Mercedes-Maybach S-Class chauffeur hire

The reclining seat is the whole argument. Set right back, with the footrest up and the front passenger seat wound forward, a passenger lies at something close to the angle of a business class seat. Two hours in that position is restful in a way no upright seat manages, and it is the reason this car gets booked for the leg home from a long flight.

The two rear seats are separate and generously wide, with a fixed console between them holding controls, cup holders and storage. Some cars carry a refrigerated compartment and folding tables; whether the vehicle on your booking does is confirmed on the quotation rather than promised here.

A third passenger can travel in the front, and that is the honest arrangement. This is a rear compartment for two people, and treating it as a three-seat car misses what it is for. If three of you are travelling together, the standard S-Class is the more sensible car and costs less than half as much.

The Maybach is a common booking for two specific airport journeys. The first is the overnight arrival, where somebody has crossed several time zones and has an hour of motorway ahead of them before anything is asked of them. Reclined, with the cabin dark and quiet, that hour is genuinely recovered rather than merely endured.

The second is the outbound leg before a long flight, which people underrate. Arriving at a terminal already tired makes the flight worse, and a car that lets you finish waking up slowly is worth more at that end of the trip than at the other.

Practically, the collection runs like every airport booking here: flight watched, chauffeur inside the building with a board, luggage loaded rather than dragged. The length means the car uses a designated pick-up point rather than a tight short-stay bay, which is a routing detail your chauffeur handles rather than something you notice.

A long car is easy on a motorway and demanding in a city. The rear wheels track well inside the fronts, so a turn into a narrow entrance is taken wider and later than instinct suggests, and a chauffeur who cuts it fine will put a rear wheel on a kerb, which a reclined passenger feels through the whole car.

Speed humps are the other test. Taken square and slow, the air suspension makes them disappear; taken at an angle, the long body pitches and the passenger is reminded that they are travelling. On residential approaches a chauffeur will often take a longer route with fewer of them rather than the direct one.

The last part is the stop. A reclined seat has to be brought upright before the door opens, which takes a few seconds, so the car is stopped a little earlier and more gently than usual to give the passenger time to arrive rather than be arrived.