Prestige car or premium car: the gap in euros

A prestige car has no legal definition in Belgium. It is a salesman's word. The tax authorities look at list price, CO2, power and mass. Between a Mercedes S 450 and a Mercedes-Maybach S 580, the prestige label costs €65,885 at purchase and €29,497 of benefit in kind over three years.

What is a prestige car, and how does it differ from a premium car?

Premium describes a brand. Luxury describes a segment. Prestige describes a sales label placed above both.

Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, Lexus and Volvo are premium brands. They sell compacts at €40,000 and saloons at €130,000 under the same badge. The luxury car, on the other hand, has a technical definition: the classification used by the European Commission puts large luxury saloons in the F-segment, above the E-segment of executive cars. A C-Class is a D-segment premium car. An S-Class is an F-segment luxury car.

The word prestige has none of that rigour. In Belgian classified ads it covers a Bentley just as well as a ten-year-old German saloon sold by a dealer called "Prestige Cars". I keep it for brands and series built in small numbers and sold above the F-segment: Bentley, Rolls-Royce, Mercedes-Maybach.

This ranking has no legal value. It has a practical one, because each step triggers a different bill.

Is top of the range a segment or a brand?

Neither: it is a position within a range. An Audi A3 S line is the top of the A3 range, not a top-of-the-range car. The phrase is worthless without the price and the power next to it.

From what price does a car become a luxury car in Belgium?

No text sets a threshold. The Belgian list prices I recorded on 14 October 2026 on Moniteur Automobile show three clear steps, here within a single brand to neutralise the badge effect.

The S-Class costs 2.6 times the C-Class. The Maybach costs 49.6% more than the S-Class, on the same platform. The Bentley adds another €39,311.

My reading: premium starts around €50,000, luxury around €130,000, prestige around €200,000. These are markers, not borders, and they move with every model year.

Which models do manufacturers themselves class as luxury?

Mercedes-Benz is the most explicit. In its sales release of 12 January 2026, the group puts seven families under the Top-End label: Mercedes-AMG, Mercedes-Maybach, the G-Class, the S-Class, the GLS, the EQS and the EQS SUV. That category accounted for 268,000 cars in 2025, or 15% of sales, down 5%. The same document states that one S-Class in three sold was a Maybach, and that the G-Class reached a record 49,700 deliveries.

The detail matters. For the manufacturer, a compact Mercedes-AMG belongs to Top-End just as much as a Maybach. Commercial standing therefore does not match the European Commission's F-segment, let alone any notion of prestige.

The manufacturer ranks by margin, the Commission by size, the salesman by adjective. The Belgian tax authorities rank by kilowatts, grams of CO2 and kilos.

How much does moving from an S-Class to a Maybach cost in regional taxes?

In Brussels, nothing. In Wallonia, a lot. In Flanders, I have no published amount.

There is a trap to avoid first. The Moniteur Automobile model pages consulted on 14 October 2026 still show €4,957 of Brussels registration tax (TMC, the one-off tax paid when a car is first registered) for both cars. Yet the Brussels scale valid from 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027, published by the same Moniteur Automobile on its TMC calculation page, rises to €6,357.85 above 155 kW. So I redid the calculation region by region from the scales, rather than copying the model pages.

Since 1 July 2025, Wallonia has calculated with four parameters: power, CO2, maximum authorised mass and fuel. For 2026-2027, SPW Finances sets a base amount of €5,159.25 above 155 kW, a reference CO2 of 136 g, a reference mass of 1,838 kg, a coefficient of 0.8 for a hybrid and 1 for a combustion car, with a ceiling of €9,000.

My calculation for the Maybach: €5,159.25 x 247/136 x 2,340/1,838 gives €11,929 using the kerb weight alone as the mass, which is less than the real maximum mass. Even with the 0.8 hybrid coefficient, the result exceeds €9,000. The ceiling applies in every case.

For the S 450, the result depends on two lines of the registration certificate I could not read: the maximum mass (box F1) and the fuel entry. As a combustion car, the ceiling is reached from a maximum mass of 2,308 kg. As a hybrid, it takes 2,884 kg.

In Flanders, the registration tax (BIV) is calculated on WLTP CO2, fuel and Euro standard, between €53 and €14,000 in 2026. Neither Moniteur Automobile nor the Vlaamse Belastingdienst publishes an amount for these two versions, and I do not estimate one. The Flemish simulator gives the exact figure for a precise configuration.

Does the prestige label change a company car's benefit in kind?

No, the list price does. The benefit in kind (ATN, the taxable amount added to the driver's income for private use of a company car) is calculated on the list value, options and VAT included, multiplied by 6/7 and by a CO2 coefficient between 4% and 18%, according to the Federal Public Service Finance formula.

On the amounts published by Moniteur Automobile, the Maybach S 580 costs €2,383.35 of benefit in kind per month against €1,563.99 for the S 450. That is €819.36 more every month. €29,496.96 over thirty-six months, for a car that shares its platform with the other.

The full reasoning is in the article on the benefit-in-kind calculation.

What do premium, luxury, Top-End and prestige mean in an ad?

Three checks before paying for the word

• The original list price. A saloon sold used as a "prestige car" is judged against its new price, not against the adjective. A ten-year-old E-Class is still an E-Class.
• The power in kW. Above 155 kW, the Brussels registration tax is at its maximum and the Walloon one starts from its highest base amount.
• The maximum mass and CO2 on the certificate. They are what takes the Walloon registration tax from a few thousand euros to the €9,000 ceiling.

Ownership costs model by model are in the luxury car ranking. Packs that imitate a higher version are decoded in AMG Line, M Sport, S line: what a trim really costs, and insuring a car of this value in the article on agreed value.

Sources

• Moniteur Automobile, Mercedes C-Class saloon 200 d 2027, recorded on 14 October 2026: 120 kW, €51,546, CO2 of 117 to 131 g, monthly benefit in kind of €436.84.
• Moniteur Automobile, Mercedes S-Class saloon 450 4MATIC 2027, recorded on 14 October 2026: 280 kW, €132,737, CO2 of 189 to 203 g, monthly benefit in kind of €1,563.99, Brussels registration tax shown as €4,957; published weight of 2,090 kg on the dimensions page.
• Moniteur Automobile, Mercedes-Maybach S 580 4MATIC 2027, recorded on 14 October 2026: 395 kW, €198,622, CO2 of 247 to 263 g, monthly benefit in kind of €2,383.35, Brussels registration tax shown as €4,957.
• Moniteur Automobile, Bentley Flying Spur 2026, recorded on 14 October 2026: V8 405 kW at €237,933, benefit in kind and regional taxes not disclosed.
• Moniteur Automobile, registration tax calculation, consulted on 14 October 2026: Brussels scale valid from 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027, €6,357.85 above 155 kW; Flemish BIV between €53 and €14,000 in 2026.
• SPW Finances, registration tax scale, valid from 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027, page updated on 30 June 2026: base amount of €5,159.25 above 155 kW, X = 136 under WLTP, Y = 1,838 kg, coefficient of 1 for combustion and 0.8 for hybrid, floor of €50 and ceiling of €9,000.
• Wallonie.be, registration tax, consulted on 14 October 2026: calculation on power, CO2, maximum authorised mass and fuel since 1 July 2025.
• Mercedes-Benz Group, 2025 sales release of 12 January 2026, consulted on 14 October 2026: Top-End definition, 268,000 sales in 2025, 15% of the total, one S-Class in three sold as a Maybach, 49,700 G-Class deliveries.
• Wikipedia, F-segment and Luxury car, consulted on 14 October 2026: luxury cars classed in the European Commission's F-segment.
• Encycarpedia, Mercedes-Maybach S 580 data sheet, consulted on 14 October 2026: kerb weight of 2,340 kg, 3,982 cc V8, mild hybrid.
• Own calculations of 14 October 2026: price gaps, benefit-in-kind gap over thirty-six months, Walloon registration tax using the SPW Finances formula. No public source consulted on that date gives the maximum mass of these versions, their Flemish BIV or their compared depreciation.