Tested: 2025 Mercedes-Maybach GLS600 Is a Fancy Bounce House

Car and Driver

a day ago

The 2025 Mercedes Maybach GLS600 glitters like a leading lady on a red-carpet premiere and intimidates like the bouncer at the after-party. In the Obsidian Black and Mojave Silver paint of our two-tone Night Series test car, the GLS600 is even more of a standout, with rose-gold details inside the headlamps and smoked chrome reflecting the surroundings like a Victorian gazing ball.
What Is Maybach?
Everyone who sees it will know the Maybach is a top-shelf cocktail, although not everyone knows the Maybach name. We fielded two recurring questions while testing the GLS600: "Is Maybach a trim or a brand?" and "Can I open the champagne that's in the refrigerated rear compartment?"
To the second question—no, it's a photo prop, and also it's cheap prosecco, because we don't have a champagne budget. As for the first question, Maybach has been both. Wilhelm Maybach began as a stand-alone engine manufacturer in 1909. While the bulk of the business was heavy-duty powerplants, Maybach also designed and sold high-end luxury cars.
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Jessica Lynn Walker
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Car and Driver
For obvious reasons, demand in Germany for tank engines and glamorous transport for high-ranking military officers fell off after World War II, and it wasn't until Daimler-Benz purchased the company in the 1960s that Maybach began making luxury vehicles again, first under the Mercedes name, then briefly as its own brand. Currently, it's somewhere in the middle.
All modern Maybachs are based on Mercedes models but offer features and options unavailable in a regular Benz. Mercedes is no slouch on comfort and performance, but the Maybach versions step it up on luxury and customization.
HIGHS: Mobile spa experience, surprisingly quick, passenger pleasing.
The Maybach GLS goes loud on the exterior with a polished grille and flashy wheel options such as 23-inch five-hole monoblocks or the lacy Maybach-logo-patterned seven-spokes that were on our test car. Inside, Maybach ditches the third-row seat and transforms the GLS from a very nice family SUV into a mobile executive lounge, complete with massaging recliners and thematic scent therapy.
Maybach on the Move
While the back seats are glorious, the GLS600 isn't just for those driven by a chauffeur. The front seats are also heated, ventilated, and massaging, making the cockpit just as comfortable as the back row. The driver may not be able to partake in back-seat beverages, but they do get the pleasure of 550 smooth-gaited horses that propel the Maybach to 60 mph in 3.9 seconds and across a quarter-mile in 12.5 seconds at 109 mph, all while cushioning the interior from every crack and bump in the road.
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Jessica Lynn Walker
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Car and Driver
That big power comes from a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8 with a 48-volt hybrid-assist system backed by a nine-speed automatic. The V-8's output is increased from the regular Mercedes GLS580's 510 horsepower but not quite to the sports-car levels of the 603-hp GLS63. We found the 550 horsepower and 538 pound-feet to be more than enough to push the GLS600 through traffic, and if you have a Gullwing or a racing sailboat in need of relocation, the GLS600 is rated to tow up to 7700 pounds. It's a thirsty powertrain combo, though, with EPA ratings of 15 mpg combined (13 mpg city, 18 mpg highway). We just barely beat that with 16 mpg combined during our testing.
The fuel economy was no surprise, but the quick acceleration was. The V-8 is so zippy that Maybach has a special performance mode that restrains the power. In Maybach mode, the vehicle starts the car from stops in second gear, minimizes shifts, and smooths acceleration to keep overexcited chauffeurs from jostling their passengers.
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Jessica Lynn Walker
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Car and Driver
The Maybach also offers a Curve mode, which uses the quick-adjusting air springs to level out the body on winding roads. None of our passengers seemed to notice when we had it on. Perhaps they lack the finely tuned inner ears of the jet set, or perhaps they were too busy experimenting with the multitude of preprogrammed lighting themes in the back-seat menu. Several of those also activate the Maybach's interior scent atomizer, resulting in the GLS briefly smelling like a Yankee Candle store until we aired it out.
While comfort and luxury are ultimately subjective, we'd be surprised if anyone found the Maybach driving experience rugged or stressful. The seats are plush, the screens are crisp and bright, and there are cameras, head-up displays, navigation assists, easy phone connections, and cruise-control settings to take the anxiety out of piloting this machine.
Styling: More Is More
Visually, the Maybach is baroque, with logos and textures on every surface. The interior features pattern-stitched leather covering the seats and door panels, with padded headrests in the front, lumbar pillows in the back, and a choice of wood trims for the dash and door inlays that would make a termite drool.
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Jessica Lynn Walker
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Car and Driver
Our Night Series test car had white leather upholstery as bright as a veneered smile and was trimmed with ash wood and aluminum that gave it the look of a silver-plated Chris-Craft. It was an impressive sight upon opening the door, even if long-term maintenance would require an Amazon subscription of Mr. Clean Magic Erasers.
LOWS: Flashy bordering on gaudy, guillotine-deserving gas mileage, luggage space sacrificed for champagne cooling.
Housekeeping aside, the Maybach is much more than a wheeled yacht. Sure, you can get a massage while covering miles in Comfort mode, but if you do need to pick up the pace, the Maybach handles on par with its competition from Bentley and Rolls-Royce. None of these ultraluxury SUVs are made with gymkhana in mind, but if you have to flee from the bad guys with an oligarch's daughter in the back seat, or just hustle over the hills on your way to a Palm Springs brunch, the Maybach sticks and turns better than you'd expect from a 6271-pound jewelry box.
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Jessica Lynn Walker
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Car and Driver
On our skidpad, the Maybach held steady at 0.86 g, which puts it just behind the Bentayga's 0.88 g and ahead of the 0.83 g put down by the Cullinan—which, at $410,575, costs almost twice the Maybach's as-tested price of $243,850. And considering that the last Bentayga we tested was $269,865, the Maybach is almost a bargain. If that notion causes you to slam on the brakes, you'll find that the Cullinan and the Maybach will both come to a stop from 70 mph in 159 feet, while Bentley will slide just a little farther to stop in 165 feet.
Maybach's Special Features
Having established that the GLS600 is a bargain for a fully loaded and stunningly rapid luxomobile, let's rate some of the features and options that make it more than a Mercedes. We called in some pals for this, since the real big shots will be in the back seat.
Automatically deploying running boards got a nod for ease of entry and egress but were dinged for being a little too slow to drop down and doing so right into the shins of impatient passengers. Puddle lamps with different designs front and rear and twinkling stars got rave reviews for turning every evening into a nightclub. The refrigerated rear center console ($1100) was a hit with passengers for the bubbly and with this driver, who found it perfectly held a deli sandwich. The console does cut into luggage room, though.
Jessica Lynn Walker
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Car and Driver
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Jessica Lynn Walker
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Car and Driver
Mercedes understandably does not loan out the GLS600 with the $2400 silver-plated champagne flutes, so we had to test the champagne-flute holder ($800) with regular glasses. No stemware was harmed. The folding rear tables ($1800) were difficult to unfold but would prove useful for eating the sandwich. Rear-seat entertainment ($3400) could be popular with those on regular Zoom meetings, although we mostly used it to change the accent lighting to Miami turquoise and pink.
VERDICT: Yacht rock on wheels.
The Maybach's biggest crowd-pleaser was "free driving assist," or, as the kids call it, bounce mode. Intended as an off-road tool that uses the air springs to mimic the weight transfer of a bunch of off-roaders jumping on a tailgate to help a truck shimmy out of silty or sandy terrain, this mode also works as comic relief at the end of a long photo shoot. We had our photographer giggling as we wiggled and jiggled the Maybach down the trail in a roostertail of dust. It probably helps if you get stuck while off-road too, but with the GLS's all-wheel drive and adjustable height, we never had any issues with traction or clearance on pavement or dirt.
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Jessica Lynn Walker
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Car and Driver
If bouncing down dirt roads on delicate intertwined-logo wheels seems silly, well, everything in the ultraluxe automotive space is a little silly. That's the prerogative of the wealthy: to sip champagne in a pink-lit white-leather cabin in a car that can bounce.
Reviewed by
Elana Scherr
Senior Editor, Features
Like a sleeper agent activated late in the game, Elana Scherr didn't know her calling at a young age. Like many girls, she planned to be a vet-astronaut-artist, and came closest to that last one by attending UCLA art school. She painted images of cars, but did not own one. Elana reluctantly got a driver's license at age 21 and discovered that she not only loved cars and wanted to drive them, but that other people loved cars and wanted to read about them, which meant somebody had to write about them. Since receiving activation codes, Elana has written for numerous car magazines and websites, covering classics, car culture, technology, motorsports, and new-car reviews. In 2020, she received a Best Feature award from the Motor Press Guild for the C/D story "A Drive through Classic Americana in a Polestar 2." In 2023, her Car and Driver feature story "In Washington, D.C.'s Secret Carpool Cabal, It's a Daily Slug Fest" was awarded 1st place in the 16th Annual National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards by the Los Angeles Press Club.
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