Maybach was an audacious idea - a Mercedes-Benz that could truly do battle against ... by nothing more exciting than the stillborn Exelero and Jay-Z and Kanye West attacking one with a blowtorch ...

and Mercedes-Benz has Maybach. Both Bentley and Rolls-Royce have proven to be valuable upper echelon assets for their respective parent companies, but Maybach has never made it that far.

The Benz and Maybach prototypes in these pics will morph into series-production vehicles for model year 2027, marking the second refresh of the GLS-Class rather than a ground-up redesign.

The Mercedes-Benz Exelero, created in 2004, is a concept car built on the Maybach framework. It features a powerful twin-turbo V12 engine that delivers 690 horsepower and 1,020 Nm of torque.