Mercedes-Maybach S 600 due for LA auto show debut

Mercedes’ last venture into the high-end luxury car market with its Maybach brand wasn’t the success the company might have hoped.

Maybach as an exclusive nameplate now resides in the past, but a new vehicle making its debut soon will still carry the once-historic name. The Mercedes-Maybach S 600 will be launched simultaneously at the upcoming LA auto show and in Guangzhou, in China.

Mercedes says the car melds the perfection of its S-class luxury saloon with the exclusivity of Maybach. Mercedes-Maybach will offer a range of features unavailable in ‘lesser’ S-class models, an appropriately luxurious foil to the firm’s sporty Mercedes-AMG branding.

Just two photos have been released so far – that of the car’s badging and a luxuriant interior shot – but from the latter it’s clear that the regular S-class interior has been built upon to provide even more luxury for rear seat occupants.

Mercedes-Maybach models will have extra space, specially-designed seats and lavish appointments. There’ll also be ‘extensive scope for individualisation’, giving plenty of scope for giving customers worldwide the chance to specify their cars in all manner of imaginative colour and trim combinations.

The new brand debuts alongside Mercedes’ new naming strategy. In future, all SUV-linked models will begin with GL lettering. Most significantly, the old M-class will become the GLE, equating to a ‘GL E-class’.

All coupes will begin CL, including those with four doors, and all roadsters will begin SL. Again, the largest change here is that of the SLK to SLC, linking it to the C-class.

Mercedes’ various powertrains also get uniform naming structures. ‘c’ will refer to compressed natural gas models, diesels will be suffixed with ‘d’, electric cars get ‘e’, ‘f’ refers to fuel cells and ‘h’ means hybrids.