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CORNWALL, N.Y. I’ve driven poor. I’ve driven rich. It doesn’t matter the season, bad times or good, I much prefer rich.

That might seem a feckless assessment in this winter of fiscal discontent. Joblessness, homelessness, swindles and bankruptcies frame the times. It is a season so dour, it seems impolitic to smile in public, let alone to motor about in an iconically luxurious car, the 2009 Mercedes-Benz S550 4Matic sedan.

But the simple truth is that many rich people remain rich, the shenanigans of Ponzi maven Bernard L. Madoff notwithstanding.

Not everybody with money did business with Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. Some chose to be taken for a ride in a much more reliable, enjoyable carriage, such as the S550 4Matic.

It is a big sedan, “full-size” in the truest meaning of the word. It stretches a tad longer than 17 feet, end to end. It has a vault-like presence and weight — a curb weight, or factory weight minus passengers and cargo, of 4,630 pounds. You can load it with five huge adults and still have enough room for all passengers to feel like royalty in their own castle.

Extravagance is the nature of luxury, and the makers of the Mercedes-Benz S-Class cars have always taken great pride in expressions of luxury’s essence. Why else would they have included a six-liter, 604-horsepower, V-12 engine in the S-Class line?

But I am a driver of gentler sensibilities. I like rich. But some things border on sacrilege. If I’ve learned anything from the Madoff saga and from the recent falls of so many Masters of the Universe, it’s that you should never thumb your nose at the Gods of Schadenfreude. They have a way of upending you.

I chose, instead, one of the more reasonable offerings of the S-Class — the all-wheel-drive S550 4Matic, equipped with a 5.5-liter, 382-horsepower V-8 linked to a seven-speed transmission that can be shifted automatically or manually.

“Reasonable” should always be this good — a big, heavy car, an automobile that gives you the feeling of being inside a motorized fortress, yet one that moves with the alacrity and nimbleness of something smaller, sportier.

The nearly 325-mile drive here from our home in Northern Virginia was no work at all. My passengers — my wife, Mary Anne and youngest daughter, Kafi — equated it to a ride aboard a luxury yacht or train.

“This is the meaning of luxury,” said Kafi, settling back into one of the S550 4Matic’s soft leather seats.

“You should have seen what he was driving last week,” said Mary Anne, referring to the base Nissan Versa subcompact reviewed a week past in this space. It was an economy car absent the most rudimentary niceties, including a radio.

There ensued a conversation about values, too lengthy to recount here. But its substance was that no one, at least no one we know of among our well-educated friends in the United States, dreams of owning a base Nissan Versa.

The S550 4Matic, by comparison, is a bona fide dream car.

There is a pecking order to aspirations, Kafi said. “It’s why so many young people fight so hard to get into Ivy League schools,” she said.

I suppose.

But I know this: Rich, in the guise of the S550 4Matic, feels good. Smooth, expertly delivered power feels good, even with the consumption of premium unleaded gasoline at the rate of 21 miles per gallon in highway driving. Being in a car that cradles you, protects you with an array of active crash avoidance and passive crash mitigation devices, feels really good.

If you spend enough time in cars such as the S550 4Matic, you begin to understand something about how rich people think. It feels good to feel that good, so much so, you want to feel that good all the time. Wealth is addictive.