiet, eschewing boisterously macho exhaust notes in favor of urbanity and civility. The car is a work of utilitarian poshness, a concept that says luxury must also be functional.

Thus, all four leather-covered seats in the CL550 are orthopedically designed — friendly to backs old enough to bear the years of hard work often needed to earn the kind of money it takes to buy a high-end luxury car.

You can drive this one hard or just take it for a gentle cruise. It does not matter. It pampers your body, puts your physical comfort and safety first.

As such, the CL550 presents an elegant compromise — a 382-horsepower, V-8, rear-wheel-drive, high-performance car that can run with the world’s fastest automobiles, but that can do so without brutalizing the bodies of its driver and passengers.

There is nothing about it that makes me yearn for lost youth. You can have that, if you want it and can find a way to get it. As for me, I left the CL550 with one thought in mind: “Show me the money, honey.”