Mercedes-Benz Maybach vs Rolls-Royce Spectre (bev)

What's the difference?

It’s big, it’s bold and totally baller, but that’s kind of the point.

The Mercedes-Maybach GLS 600 might not win over many fans with its in-your-face design or its sky-high price tag, but there is definitely an appeal here.

Taking luxury to another level is no easy feat, especially in a Mercedes, but the attention to detail, lavish second row and butter-smooth V8 engine combine to turn the already-good GLS into this exquisite Maybach.

Note: CarsGuide attended this event as a guest of the manufacturer, with accommodation and meals provided.

Personally, I was very much taken with the looks, and the feels, of the new Rolls-Royce Spectre, which delivers everything you’d expect from this brand, and seems to have lost nothing by switching to electric propulsion. The trick, it seems, in turning your brand into an EV one is to have made your cars silent in the first place.

But the real verdict comes from the people hurling their Spectre orders at the company, which has received so many of them it’s being forced to ramp up production. And 40 per cent of pre-orders are from new customers. Honestly, it’s as if they were all just waiting for an EV to drop a million on.

If you have wealth, why not flaunt it? I reckon that might be the philosophy of the Maybach designers back at HQ, and it kind of shows!

The styling of the Maybach GLS might be the most controversial thing about it. But honestly, I love it!

The liberal lashings of chrome, the three-pointed star hood ornament, and especially with the optional two-tone paintwork, it’s all just so over the top and in your face that it brings out a smile.

From the front, the Maybach is also distinguished by an imposing grille that gives it serious presence on the road, while the profile is characterised by massive 23-inch multi-spoke wheels – better park well clear of any gutters!

You’ll also notice the Maybach eschews the usual black-plastic cladding around the wheelarches and underbody found on lesser/cheaper SUVs in favour of body-coloured and gloss-black panels.

There is also a little Maybach badge on the D-pillar, which is a nice attention-to-detail touch. From the rear, there’s more chrome, while the dual exhaust outlets hint at the performance on offer. But it’s inside where you really want to be.

Everything in there is just a sea of soft-touch and premium materials, from the dashboard to the seats and even the carpet under your feet.

Though the layout of the interior mirrors the GLS, the extra detailing, like the Maybach-stamped pedals, unique multimedia surround and woodgrain steering wheel, elevates the cabin into something truly special.

And if you opt for the comfort rear seats, well they wouldn’t look out of place on a private jet.

The second-row seats also feature contrast stitching on the headrests, cushions, console and doors for that add a touch of class.

I can see the Maybach GLS might not be to everyone’s tastes, but it certainly stands out from the sea of samey-looking luxury SUVs out there.

Making a vehicle as enormous as the Spectre look good is no mean feat, but Rolls has done a hell of a job, from most angles. The massive Pantheon Grille is something to behold in the metal, and because it doesn’t need to let air into an engine bay, it’s been designed for airflow, as has so much else. Rolls achieved a drag coefficient of 0.25, which is good for extending EV range, and they even spent more than 800 hours in a wind tunnel working on making the Spirt of Ecstasy hood ornament as aerodynamic as possible (she’s had her wings clipped, apparently).

The modern take on the classic grille combined with a chesty bonnet and very cool DRLs give the Spectre a look of classic modernity from the front, while the proportions over all give it a great side profile.

Apparently the design brief was based on some majestic cliffs, the Seven Sisters of Sussex, and the car definitely has that level of grandiosity.

The only weak point is the rear, which had to be sheer for aero reasons - and features the narrowest legally possible rear lights, which are supposed to look like “islands in a lake”, apparently. To me, driving behind one, the rear view is just a little dull.

The luscious interior is meant to be an example of “Automotive Haute Couture”, meaning hand made and stupidly expensive, and Rolls also humbly refers to it as a “cosseting art lounge”. It all sounds a bit over the top until you sit in it, and discover that it really does feel beyond special.

The Maybach GLS is based on Mercedes’ largest SUV offering to date, which means there is plentiful room for occupants and cargo.

The front row feels positively palatial, with heaps of head-, leg- and shoulder-room for six-foot (183cm) tall adults.

Storage options include generous door pockets with room for large bottles, two cupholders, a smartphone tray that doubles as a wireless charger, and an underarm storage cubby.

But the rear seats are where you want to be, especially with these second-row comfort seats fitted.

It’s rare when there is more room in the rear than the front, but it does makes sense for a car like this, especially when you consider the GLS this car is based on is a three-row vehicle.

The removal of seats six and seven mean there is more room in the second row, especially with the comfort seats fitted, allowing you to recline fairly flat and to get into a comfortable position.

Storage is also plentiful in the second row, with a bespoke centre console in our test car, the aforementioned drinks fridge, backseat storage and a nice door bin.

Open the boot and you will find 520 litres (VDA) of volume, which is plenty for golf clubs and holiday luggage.

However, if you opt for the rear seat refrigerator, the cooler box will eat into boot space.

If you’re looking for the modern EV style interior, you can forget it, because Rolls says it didn’t want “any of that funky stuff” in the Spectre, so no giant screens in here. Indeed, I switched into a Rolls-Royce Ghost at one stage to be driven somewhere and the interior was almost exactly the same, although the new car gets a more modern fully digital dash. 

There’s plenty of room for water bottles and oddment storage and the sense of space for the driver and front passenger is suitably grand, but the rear seats are really for spoilt teenagers rather than Rolls owners. They’re not uncomfortable, at all, but they just feel a bit squeezed, you wouldn’t ask to be chauffeured in a Spectre, clearly it’s a Rolls you’d choose to drive yourself. 

The boot is wide, deep and long with a volume of 380 litres.

Australian pricing for the Rolls-Royce Spectre starts from $770,000 before on-road costs, and on the point of whether that represents value, well not to me, but certainly the huge number of orders Rolls claims to have been hit by suggests otherwise.

You do get a lot of car for your money, because the Spectre is vast and weighs almost three tonnes, and there’s no doubt that the interior is nicer than most people’s houses, or even the nicest hotel you’ve ever seen, and that the top-notch umbrellas hidden in each door are a nice touch.

One of the nifty and unexpected features the Spectre offers is a “Rolls-Royce Sound”, which you can toggle on and off. With the fake noise off, the car is freakishly quiet - apparently during testing they achieved a level of EV silence so incredible that people found it “disturbing” and had to engineer some sound back in - but with it on you get just the most subtle of guttural sounds. Every other company so far has gotten fake noise wrong, but Rolls has nailed it with the Spectre; it’s just loud enough, but suitably restrained as well.

You also get the wondrous Starlight Headliner, which uses optic fibre cables to paint the night sky on the roof, complete with shooting stars, and in the Spectre you can now have the stars fitted to the inside of its massive coach doors as well.

Powering the Mercedes-Maybach is a 4.0-litre twin-turbo petrol V8 – the same engine you will find in many AMG products like the C 63 S and GT coupe.

In this application, the engine is tuned to produce 410kW and 730Nm, which is admittedly less than you get in something like the GLS 63, but the Maybach isn’t designed to be an outright powerhouse.

With drive sent to all four wheels via a nine-speed automatic transmission, the Maybach SUV will accelerate from 0-100km/h in just 4.9 seconds – also helped by a 48-volt mild-hybrid 'EQ Boost' system.

Though not designed for outright grunt, the Maybach GLS’s engine is nicely tuned to deliver smooth power and seemless shifting

The Maybach is more than a match for rivals such as the Aston Martin DBX (405kW/700Nm), Bentley Bentayga (404kW/800Nm) and Range Rover P565 SV Autobiography (416kW/700Nm).

For the first time ever, this Rolls-Royce has no magnificent engine, no throbbing 12 cylinders, no, it has two separately excited synchronous motors, one on each axle for seamless all-wheel drive. The front motor makes 190kW and 365Nm while they’ve sensibly sent more grunt to the rear, which gets 360kW and 710Nm. Either motor on its own would be enough to power a normal car. The total figures are 430kW and 900Nm, which is supercar like.

The battery is made up 804 cells, weighs 700kg and has a net capacity of 102kWh, and the designers used it as a sound-deadening agent for road noise, because it’s so massive. 

The Spectre can hit 100km/h in 4.5 seconds, which feels very fast indeed when you’re piloting something that weighs 2890kg and is 5.5m long.

Official fuel consumption figures for the Mercedes-Maybach GLS 600 are pegged at 12.5 litres per 100km, and it’s recommended to fill up with 98 RON premium unleaded, so be prepared for a big fuel bill.

This is despite the 48-volt mild-hybrid tech that lets the Maybach coast without using fuel in certain conditions, and extends start-stop functionality.

In our brief time in the car, we managed to get 14.8L/100km. Why is the Maybach so thirsty? That’s simple, it’s weight.

All the cool features like Nappa leather interior, woodgrain trim and 23-inch wheels add weight to the overall package, and the Maybach GLS tips the scales at nearly three tonnes. Ouch.

The Spectre is rated at 520km on the WLTP scale, but Rolls claims it can do a lot better (like 600km). Efficiency is claimed to be 21.5kWh per 100km.

We drove 210km and had 300km of indicated range left at the end, which is pretty close to the claim.

The Spectre can be charged at up to 200kW on a DC fast charger, on which it will take 35 minutes to go from 10 to 80 per cent charge.

On an 11kWh home system it will take 10 hours and 45 minutes to go from zero to 90 per cent charge.

While you might not find many owners of the Maybach GLS in the driver’s seat, it’s nice to know it can hold its own in the driving dynamics department.

Don’t get me wrong, this won’t give the AMG-blessed GLS 63 a run for its money, but the Maybach SUV is far from dull.

And the engine plays a large part in this. Sure, it’s not as savage as some AMG models, but there is still plenty of grunt to come out of corners with enthusiasm.

The tune of the engine is obviously weighted towards smoothness and comfort, but with 410kW/730Nm on tap there is enough there to make things feel urgent.

The nine-speed automatic transmission also has to be called out, as it is calibrated in such a way that the shifts are imperceptible. There’s none of that mechanical jerkiness and clunkiness involved in swapping cogs, and it just makes the Maybach GLS feel that much more luxurious.

The steering, while straying a towards numb, still offers plenty of feedback so you know what’s happening underneath, but it’s the active body control that works to keep this hefty SUV in check in the bends.

The best bit, though, has to be the air suspension, which floats the Maybach GLS over bumps and uneven roads like a cloud.

The front-facing camera can also read the terrain ahead and set-up the suspension for incoming speed bumps and turns, taking comfort up to a whole new level.

All this is to say, yeah, the Maybach might look like a boat, and cost as much as a boat, but it doesn’t actually feel like a boat behind the wheel.

But really, are you buying this car because you want to be the driver? Or are you buying one because you want to be driven?

In the second row, it’s as close as you’ll get to a first-class flight on the road, and the seats are genuinely plush and cosy.

It’s eerily quiet and supremely comfortable in the second row, leaving you free to carry on with important business like drinking your champagne or uploading to the 'gram.

And while I usually suffer from a bout of motion sickness within minutes of looking at a phone in a car, I didn’t feel such ill effects in the Maybach GLS.

Even after about 20 minutes scrolling through Facebook and emails while being driven around, there was no sign of a headache or queasiness, which is all thanks to how well the suspension is tuned and the active anti-roll technology doing its thing.

The short answer to this question is that the Spectre drives just like a Rolls-Royce, but that answer is deceptively simple, because, for an electric vehicle, that’s actually a hell of an achievement.

Most EVs do not feel like cars to drive - the electric Hyundai Kona is not much like a petrol one at all - but what Rolls set out to do with its first EV was to make a vehicle that feels, handles and accelerates just like one of its famous and fabulously over-powered combustion-engined Ghosts, Phantoms or Wraiths.

This meant it had to be “Silent”, which it nails with ease - and the important thing to remember here is that even its V12 cars were always incredibly quiet, unless you really misbehaved. And it had to be “Effortless”, another brand pillar. Again, nailed it, because a Roller has never bothered with things like shift paddles, Sports modes or even the option to do anything but stick it in D for Drive and go. 

The sensation Rolls owners demand is endless, otiose acceleration, particularly off the line, and the Spectre delivers this in a typical EV fashion, but also one that’s very familiar to anyone who’s driven a Ghost, for example. It’s just a sense of overwhelming, prole-crushing progress, and it’s magnificent. 

The third and final brand pillar is “Waftability” and despite all the weight that it’s carrying (imagine how far over three tonnes this thing would have gone if they didn’t build their cars out of aluminium), the Spectre rides with a kind of hovercraft air of being just above, or barely in touch with, the ground. Bumps are no longer your concern, sir.

As mentioned, Rolls could have chosen a limousine-style vehicle as its first EV, but it has made a driver’s car instead - no CEO will sit in the back of a coupe like the Spectre. So it had to deliver when it comes to being fun, or at least a little frisky at times, when driven. 

Again, quite incredibly, despite its mass and weight, it does reward enthusiastic driving and can carve up even relatively narrow winding roads with aplomb, displaying very little body roll or pitching. The steering is almost absurdly light - because it must be “effortless” - but there’s still enough feedback to keep you interested. 

Most of the time, of course, the essentially laid back aura of being in a Rolls-Royce will seep into your body and brain and you will simply cruise along, patting yourself on the back for being so rich and clever.

And now, with an EV option finally available, you can tell yourself you’re saving the planet as well (as long as you don’t think about the 28 other cars in your garage).

The Spectre has not been crash tested for ANCAP. Its safety offerings include adaptive cruise control, lane-change assist, lane departure with active steer, a reversing assistant - "to support with parking and long reverses, eg country lanes or driveways, Spectre will reverse the previous 200m driven" - and collision warning with active braking.

Rolls tell us the Spectre has "Four airbags (does not need more)". So that's good news.

Like all new Mercedes models sold in 2021, the Maybach GLS 600 comes with a five-year/unlimited kilometre warranty with roadside assist over that period.

This is class-leading in the premium segment, with only Lexus, Genesis and Jaguar able to match the warranty period, while BMW and Audi serve up assurance periods lasting only three years.

Scheduled servicing intervals are every 12 months or 20,000km, whichever occurs first.

While the first three services will cost owners $4000 ($800 for the first, $1200 for the second and $2000 for the third service), buyers can opt to save some money with a pre-paid service plan.

Under the service plan pricing, three years of maintenance will cost $3050, while four- and five-year plans are on offer at $4000 and $4550 respectively.

Now, I would assume you'd get a lifetime warranty at Rolls prices, but apparently you get only four years, but it is unlimited mileage.

The Spectre's battery is covered by a 10-year warranty.

An extended service and warranty package is "TBC".

Rolls also offers 24/7 roadside assistance, and if your battery goes flat the company will take your Spectre to the nearest charging station.

A "regional flying doctor" is on standby 24/7 in extreme cases if Spectre “fails to proceed”.