The Colour of Money

Mercedes-Maybach GLS 600, the ultra-luxurious SUV launched last month at a price of Rs 2.43 crore, is opulence personified

- Sameer Kumar

The newly-launched Mercedes-Maybach GLS 600 4Matic makes you sit back and ask yourself, what even is an SUV anymore? Because at 5.2m long and with a kerb weight of 2,785 kilos, this thing — this monster, if you will — can’t possibly have any ‘sport’ in it, right? And as for ‘utility’, the GLS 600 has an ex-showroom price tag of Rs 2.43 crore, so who on earth is going to use it as a load-lugging workhorse? Then again, the Maybach tag represents extreme luxury. The GLS is only used on the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, so this SUV clearly isn’t meant for everyone; only Arabian oil sheikhs, European royalty, and newly-minted tech billionaires in Asia need apply.

The other thing about the Mercedes- Maybach GLS 600 is that on the day of the launch last month, the company pre-sold the entire 50-unit batch of these vehicles allocated for the Indian market for 2021. So, even if you have Rs 3 crore lying idle in your bank account and you want the most luxurious SUV that Mercedes-Benz makes, you can’t have one — at least not this year — because they’re all gone. The next batch of the GLS 600 will only be here during the first quarter of 2022. A raging pandemic and its deleterious effects on the economy be damned — the Indian stock market is hitting new lifetime highs, and Indian car buyers are buying luxury SUVs costing crores. And all is well with the world.