At a glossy new studio space in Beverly Hills, California, Mercedes introduced its first Manufaktur hub in the United States and rolled out a new model ripe for the company’s most top-tier personalizations, the Maybach GLS680.
The Maybach Lifestyle
Mercedes’ Maybachs are designed with the opposite of restraint, which means a list of aesthetic and luxury features longer than the contract rider of the celebrities who buy them. The 2027 Mercedes-Maybach GLS680 enters the luxury SUV market with more power, sophisticated chassis management, and new exterior and interior options.
The most important thing about getting a top-of-the-line luxury machine is making sure everyone in the valet line knows it’s the top of the line. To that end, the GLS680 wears a distinctive Maybach-only grille with a light-up surround. Additional illumination spells out the Maybach name inside the grille, and if that’s not enough razzmatazz, there’s also the option for a spotlighted Mercedes hood ornament.
The driving lights are designed to catch attention as much as illuminate the road, with rose gold elements and accent lights inside and between the headlights and the grilles. Chrome Maybach patterns glitter across the inlet grilles, and more shiny silver runs along the redesigned front bumper. Should these cues to importance be missed on arrival, they won’t be on departure, as the rear of the GLS wears a redesigned tailgate with a chrome-starred taillight design.
New wheels include a standard 22-inch, 20-hole design and an optional 23-inch wheel with a gyroscopic Mercedes star centercap that stays upright even while in motion, a fun party trick similar to wheels from Bentley and Rolls-Royce.
Exterior color options include the new Dark Petrol, a bright Patagonia Red Metallic from the Manufaktur program, and Maybach exclusive Dark Petrol/Verde Silver Metallic two-tone. Other Manufaktur customizations are available, including a 20-piece hand-stitched leather headliner.
For Maybach, static appeal is only part of the allure. This is a vehicle intended to offer a grand welcome and a respectful farewell. An open door greets the driver or passenger with a quick deployment of the anodized running boards, lit up (natch) and projecting a Mercedes-Maybach signature puddle lamp at night. It all blinks off and folds up at the click of a soft-close door.
An Indulgent Interior
Inside, the Maybach GLS is as opulent as a 17th-century cathedral, albeit with more touchscreens and fewer fingerbones of saints. The 12.3-inch multi-display stretches glassily from behind the steering wheel across the dash, with rose gold surrounding the dials in the driver’s display and a pattern of gold, rose, and black making a backdrop for additional driver info.
Leather upholstery covers the seats, which offer a new vibrating massage function in the front and an extended massage in the rear that now includes the recliner calf rests. While your shins jiggle, you can sip beverages from the optional refrigerator compartment, or enjoy a surround-sound concert through the standard Burmester system with Dolby Atmos, upgraded by two additional speakers and a 710-watt amplifier. With the exterior noise pollution muffled by additional engine and undercarriage insulation, riders will hear nothing not on their playlist.
Even the air in a Maybach must be better than that of more plebian transportation, and certainly with a summer of forest fires already underway, Mercedes is in a good place to highlight its standard multi-stage air-filter system, which includes an ionizer to eliminate dust and cabin filters to trap exterior contaminants.
Any seat in the GLS is designed with comfort and high-tech assistance in mind. The MBUX infotainment system allows a personalized organization of most-used apps and displays, while the “Virtual Assistant” allows for real-time, natural-speech voice commands. Driver assistance is available and includes 10 cameras, five radar inputs, and 12 ultrasonic sensors to prevent running that chrome-trimmed bumper into a post or curbing the gravity-defying wheels. Rear passengers can ignore the challenges of parking and immerse themselves in one of two optional 11.6-inch full-HD entertainment displays with integrated cameras to support video conferencing as well as video watching.
When the road opens up, so can the GLS680 with a 48-volt hybrid system that matches an integrated starter-generator with a twin-turbo V-8 and a nine-speed automatic transmission that delivers power to all four wheels. There’s plenty of power to go around as the updated powerplant makes 603 horsepower and 627 pound-feet of torque. Mercedes says the engine is not only more powerful, but also smoother, due to the addition of balance shafts to counteract any uncouth vibrations.
A new steering ratio quickens the response to directional inputs while predictive damper control reads the road ahead and adjusts the suspension before bumps and curves can upset the conference call. In the off-road mode, the GLS can bounce its way out of sticky situations, or dance to amuse the royalty.
Mercedes hasn’t yet said how much the new Maybach SUV will cost, but we expect its price tag will start above $200,000. The GLS680 is built in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and should arrive at dealerships in late 2026.
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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.
