The top of the high-end luxury rides in Kansas City? We found some real beauties

Robert Hellweg at Aristocrat Motors in Merriam won’t divulge who shelled out $337,625 for the diamond white 2017 Mercedes-Benz Maybach S650 Cabriolet.

He was happy, however, to show off the one remaining such model in the showroom — this one in Cote D’azur light blue metallic.

It was just one of the autos we found around Kansas City when we went looking for some of the most exclusive rides in town.

High-performance luxury cars have technological features and capabilities that some of us — ahem — don’t completely understand. So pardon us if we’re a bit short on technological details and long on the car’s visual attractiveness.

Some of the most dazzling high-performance luxury cars include the 2018 Porsche Panamera Turbo, $172,690, and the 2018 Maserati GranTurismo Sport, which starts at about $157,000, both at Aristocrat Motors.

Tesla founder Elon Musk says its Roadster will be the fastest car in the world, able to reach 60 mph in 1.9 seconds when it comes out in 2020. You can reserve the fully electric sports car for $50,000 at the Country Club dealership. The total price will be $200,000 for a base model and $250,000 for a Founders Series Reservation.

Then there’s the 2017 Acura NSX coupe, a hybrid car that features a twin-turbo engine, three electric motors and dual-clutch transmission. According to Acura, it can reach 60 mph in about 3 seconds and go as fast as 191 mph.

Sticker prices at Jay Wolfe Acura start at $208,000. They have four in stock right now including one in Valencia Red that has special carbon fiber wheels and retails for $217,000.

Acura built the NSX from 1991 to 2005, took a hiatus then reintroduced it in 2017.

James Carpenter, new car sales manager at Jay Wolfe Acura, says the dealership has sold 10 of the NSX coupes, mostly to out-of-town buyers though one has gone to a local eye surgeon and another to local financial broker.

When the engineers at Honda went to the drawing board to reinvent the latest NSX coupe, Carpenter says, they bought and tore apart cars they wanted to compete with. Cars like Lamborghinis, Porsches and Ferraris.

As for the Maybach S650 Cabriolet, it is a beauty queen among beauties.

The German automaker built only 300 of this particular convertible luxury performance car and only 75 of them are in the United States. Aristocrat Motors was able to get its hands on two of them, Hellweg says.

The first thing you notice as you approach the car is that it’s low to the ground — the front bumper can’t be more than six inches high — and it has lots of gleaming chrome and Swarovski crystal accents on its headlamps. Jewelry!

The body of the car is coated in a shade of soft metallic blue that complements the magnolia nut brown wood and the Nappa leather in shades of cream and caramel on the convertible’s interior. The diamond pattern stitching and thousands of tiny perforations that punctuate the leather upholstery on the seats looks like it could have been crafted at an atelier in Milan or Paris.

Hellweg opens the driver’s door and caresses the seats and points at the showroom floor. “It’s things like the fit and finish of the interior, the lighted Maybach logo on the ground, it’s those things where they’ve taken a complete step up (from the Maybach S550 Cabriolet),” he says.

There’s a 6.0-liter turbocharged V12 engine that produces 612 horsepower under the hood of the S650. According to Hellweg, most people who buy cars like this typically are collectors.

The Maybach S650 Cabriolet also comes with its own set of leather luggage. The elegant bags are constructed of more Nappa leather that is the same color as the interior of car and resembles a Louis Vuitton Keepall bag in construction and style, though with a subtle Mayback logo stitched into it.

According to Mercedes-Benz, the convertible Cabriolet was inspired by the futuristic Vision Maybach 6 concept car they introduced last year. The Maybach name goes back to 1909, when Wilhelm Maybach founded Maybach Motorenbau, a subsidiary of Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH which designed and manufactured Zeppelin aircraft.

Daimler-Benz bought Mayback in 1960, and began manufacturing the brand as an ultra-luxury car that shared many of the same components as other Mercedes-Benz automobiles.

The price tag notes that the owner will spend about $600 more over five years on gasoline than with other cars, as if that’s a deal breaker on a car that costs more than most people’s homes.

The Maybach has some competition when it comes to gawkability at Aristocrat Motors in a pair of 2018 Mercedes-Benz AMG GT Roadsters lurking nearby.

Mercedes has nicknamed one of them, which has a matte green paint job and sinister profile, “The Beast of the Green Hell.” It’s priced at $201,815. The other one, a shiny black version that sits in a separate showroom, is listed at $170,915.

“The buyer for this car is going to be a similar buyer to that of a Porche 911 or other high-performance vehicle but they want something that stands alone, and this is the type of car that will do that,” says Hellweg, standing next to The Beast of Green Hell.

“If you’re buying a car like this, it’s not because you don’t want to be seen,” he adds.

The AMG GT Roadster was developed on computer simulation before testing in a wind tunnel, and fine-tuning on the North loop of the Nürburgring, a racing complex in Germany, Hellweg says.

The loop is considered the most daunting circuit anywhere in the world – it has 154 corners and 1,000 feet in elevation changes over 12.9 miles – and was nicknamed The Green Hell by legendary Formula 1 racer Jackie Stewart. Hence the nickname of the AMG GT Roadster.

By the way, Hellweg notes, mean-looking as the green car is, you cannot put it through a car wash or use just any type of detergent on it. It’ll ruin the matte finish.

Mercedes-Benz applied a lot of what it has learned in Formula 1 racing to the AMG GT Roadster in terms of brakes and other technology items, including the care given to hand building each motor, Hellweg says.

“One person builds each AMG engine, and when it’s done that person signs it,” he says. “So there’s a history with the engine maker that goes back to the factory and if there’s an issue with the engine, it can literally be traced back to the person who built the engine.”

This story was originally published December 20, 2017 at 11:46 AM with the headline "The top of the high-end luxury rides in Kansas City? We found some real beauties."