A long weekend on the French Riviera, your own itinerary, no fixed schedule — just a car that makes every stretch of the coast road feel like an occasion. This isn’t a performance comparison, even though all three of these cars technically qualify as SUVs with well over 500 horsepower. Nobody choosing between a Rolls-Royce Cullinan, a Mercedes-Maybach GLS 600, or a Bentley Bentayga for a few days on the coast is thinking about lap times. They’re thinking about which one makes the drive from Nice to Monaco feel the way it’s supposed to feel.
The numbers
| Rolls-Royce Cullinan | Mercedes-Maybach GLS 600 | Bentley Bentayga | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seats | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Engine | 6.75L twin-turbo V12 | 4.0L twin-turbo V8 | 4.0L twin-turbo V8 |
| Horsepower | 571 hp | 558 hp | 550 hp |
| Torque | ~850 Nm | ~730 Nm | ~770 Nm |
| 0–100 km/h | 5.2 sec | 4.9 sec | 4.5 sec |
| Top speed | 250 km/h | 250 km/h | 290 km/h |
| Purchase price (from) | ~€350,000+ | ~€200,000+ | ~€200,000+ |
| Rental (per day) | ~€2,400 | ~€1,200 | ~€1,700 |
| Drivetrain | AWD | AWD | AWD |
Notice the Cullinan is technically the slowest of the three and carries the most torque of the three at the same time — a reminder that outright torque doesn’t automatically mean outright speed once gearing, weight, and calibration get involved. It’s also the most expensive to rent and to buy. That’s not a contradiction — it’s the whole comparison in one line.
What sets them apart on the road
The Cullinan’s entire engineering brief is comfort, full stop. Rolls-Royce doesn’t publish a 0-60 time you’re meant to care about; the company’s own language is about “magic carpet ride,” and the Cullinan is the closest thing on four wheels to that description actually being true. The self-leveling air suspension, the sound insulation, the sheer isolation from the road — it’s not built to be fast, it’s built to make speed feel irrelevant. For a coast-road weekend where the destination matters as much as the drive, that’s arguably the correct priority.
The GLS 600 Maybach takes a different route to a similar destination: it’s genuinely quick — 4.9 seconds is not slow — while adding Maybach’s specific interior treatment on top of an already excellent Mercedes GLS platform. It reads as slightly less overtly showy than the Rolls badge, which some people actively prefer, and at roughly half the daily rental rate of the Cullinan, it’s the easiest of the three to justify.
The Bentayga is the enthusiast’s pick among the three. It’s the fastest, and Bentley’s engineering has always leaned toward “luxury car that happens to be genuinely good to drive” rather than “isolation chamber on wheels.” If part of the appeal of a Riviera weekend is that the coast road itself should still be engaging — Basse Corniche included — the Bentayga is the one that delivers that alongside the presence.
A bit of context on each car
The Cullinan is named, appropriately, after the largest gem-quality diamond ever found — Rolls-Royce doesn’t do subtlety with naming, and the SUV lives up to it as the brand’s first genuine off-road-capable model since the marque’s earliest history. It launched in 2018 as Rolls-Royce’s answer to a question the company resisted for years: whether an SUV could exist without compromising what a Rolls-Royce is supposed to feel like. The self-leveling “Planar” suspension system, unique to the Cullinan among the cars in this comparison, uses a camera to read the road ahead and adjust each wheel independently before a bump is even reached — which is a large part of why the ride feels the way it does, and part of why it commands the highest purchase price here by a wide margin.
The Maybach sub-brand has a longer and stranger history than most people realize — an independent luxury manufacturer in the early 20th century, later absorbed and revived by Mercedes-Benz as its top-tier trim rather than a separate company. Applying the Maybach treatment to the GLS platform, rather than only to sedans as in decades past, was itself a relatively recent move, and it shows in details like the illuminated grille badge and the noticeably quieter cabin insulation compared to a standard GLS — at roughly half the Cullinan’s purchase price for a comparably plush experience.
Bentley’s approach with the Bentayga has always leaned on the brand’s motorsport-adjacent history more than Rolls-Royce’s does — Bentley won Le Mans outright multiple times in the 1920s, and something of that identity survives in how the Bentayga is tuned, even as a five-seat luxury SUV. It’s the reason Bentley’s marketing has never shied away from calling the Bentayga fun to drive in a way Rolls-Royce simply doesn’t use that word about the Cullinan.
Practical considerations
All three seat five and handle luggage for a full week without issue, and all three run all-wheel drive, which matters if your coast-road plans hit a wet spell — not uncommon on the Riviera outside peak summer. Where they diverge more is cabin width and rear-seat comfort: the Cullinan’s more upright, boxier body gives slightly more rear headroom than the Bentayga’s more coupe-influenced roofline, worth knowing if part of your group will be riding rather than driving.
Our call: the Rolls-Royce Cullinan. For a Riviera weekend where arriving matters as much as the drive itself, it wins on pure occasion — the car that makes stepping out in Monte Carlo feel like an event rather than a transfer. Choose the GLS 600 Maybach if you want 90% of that feeling at half the price, or the Bentayga if you’d rather the coast road itself stay part of the entertainment.
All three are available through the same fleet that supplies the exotic cars on Pure Adrenalin’s Supercars Rally Monaco — a completely separate booking, worth considering on its own merits if a weekend on the coast isn’t enough and you’d rather have a full week of driving with a private guide instead.
Ready to book one for your own Riviera weekend? Get in touch and we’ll set it up.