- The Chinese S-Class does a very convincing impression of the real thing in this video review from China.
- It's opulent, its interior feels luxurious and brims with toys, and it glides down the road like potholes don't exist.
- The Maextro S800 is unique because it's available with either a pure electric or a range-extender powertrain.
China has its own equivalent to Bentley or Maybach in the form of the Maextro S800, an ultra-opulent limousine that does a great job of shouting about your wealth to passersby. But just like every car sold today in China, the S800 is remarkably good value for what it offers, with prices ranging between around $100,000 and $140,000.
That’s about as much money as a BMW i7, but the S800 does a great job looking and feeling more expensive than it is. It has a longer wheelbase and is a bigger car overall and its more simple, monolithic design actually makes it look more European than the BMW, which we know was designed to appeal to Chinese buyers first and western buyers second.
But the S800 looks so good in this Wheelsboy video review that it would not have trouble finding buyers in the West. It would need to be cheaper than its German rivals, but only enough to get people in the showroom door. There would also be the novelty factor, and affluent individuals would simply want it because nobody else has one here.
It does a compelling impression of a luxury car built by an automaker with decades of experience. That’s actually partly true because its parent company, JAC, is one of China’s oldest automakers, founded in 1964 as Hefei Jianghuai Automobile.
You can get the S800 with pure electric power featuring a 97-kilowatt-hour battery pack powering a dual-motor setup with 523 horsepower, or you can get it in two range extender flavors. The first pairs a smaller 65 kWh battery with a 1.5-liter turbocharged four-cylinder with the same dual-motor powertrain as the BEV variant, giving it a claimed combined range of 828 miles (1,333 km).
The car in the video has the top-of-the-range powertrain, which adds a third motor for 848 horsepower and a 0-62 mph (0-100 km/h) acceleration time of 4.6 seconds. That’s actually three-tenths slower to sprint compared to the BEV variant, even though this has considerably more power.
The fact that it’s a range extender makes it truly unique in the segment, at least for now, because BMW might soon put a similar powertrain in its 7 Series and other big models.
The S800 only just launched this year in China, so it’s too early to tell if it will actually make a dent in its rivals’ sales figures, but it is very convincing, and it ticks a lot of the same boxes. Chinese buyers are also very proud of what is being locally manufactured, and they may prefer something like an S800 over a Western rival for that very reason.
