Concepts · 2016
A yacht that learned to drive.
Pebble Beach, 2016: Mercedes parked a nearly six-meter red coupé among the classics — and put four electric motors under its boat-tail.
The name rounded up. At 5,700 mm the Vision Mercedes-Maybach 6 was not quite six meters, but it was long enough to make every other coupé on the lawn look polite. Gorden Wagener called the brief sensual purity taken to an extreme — an aero coupé for the electric age.
Inspiration came from the streamliners of the 1930s: endless hood, cabin shoved aft, boat-tail rear. The grille was described as a pinstriped suit. The doors were gullwings.
Chapter I
738 horsepower, zero cylinders.
Four permanent-magnet motors — one per wheel — made all-wheel drive with torque vectoring. Combined output: 550 kW (738 hp). Zero to 100 km/h in under four seconds; top speed limited to 250. An underfloor pack of about 80 kWh promised more than 200 miles (EPA) / over 500 km (NEDC).
CCS DC charging at up to 350 kW was said to add about 100 km in five minutes. Wireless charging was already on the 2018 roadmap. The illuminated side sills advertised what the silence confirmed: this was an EV wearing Maybach robes.
Inside: Chesterfield-style seats, rose-gold trim, polished elm floors, and a windshield that doubled as a transparent display — instruments and navigation beamed across the glass. A 2+2 layout in a cabin that felt like a lounge that had swallowed a dashboard.
- Length
- 5.70 m
- Power
- 738 hp
- 0–100
- <4 s
- Wheels
- 24″
Chapter II
A cabriolet encore.
A year later Mercedes showed the Vision Mercedes-Maybach 6 Cabriolet — same drama, conventional doors, open sky. Neither version was meant for a price list. Both were meant to tell Monterey that Maybach’s future could be electric without becoming austere.
Epilogue
The length that stayed a statement.
No six-meter Maybach coupé reached the showroom. What did reach customers was the attitude: EQS and Maybach S-Class interiors that treat electric drive as another form of silence, and design studies that keep quoting the streamliner. The Vision 6 remains the purest drawing of that idea — almost six meters of red metal arguing that excess and efficiency are not opposites.