Cullinan vs Bentayga vs Maybach GLS: The Back-Seat Question

Three ultra-luxury SUVs, five seats each, and every performance figure close enough to be irrelevant. The only column that separates them is the second row.

So this piece has a narrow job and it is worth saying what it is not. If you are the one driving — if the question is which of these is quickest, loudest or best on a canyon road — that argument is already written, and the Bentayga appears in it alongside a Urus and a G 63: the super-SUV comparison. Nothing below quotes a 0–60 time, because a 0–60 time has never once decided which of these three somebody should book.

And if the question underneath is really Rolls-Royce against Rolls-Royce — SUV or coupe or convertible, black or white — that is a different piece too: which Rolls-Royce to choose, with the whole marque here. This one is about the moment the rear door opens outside a venue, and about the two hours before it.

The second row, side by side

	Cullinan	Bentayga	Maybach GLS 600
Rows	2	2	2 (third row deleted)
Seats	5	4, 4+1 or 5 by build	5, or 4 with recliners
Rear door	Rear-hinged coach	Conventional	Conventional
Getting out	Facing forward	Facing sideways	Down a chrome step
Rear seat	Couch-like bench, heat, cooling, massage	Bench or individual seats by build	Two power recliners, heat, massage
Rear seats fold	Yes	Yes	No — fixed
Boot behind row two	21 cu ft	Conventional SUV boot	About 18–19 cu ft
Reads from twenty feet as	An event	An expensive SUV	A Mercedes, until the grille

Two rows in that table decide almost every booking, and neither of them is a number. Rear door decides what the arrival looks like. Rear seats fold decides whether the luggage fits. Everything else is preference.

The Cullinan: the doors are the argument

The rear doors of a Cullinan are hinged at the back. That sounds like trivia and it is the whole car. You do not swing your legs out sideways and stand up; the aperture opens ahead of you and you step out facing where you are going, which is why every photograph of somebody arriving in one looks composed rather than athletic. In a dress, or in anything with structure, it is the difference between an entrance and a manoeuvre. The front doors are conventional, so valets already know what to do with it.

Behind those doors is a bench rather than a pair of thrones — wide, deeply upholstered, with heat, cooling and massage, and individual rear seats specified on some cars rather than all. Ours is a bench. That matters if you are picturing two separated seats with a console between them; the car that gives you that is the Maybach.

The planning item, and we will raise it before you book rather than at the venue: a coach door needs room to open. Not as much as the two-door cars in this fleet, but more than a conventional rear door, and it swings towards the kerb rather than away from it. A stacked valet in West Hollywood or a tight subterranean space Downtown is worth checking. Tell us the address when you enquire and we will flag anything obvious.

The Maybach GLS 600: the only one that reclines

The Maybach GLS 600 is the only one of the three that was engineered backwards from the passenger. Mercedes took a three-row, seven-seat GLS, deleted the third row outright, and gave the space to the two people behind the driver. Car and Driver, who have tested one, put the resulting rear seats level with the best first-class airline cabins — two power-adjustable recliners with heat and massage in the four-seat cabin, or a three-across bench if you need five — and note that heat and massage run in both rows rather than only the back one.

Neither of the other two reclines. That is the sentence this whole article exists to deliver. A Cullinan's bench and a Bentayga's rear seats are excellent places to sit upright; the Maybach is the only one in which somebody can genuinely lie back between the hotel and the venue, and on a run to Palm Springs or up to Santa Barbara that is not a small difference.

What it costs is the boot, and we will come back to that.

The Bentayga: the one nobody photographs

The Bentayga does the least to announce itself and that is precisely the reason it goes out. Ours is black on black. From twenty feet it reads as an expensive SUV rather than as an event, and there are evenings — a private dinner, a client, a person who does not want the arrival on anybody's phone — where that is the entire specification.

Inside it is the most conventionally excellent of the three: the quietest at freeway speed, the most settled over the broken tarmac that covers half this city, and the best materials of the three by most people's reckoning. Rear doors open conventionally, and Bentley builds the standard-wheelbase car in 4-seat, 4+1 and 5-seat configurations, so what is behind the front seats varies from car to car rather than being fixed by the model name.

One honest distinction, because it is the thing people conflate. Bentley also makes an extended-wheelbase Bentayga built specifically around the rear passenger, with a longer cabin and seats that adjust in ways the standard car's do not. That is not the car in this garage. Ours is the standard wheelbase, which is a superb SUV and is not a limousine — and it is why, on the narrow question this article asks, the Maybach beats it.

Luggage, with everybody actually in the car

Here is the row nobody publishes, and it decides more bookings than any of the above.

• Cullinan. Twenty-one cubic feet behind the rear seats, and the seats fold. Four adults and a genuine week of luggage, no negotiation. It is the most practical of the three by a clear margin, which is a strange thing to write about a Rolls-Royce and is nonetheless true.
• Bentayga. A conventional SUV boot with folding rear seats. Four people and their bags is routine; the exact figure moves with the seat configuration the car was built in, which is why we would rather check ours than quote a brochure at you.
• Maybach GLS 600. Around eighteen to nineteen cubic feet, and — this is the part — the rear seats are fixed and do not fold. There is no expanding it. Car and Driver fitted five carry-on cases behind the second row. That is four people arriving from a flight, comfortably. It is not four people with hold luggage and a garment bag.

So the car that is best to sit in is the worst to pack, and the car with the most theatrical doors takes the most bags. If the day has an airport at one end of it and four people with real suitcases, that is not a preference question any more.

Three cars people mean, and none of them is in this garage

Naming them saves a phone call.

• The Maybach saloon. The long-wheelbase four-door is the car most pages using the word “Maybach” actually photograph, and it is a different vehicle from the GLS 600 in every respect except the badge. It is not in this fleet. The SUV is, and it takes the luggage the saloon leaves on the pavement — the longer version is in what a Maybach actually is.
• The Rolls-Royce Phantom. The chauffeur benchmark, and the car people picture when they picture being driven. Not here. The Cullinan is the Rolls-Royce that is, and on rear-door theatre it gives away very little.
• The Cullinan Series II and the Black Badge. The updated car and the blacked-out one. Ours are the earlier specification, in black and in white, and the doors work the same way.

Deposit, delivery, and the arrival itself

All three sit in the top deposit band, which has three consequences worth knowing before you plan.

• The deposit is held, not spent, and it comes back 5–7 business days after the car does.
• Damage-and-liability cover is mandatory and priced per day by that band. On these three it is the highest band we run, and it is in the quote rather than sprung at handover.
• Under twenty-five, the young-driver fee is $175/day on all three rather than the $50/day the standard cars carry. The threshold is a deposit of $1,500 or more, and every car on this page is above it.

None of the three carries a weekly or monthly block rate, so five days costs five days. The quote takes whichever combination of daily, five-day and twenty-one-day blocks is cheapest across your dates, and on these cars there is nothing to choose from. Say that plainly rather than implying a volume discount that does not exist. The Cullinan is $2,500/day, the Maybach GLS 600 $1,799/day and the Bentayga $1,299/day, and the rest of the small print lives in the terms and conditions.

On delivery: collection from Robertson costs nothing and delivery to our partner hotels in Beverly Hills is complimentary. The airport is the exception and it is priced in two tiers, each way — $75 leaves the car in the parking structure and you shuttle out to it, adding about half an hour; $150 brings it to the terminal with somebody standing beside it. Combined per direction that is $150, $300, or $225 for the terminal in and the parking structure out.

Match the tier to the point of the car. Every one of these three is booked for the way it looks when it stops somewhere; three of those minutes are the ones outside a terminal, and a shuttle bus is not part of them. Both tiers are broken down in our airport delivery guide.

Which one

If the brief is…	Book	Why
Somebody arriving and being photographed	Cullinan	Rear-hinged doors, and you step out facing forward
Two hours in the back between cities	Maybach GLS 600	The only one of the three that reclines
A client who would rather not be noticed	Bentayga	Reads as an expensive SUV rather than an event
Four adults and a week of luggage	Cullinan	Twenty-one cubic feet and the rear seats fold
A wedding, ceremony to reception	Cullinan	High roof, wide rear aperture, a dress arrives as it left
Airport to Beverly Hills, four people	Bentayga or Cullinan	The Maybach's rear seats do not fold

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