Mercedes-Maybach S 580L 2021 Review

Pay peanuts, get monkeys. Pay $329,900 plus on-road costs and, in Australia, you’ll get the 2022 Mercedes-Benz S 580L. Pay $565,800 plus ORCs and you’ll get the equally new Mercedes-Maybach S 680, complete with twin-turbo V12 grunt.

But there’s an argument that with the Maybach siblings (the S 580L is also available in Maybach spec in Europe, as tested here), you get what you pay for – even if they are the most expensive models from the three-pointed star brand this side of the Mercedes-AMG ONE hypercar.

And that’s before you tick a single option box.

In addition to all-wheel drive, cushy air suspension and the option of rear-wheel steering, both Maybach-spec models bring you 18cm more wheelbase (read: rear legroom) than even the long-wheelbase S-Class, plus reclining rear seats with full massage function (including the calves!), gesture-control (and/or one-touch) opening and closing for the rear doors and more pampering than a day spa.

It’s... comprehensive. But it needs to be, given the prices being asked here. Even without all of those extras, the V8-powered Mercedes-Benz S 580L 4MATIC will cost $65,000 more than the considerably good S 450L 4MATIC ($264,900), and about $90K more than the entry-level S-Class, the short-wheelbase S 450 4MATIC ($240,700).

On the flipside, the S 580L is $48K cheaper than the Bentley Flying Spur V8, which would almost pay for some options.

And while the $566K S 680 V12 brings all of those rear-seat features for a cool $182K more than the BMW M760Li ($383,900) and $97K more than the 6.0-litre W12-powered Bentley Flying Spur ($469,000), it’s still $62K cheaper than the 6.75-litre V12-powered Rolls-Royce Ghost ($628,000).

Besides the engines, the funding you part with gives you a mild-hybrid system in the V8 (not the anachronistic, but beautiful V12) and every piece of safety (18 airbags!) and driver-assistance tech in the not-inconsiderable Daimler playbook.

In short, they’re not messing around with the Maybach brand this time, especially not in the year of its 100th birthday.

Everything Mercedes-Benz can engineer to keep the 2022 Mercedes-Maybach S 580L from colliding with the scenery, or lesser road users, is packed in here.

There is active body control, which combines with air suspension, a road-surface scanning system to eradicate bumps and hazards, curve tilting and active body control, and then there is the lidar, the stereo cameras, the radars and the ultra-sonic sensors.

It has all the good safety stuff too, like a driving-assistance package, active distance assist, active cruise control, traffic-sign assist, active-parking assist and a 360-degree camera.

There is rear-axle steering as an option (so that’s going to hurt, even if you don’t crash), which can shrink the turning circle by two metres, so you’re going to need it.

Even when all of that fails, there are standard rear airbags, seat-belt airbags and a gently deploying front airbag that burps out of a strange tubular structure to protect rear-seat occupants.

The Chauffeur Package means the front passenger backrest can tilt forward 23 degrees to increase the rear legroom, while the Executive rear seats can recline by 43.5 degrees.

And then, even in its base form, the Burmester 4D surround sound system delivers 1750 Watts of output through 31 speakers. And that’s the minimum.

These are known items inside the Daimler family. The 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 is a versatile rockstar of a thing, sitting inside everything from the nimble AMG GT coupe to the... well, to the 5.5-metre Maybach S 580L.

It’s a lovely motor, especially now that it’s mated to the almost invisible force of the 200Nm Integrated Starter Generator (ISG).

It’s enough to hurl the Maybach S 580L to 100km/h in just 4.8 seconds, and though weighing 2290kg discourages wheelspin anyway, it still has active all-wheel drive. Just in case.

Meanwhile, over in dinosaur land, the S 680’s V12 takes its step-brother’s paltry 320kW of power and piles on another 130kW, and embarrasses its 700Nm of torque with 960Nm of its own.

It’s brutally smooth, surging to 100km/h in 4.5 seconds, despite weighing 60kg more than the Maybach S 580L.

The 4.0-litre V8 is modular, with each cylinder’s dimensions being the same as in AMG’s inline 3.0-litre six and the inline 2.0-litre four. The V12 is related to, umm, oooh, the W140 S-Class engine from 1991.

The chassis side of things is relatively close to the S-Class, other than the dozens of kilos of sound deadening stuffed into the wheel-arches, the standard acoustic glass and the noise-cancelling (yes, headphone-style) soundwaves that flood the cabin from the Burmester bass speakers to silence everything.

There is a four-link front suspension, a five-link rear end and active body control to keep it all, well, civilized.

For a limousine largely designed for people to be driven in, the 2022 Mercedes-Maybach S 580L drives superbly – as it should because the latest S-Class drives superbly.

The thought is that it should lack for nimbleness because of the 3396mm between the axles, but it doesn’t. It lacks for nothing, and even the driving experience has been thought through.

The engine, for example, rushes through its work without a hint of the aggression of the GT or the rumbling bellow of the E 63.

It just surges and keeps surging and there’s a distant rumble from somewhere up there, though it never interferes with the cabin.

Likewise, its ride comfort is impeccable. The wheelbase gives it a leg-up in the fight against squat and pitch, but the rest of the suspension package makes for a rock-stable cabin platform that doesn’t seem interested in what’s happening below decks.

It can be convinced to be involving to drive, via the drive-select modes and its sportiest mode. While that delivers a car that would hustle through a winding road at a rate that would shock a mid-level sports car, its core competence is still isolation.

The rear seats are where it’s at, and it’s here that the focus has been put. Nothing in the car industry is more cossetting than a Maybach headrest and there’s nowhere else you’d rather be for a cross-country trip.

Even I fell asleep in the back with a shuttle driver – and I never fall asleep in cars. The sound isolation from the suspension and the road is brilliant, even if there’s still a decent amount from the powertrain.

Well, here’s a thing. Normally, I’d mark the 2022 Mercedes-Maybach S 580L down because of its price tag – which is $330K even without the Maybach bits in Australia.

But that’s where the market for super-limos like this is and, in that context, it’s not expensive. It’s almost a bargain.

It’s certainly a better car than a Rolls-Royce Ghost, even without the cache of the Spirit of Ecstasy.

To argue that its competition is actually down in the S-Class family is to miss the point of the car, which is exactly to stand out from the lesser family members.

It’s a wonderful place to spend time and it’s also distinctive, both inside and out. You can see the creased centre line of the unique bonnet from the driver’s seat, for example, and it has a ride quality that even the vaunted S-Class would envy.

The only issue I can see is that, for all of its suspension and noise-cancelling refinement, electric cars have changed our perceptions of what powertrain refinement can be.

And now that EVs have become democratised – at least in Europe, China and the US – it’s relevant that the Volkswagen ID.4 powertrain is actually quieter and smoother than the S 580L powertrain.

Then again, Mercedes-Benz has the EQS coming later this year to show us what it can do there, too. In the meantime, the Maybach S-Class should do just nicely.

How much does the 2021 Mercedes-Maybach S580L cost?
Price: $329,900 plus ORCs (Mercedes-Benz S 580L)
Available: Late 2021
Engine: 4.0-litre turbo-petrol V8
Output: 370kW/700Nm
Mild-hybrid boost: 15kW/200Nm
Transmission: Nine-speed automatic
Fuel: 10.2/100km (WLTP Combined)
CO2: 233g/km (WLTP Combined)
Safety rating: five-star (Euro NCAP 2020)