The Kim Kardashian Maybach, Explained: What the GLS 600 Actually Is

The tell	Figure	What kind of number that is
Body	SUV, not saloon	Three Maybachs exist. The GLS 600 is the tall one, and the one that reads as a Los Angeles car.
Grille	MAYBACH in the slats	Fine vertical chrome bars with the word across the top, inside the grille rather than on the bodywork.
Wheels	23 in	Tyres wider at the back than the front. Nothing else in the GLS range sits on these.
Sill	chrome running board	Because the car is tall and somebody in the back is expected to step down, not jump.
Paint	two-tone, optional	An $18,500 factory split on Car and Driver’s test car. Ours is a single silver, which photographs cleanly.
Rows	2, not 3	A seven-seat GLS becomes four seats, or five on a bench. That is the whole engineering decision.

The same car, in this garage Mercedes-Maybach GLS 600 Silver, one of one, and it goes out more often with a driver than without. The calendar fills from the weekends inwards. Dates and rate →

Why the answer is an SUV when every listing shows a saloon

People type a name and a badge together because the badge is the part they cannot identify. That is the whole of the question, and it has a factual answer that takes about four minutes to read.

Maybach is not a separate manufacturer. It is the tier above Mercedes-Benz, applied to a handful of specific models, and it currently covers a long-wheelbase saloon, an electric SUV and the GLS 600. The saloon is the one photographed on almost every page that uses the word, because it is the oldest and the most obvious, and it is not the car in most people’s heads when they picture a Maybach in Los Angeles.

The car in their heads is a tall silver-or-two-tone SUV with chrome down the sills and wheels the size of dinner tables. That is the GLS 600, and the reason it reads as a different species from a normal Mercedes SUV is that it more or less is one: the third row has been taken out and the space given to the two people in the second row. The longer version of that argument, and the history of the badge, is in what a Maybach actually is; this page is the practical half.

How to tell a Maybach GLS from a GLS at twenty feet

This is the practical part, and it is what somebody searching a car by association is usually trying to do. Four tells, in the order you will spot them.

The grille. A standard GLS wears a mesh or a set of horizontal bars. The Maybach wears fine vertical chrome slats with the word MAYBACH written across the top of them, inside the grille rather than on the bodywork. It is unmistakable once you have seen it and invisible until you have.

The wheels. Twenty-three inches, and the tyres are wider at the back than the front. Nothing else in the GLS range sits on wheels that size, and from the kerb they are the first thing the eye lands on.

The paint. Two-tone is a factory option and an expensive one: Car and Driver’s tested car carried an eighteen-and-a-half-thousand-dollar silver-over-black split. Ours is a single silver, the one that photographs most consistently.

The sill. A polished chrome running board along the bottom of the doors, which exists because the car is tall and somebody in the back is expected to step down from it rather than jump. The badge on the bonnet is still the three-pointed star; the double-M sits on the rear quarter and the boot lid. Star at the front, double-M at the back, and you are looking at the car in the photographs.

What is different once the doors close

The cabin is the product. Car and Driver’s test of the GLS 600 puts the rear seats level with the best first-class airline cabins, and lists the things Mercedes will sell you to go in the back of one: a refrigerated rear console, holders for champagne flutes, folding tables, rear entertainment screens. Heat and massage come in both rows rather than only behind.

Under all of it is a 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 with a 48-volt starter-generator, making 550 horsepower through all four wheels, on air suspension with a Maybach setting that takes the edges off whatever the driver is doing. The rear seats are fixed recliners, and the boot behind them took five carry-on cases in Car and Driver’s testing: four people arriving from a flight, comfortably.

What the car actually does here

A GLS 600 is booked for the twenty minutes between an aircraft door and a hotel forecourt, or between a hotel and a venue, often with somebody else holding the keys. It is executive transport with an unusually good badge, and every feature above points the same way: the best seat in the car is behind the driver.

Two practical consequences. First, airport delivery is worth paying up for on this one specifically, and the two tiers are set out below. Second, ask about a driver when you send the dates rather than afterwards. A chauffeured day is quoted separately from the daily rate rather than folded into it — see chauffeur service — and this is the car in the fleet that goes out that way most often.

If the arrival is the point, there are two others

The GLS 600 is not the only car here built around its back seat, and it is not automatically the right one. The Rolls-Royce Cullinan is the louder statement and has rear-hinged coach doors, which change how getting out of it looks. The Bentley Bentayga is the one nobody photographs, which for some evenings is the entire brief. All three separate on the second row rather than on anything you would find in a performance table, and that comparison is its own piece: Cullinan vs Bentayga vs Maybach GLS.

What it costs, and how it reaches you

The GLS 600 carries a $2,000 refundable deposit, the top band in the fleet, held rather than spent and back 5–7 business days after the car returns. The Protection plan is priced per day off that band, Los Angeles County sales tax at 10.25% goes on the whole booking, and under twenty-five the young-driver fee is the higher of the two we charge, because the threshold is a deposit of $1,500 and this car is well above it. The live calendar and the figure to trust sit on the GLS 600’s page.

Collection from our lot on Robertson Boulevard is free and delivery to the partner hotels in Beverly Hills is complimentary. Airport delivery is $150 both ways standard, where the car waits in the airport parking structure and you take the shuttle out to it, or $300 both ways VIP, where it is waiting at the terminal when you walk out — half that for one direction. On a car built around a reclining rear seat, half an hour on a shuttle bus to reach it is an odd way to start the evening, so this is the one car where the terminal tier earns its money every time. The rest is in the terms.