Automotive

What it's like inside Mercedes-Maybach's new ultra-luxury SUV

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Huge SUVs are the new limousines, and the Mercedes-Maybach GLS is ready to take on the Cullinan and Bentayaga
Mercedes-Maybach
The front seats: hardly your concern
Mercedes-Maybach
Detachable MBUX entertainment tablets in the rear
Mercedes-Maybach
How's that for a set of recliners? They heat, cool and massage your backside, and come with their own fancy pillows
Mercedes-Maybach
Two-tone paint job distinguishes the Maybach
Mercedes-Maybach
Comes with its own fancy luggage
Mercedes-Maybach
Panoramic sunroof
Mercedes-Maybach
Oceans of chrome on the front
Mercedes-Maybach
22 or 23-inch rims look a tad flashy
Mercedes-Maybach
Huge SUVs are the new limousines
Mercedes-Maybach
Huge SUVs are the new limousines, and the Mercedes-Maybach GLS is ready to take on the Cullinan and Bentayaga
Mercedes-Maybach
Pop-out champagne fridge
Mercedes-Maybach
Interior is also available in Elysium-like white
Mercedes-Maybach
The view from the back seats
Mercedes-Maybach
The Maybach GLS in silver/blue
Mercedes-Maybach
View gallery - 14 images

The Mercedes GLS family-hauler has been given the Maybach treatment, taking an interior that our own Aaron Turpen described as "comfortable, even opulent" and ratcheting things toward the ridiculous. Pop off that top hat, your highness, you can leave the monocle on, and sink into the reclining back seats of an ultra-luxury SUV that aims to equal or beat the Rollers and Bentleys on their own turf.

As we open the doors, you'll notice your carriage wafting down about an inch on its Airmatic suspension. That, your excellency, is an inch you won't have to climb. You'll notice, too, the articulating step emerging from the lower sill. Stand confidently on it, it can accommodate the full 200 kilograms (441 lb) of you and your Gucci accessories combined.

Where poverty-stricken mortals might configure the Mercedes GLS as a seven seater, Maybach recognizes that one needs room to expand one's person. Hence, the "Executive Rear," slathered as it is in Nappa leather, offers but two seats. Rest assured, your eminence, they are seats worthy of an executive rear like your own.

How's that for a set of recliners? They heat, cool and massage your backside, and come with their own fancy pillows
Mercedes-Maybach

Not only do they recline further than some of the cheaper business class airline seats you may have been subjected to in your character-building years of struggle, but there's calf supports as well, so we can roll you from pedicure to red carpet in a degree of comfort most people wouldn't experience in their own lounge rooms. Those seats, your magnificence, will gently suck away the heat generated by your movement when you're first seated, and can then be set to heat, cool, or run a series of ten-minute massage programs on your tired posterior chain.

Naturally, each back seat gets its own MBUX tablet and entertainment system, but if you recline yourself so far that it feels like you're trying to watch Dancing with the Stars on a postage stamp, you can easily have your driver pop the tablet off and hand it back to you. Your consigliatóre has specified this example with phone charging points, too, as well as this champagne refrigerator and its pair of silver flutes. After all, your bounteous affluence, open container laws hardly apply at your level.

The view from the back seats
Mercedes-Maybach

Perhaps you've noticed Maybach's own version of new car smell. It's part of the optional active fragrancing system: "the white osmanthus blossom, floral and light, is rounded off by a gentle leather note and spicy tea." We're only sorry, your radiating munificence, that the car has no way to pamper your taste buds the way it coddles your other senses.

Should you ever be forced to drive this car yourself – and may we never see the day – you should be comfortable in the knowledge that this is possible, and indeed a potentially entertaining diversion. You won't be immune to the charms of its 558-horsepower V8, which is rather more feisty than you'd think if you've never left the back seat or switched the transmission out of chauffeur mode. It's up for some proper gallivanting if and when you are, your plenteous splendor, on-road or off, and wouldn't it be jolly sporting to get the odd bit of mud on it?

Source: Mercedes-Maybach

View gallery - 14 images
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5 comments
paul314
Maybach seats alone cost more than many conventional cars...
buzzclick
You're really laying it on thick here Loz, and deservedly so. Who needs a self-driving car when you can have your driver attending your every whim while you sit back in your leather Lay-z-boy rear seat in true lap of luxury and indulgence. This is way over the top, and us plebes are disgustingly fascinated and horrified.
clay
Who doesn't mind having a (human) driver safely deliver me and mine to the theatre on Friday night? The airport on Saturday, Trader Jo's on Sunday...? Can I afford it? No. But I can dream! I am not horrified at all! Oh, and lets not forget, rich people pay down the features and functions (and tech) so that us Normies can afford them ...down the road, so to speak.
guzmanchinky
Someday (soon) you will be able to lay back in your massage seat while the car drives itself.
seewind
not sure of the Lincoln/Land Rover looks.