Rolls-Royce Cullinan and Bentley Bentayga are facing competition from Germany: Where Audi only serves the bourgeois elite with the Q8 and BMW with the X7, Mercedes now ranks the GLS as Maybach among the nobility. They will be less happy about it in the old world than in America and Asia
It is an important gesture and it comes at just the right time: While the Mercedes star is losing a little radiance and at the same time the Chinese market as the Swabian mainstay is weakening at a high level, the Swabians are literally bringing a big one to their most important customers Gift with. Because not at the home game at the IAA in Frankfurt and also not at the luxury car show in Los Angeles, but at the trade fair in Guangzhou, the cloth of the new Maybach GLS, with the Mercedes from the second half of the next year, will probably fall far below prices to compete against Bentley Bentayga and Rolls Royce Cullinan beyond 150.000 euros and want to outperform middle-class GLS competitors such as the BMW X7 or the Audi Q8.
As a colossus for Krösus & Co, Mercedes has spruced up the GLS: From the outside, the 5,21 meter long thick ship sparkles with the new radiator grille in pinstripe design, with plenty of chrome in front of the fan grilles and around the windows like a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve inside there is a luxury lounge with plenty of lacquer and leather.
Who climbs on the electrically extendable steps in the Olympus SUV, imagines himself in the seventh SUV sky. Because where up to seven seats still have to be accommodated in the GLS, there are only four more in the Maybach. In the 3,14 meter wheelbase, this is enough for over 1,30 meters of legroom in the rear and creates space for extendable leg rests with which the naturally air-conditioned lounge chairs are completely transformed into a sunbed. There is of course a bar and folding tables in the through center console, a separate MBUX world for the backbenchers - and a feel-good program with ambient light and specially composed room fragrance from the scent of osmanthus with a touch of leather and spicy tea.
While dominance in the rear behind electric-drawn curtains and thick insulating glass nurtures the idleness and the Maybach mode of the predictive air spring suspension and its 48 Volt points as is bedded on clouds, the driver is also easily with this heavyweight. Because even if Mercedes breaks with tradition and despite the 600 at the rear installed only eight instead of twelve cylinders, the four-liter turbo should have no trouble with the Maybach for the mud: After all, he makes 558 PS and goes up to 730 Nm works. That's enough for 4,9 seconds from 0 to 100 km / h and full throttle for 250 stuff. And in the fight against the turbo lag and the guilty conscience, there's even electric e-booster as Mildhybrid module, which pushes a little at startup and otherwise by more recuperation and longer sailing phases the consumption pressures - and that at a standard value of already 11,7 liters at best cosmetic value.
Extremely noble, but not exclusive and with all the power but more of the reason than the abundance committed - so the Maybach GLS in the end, but only a genteel trimmed GLS and the Swabians have at least stretched body or the befitting V12 the chance for emancipation squandered by the bourgeois Benz. What you can hardly blame them in view of the bankruptcy in the last Maybach comeback and the currently somewhat tense cash position. But they do not have to worry about the heavyweight's success in a tuxedo. This is not only proven by the view of the numbers of Cullinan and Bentayga, that also teaches the experience with the S-Class. In the meantime, every seventh copy of the star still bears the double M. And here in China, the proportion is even greater, a Mercedes man justifies the premiere at the other end of the world.
