Somewhere on the center console of this Mercedes-Maybach S 680, there’s a badge stamped with a set of GPS coordinates. Punch them in and you land in Akron, Ohio — LeBron James’s hometown. It’s the kind of detail that tells you this isn’t a normal options list.
Mercedes has built a Maybach S 680 personalized by James and is showing it at Monterey Car Week, where it’s being billed as a “near-identical twin” of the four-time NBA champion’s own car. The point of the exercise isn’t just to flex a celebrity connection. Once the show is over, the car will be sold at auction to benefit the LeBron James Family Foundation.
A tribute you can actually own
The build came together through Mercedes-Benz’s Manufaktur Made To Measure program and is based on the facelifted S-Class that arrived in March. James went with a light ivory exterior finish, and — in a move that will divide the purists — even the wheels are painted to match. The usual V12 badges are gone too, swapped for discreet “LJ” emblems.
Inside, the theme continues. There’s Stormy Weather Nappa leather set against porcelain white stitching, Black Piano Lacquer Flowing Lines trim, and more “LJ” logos scattered through the cabin. The most personal touches are the quieter ones: a series of engravings referencing Akron and James’s family, including that hometown-coordinates badge. It’s a rolling autobiography with a rear seat.
The most powerful badge Maybach makes
Underneath the personalization sits the flagship of the Maybach S-Class range, and it’s no less serious than the branding suggests. The 2027 S 680 uses a twin-turbocharged 6.0-liter V12 producing 621 hp (463 kW) and 899 Nm of torque, sent through a nine-speed automatic and a standard all-wheel-drive system. That’s enough to move the chauffeur-focused limousine from 0–100 km/h in 4.3 seconds — brisk numbers for a car built around what happens in the back seat.
Dropping a celebrity-bespoke Maybach onto the Pebble Beach lawn is a deliberate statement. Mercedes wants its modern Manufaktur builds treated with the same reverence as its prewar showpieces, and this year it has the hardware to make the argument. The S 680 shares the stage at the Future Classics Auction House with the AMG One, the AMG PureSpeed, the AMG G 63 in Galactic Pearl, and the new AMG GT 4-Door Coupe.
140 years, one lawn
The James Maybach is really one thread in a much bigger Mercedes display marking 140 years since the Benz Patent-Motorwagen. The heritage side is stacked: the original Patent-Motorwagen itself, a 1938 320 Streamliner Sedan, a 190 E 2.5-16 Evolution II, a 300 SL Roadster, and a CLK 63 AMG Black Series.
The undisputed star of the classics is a one-of-one 1938 Mercedes-Benz 540K Streamliner, scheduled to lead the Pebble Beach Tour d’Elegance on August 13. It’s joined by the last known 1905 “American Mercedes” — the first Mercedes built in the United States, made in Queens, New York, and recently given an extensive restoration by Mercedes-Benz Classic.
Mercedes is backing the display with real infrastructure, too, having opened its first Manufaktur Made to Measure Hub in the United States at the Mercedes-Benz Studio in Los Angeles’s Beverly Hills.
Monterey Car Week 2026 runs August 13 through 16 across the peninsula, with the 75th Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance closing things out on August 16 at Pebble Beach Golf Links — this year with Ferrari as the featured marque and Vignale honored as featured coachbuilder. Amid all that history, the car with Akron baked into its console might be the one everyone remembers.
