2016 Mercedes-Maybach S600

 Overwhelm the senses or starve them. Connect the driver so completely with the car that he has to duck to avoid the crankshaft throws, or isolate the cabin so absolutely that its occupants feel cleansed by its serenity. Constant stimulation or sensory deprivation? When engineering an expensive car, a path must be chosen.

But the 2016 Mercedes-Maybach S600 charts a difficult middle course. It’s not a frantic supercar, nor is it a numb isolation chamber on four wheels. Instead, it indulges each of the five senses in considered doses.

Of course, the new Maybach isn’t a car for people who merely have their names on parking spaces. It’s a $190,275, 523-hp, twin-turbo V-12–powered leviathan for the titans who have their names on buildings, especially in China.

After all, even billionaires in America like to consider themselves “middle-class.” Many drive Ford F-150s and drink an occasional Coors. The Maybach is embarrassingly opulent, even by the standards of most American one-percenters, and that’s why only about 10 percent of the freshly reimagined Maybach subbrand’s S-class production will make it over here.

Chinese culture, on the other hand, has a lingering caste system, and the nouveau gentry expect to be driven in regal comfort while they drink chilled Cristal from the optional sterling-silver champagne flutes. Mercedes expects that 50 percent of new Maybachs will head there.

Let’s check out the Maybach S600, one sense at a time.

Sight

Look closely at the details as you take in all eighteen feet.

Most of the new Maybach’s mechanical substance is identical to the standard S600’s. During assembly, an additional steel panel gets welded to the floorpan, and new extended aluminum rear quarters and a longer roof are bonded to the structure. With an 8.1-inch wheelbase stretch, and the addition of chrome B-pillars and small windows behind the doors, the result is massive-looking, but with a lavish, provocative profile.

However, on the standard S600’s multispoke wheels, the Maybach also looks anonymous. It’s the dazzling, optional Maybach-exclusive 20-inchers that bring the necessary eyeball wallop. Like silver Tiffany serving bowls embedded into a polished set of E-T slot mags, the Maybach wheels visually lower the car’s center of gravity and give it a frisson of futurism. They’re encased in 245/40 front and 275/35 rear Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 2 run-flat tires with square shoulders and steamroller tread patterns. It’s all very master of the universe–type stuff.

So forget the individual media screens in the rear lounge, don’t bother with the seven possible colors of ambient interior lighting you can choose from, and don’t look up through the standard pano­ram­ic sunroof; the visual feast lies under each fender.

Touch

Take off your shoes. Now take off your socks. That's real sheep.

All the Maybach’s stretch translates into additional legroom for the two occupants in back, who are seated in thrones that look as if they were pulled from an executive jet. With separate power controls, pillow-style headrests, extendable legrests, and a perfectly coddling shape, they’re as good for napping as any bed in your house. Six-footers won’t be able to tap the front seatbacks with their feet.

Add the rear-seat comfort package—it really should be called the insanely comfortable rear-seat package—and a hot-stone-massage system is included. It’s the best thing you can touch in automobiledom, though it doesn’t offer a happy ending.
Save for a few controls, there isn’t a ­surface that the rear-seat passengers can caress, pet, or stroke that didn’t once moo. Unless they go barefoot. Then, their toes sink into plush, sheepskin floor mats. Those used to go baa.

Sound

Listen carefully and you'll hear nothing.

Mercedes claims that the Maybach S600’s rear passengers sit in the quietest space in any car. Even the seatbelts’ inertial reels are sealed to reduce the offensive noise of their operation.

Silence isn’t always a virtue, though, so every Maybach carries either a Burmester surround-sound system or the even higher-end 3-D surround-sound system that faithfully replicates orchestral music and has tweeters that pop out and rotate when in use. But the Maybach’s most engaging sound is heard mostly by the driver. Pressing the start button initiates an ignition sequence that whirs the big 6.0-liter twin-turbo V-12 to life as if the ground plugs had been pulled and fuel pumps started on a moon-bound Saturn V rocket.

Unfortunately, as with other S600s, the Maybach also uses the eco stop-start system that shuts off the engine at every stop. And it gets annoying hearing the engine rumble back to life every few minutes in traffic. The system can be turned off but defaults back to on every time you restart. An eco mode in such a staggeringly large and thirsty land yacht is a feint galling enough to insult the intelligence of its buyers.

Smell

The odor of money, masquerading as agar.

Modern processed leather just doesn’t deliver much olfactory satisfaction. So, as with the other S-class machines, the Maybach uses Mercedes’ Air Balance system of air ionization and filtration, with the addition of a fragrance. In the Maybach’s case, the ­fragrance is a special concoction of precious and expensive Agarwood essence.

The Agar tree is native to Southeast Asia, and its heartwood resin has been used for centuries in perfume and incense. It makes the cabin smell like the nicest candle shop in Guangzhou. Maybach buyers in China will love it.

Taste

Eating inside is encouraged. Other matters of taste are less clear.

Don’t lick the Maybach, but in-car dining is encouraged.  Airplane-style aluminum fold-out tables are optional, as is a refrigerated compartment big enough to hold three bottles of champagne—or a two-liter bottle of  Dr. Pepper and two roast-beef-and-provolone subs from Jersey Mike’s.

The problem with that $1100 refrigerator isn’t that it doesn’t keep things cold (it does), but that it extends deep into the trunk, sucking up about 20 percent of the usable storage space. Imagine unloading your Gulfstream and finding that there’s not enough room in the Maybach’s trunk for that cord of Agarwood you picked up during an Indonesian stopover.

The Sixth Sense

Remote but not intangible soul.

Mercedes’ S-class is already one of the best cars in the world, and moving up to the Maybach amplifies most of its virtues. In particular, the V-12 that can seem like coldblooded overkill in the S-class feels easygoing in the 523-hp Maybach, and shifts of the seven-speed automatic transmission are somehow both firm and virtually unnoticeable.

Meanwhile the coordinated operation of the Magic Body Control suspension and Road Surface Scan forward-looking-camera system gives the Maybach the most even-tempered ride of any sedan. The distant steering feel present in other S-class sedans somehow feels appropriate in the stretched Maybach.

Mercedes plans to apply the Maybach treatment to other products, including (it’s rumored) the large GL SUV.  A super-deluxe SUV such as that one could find more takers in the United States than this monstrous sedan.  And there should be a stretched E-class Maybach for the junior executives in China and here as well.

Now, please excuse us as we crawl in back, enjoy our massages and exquisitely chilled subs, and take the mother of all naps