We present results from large-eddy simulations (LES) of turbulent pipe flow in a computational domain of 42 radii in length. Wide ranges of the shear Reynolds number and Smagorinsky model parameter are covered, 180 ≤ Reτ ≤ 1500 and 0.05 ≤ Cs ≤ 1.2, respectively. The aim is to asses the effect of Cs on the resolved flow field and turbulence statistics as well as to test whether very large scale motions (VLSM) in pipe flow can be isolated from the near-wall cycle by enhancing the dissipative character of the static Smagorinsky model with elevated Cs values. We found that the optimal Cs to achieve best agreement with reference data varies with Reτ and further depends on the wall normal location and the quantity of interest. Furthermore, for increasing Reτ , the optimal Cs for pipe flow LES seems to approach the theoretically optimal value for LES of isotropic turbulence. In agreement with previous studies, we found that for increasing Cs small-scale streaks in simple flow field visualisations are gradually quenched and replaced by much larger smooth streaks. Our analysis of low-order turbulence statistics suggests, that these structures originate from an effective reduction of the Reynolds number and thus represent modified low-Reynolds number near-wall streaks rather than VLSM. We argue that overdamped LES with the static Smagorinsky model cannot be used to unambiguously determine the origin and the dynamics of VLSM in pipe flow. The approach might be salvaged by e.g. using more sophisticated LES models accounting for energy flux towards large scales or explicit anisotropic filter kernels.