Wheels06 Test-Drive: This Year's Models

What would Satan drive? He might opt for a Maybach 57S: The nineteen-foot-long, 6,000-pound sedan just looks evil, from its low-slung roof to its massive twenty-inch wheels. At nearly $400,000, it proclaims that you're obscenely rich. And the car's 11 miles per gallon states that you simply couldn't care less about the environment. Chamillionaire, the latest hot rapper out of Houston, is duly awestruck. "This is gangsta!" he says, sliding into a driver's seat the size of a hot tub. "A car like this makes you feel powerful."

He wastes no time revving up the 604-horsepower engine, steering us onto Manhattan's West Side Highway and popping his chopped-and-screwed major-label debut, The Sound of Revenge, into the twenty-one-speaker sound system. A rain shower keeps us from even attempting the car's alleged top speed of 172, "but this car just feels fast," he says.

Chamillionaire favors big, speedy rides like the 1969 Chevy Impala he owns in Houston, which "fits three across in the front seat." The Maybach seats only four altogether, but there's enough leg room to comfortably sleep inside. As you'd expect of an A-list land yacht, the cabin is marked by a dizzying array of bells and whistles. Fortunately, riding with us is Chamillionaire's acquaintance Christine, who's intimately familiar with the Maybach. She demonstrates how to use the climate control and the DVD player, and then pops open the rear's center console to reveal a minifridge and two silver champagne flutes. "Here," she says, handing one to Chamillionaire. "This is your pimp cup."

Soon after, we search in vain for our final destination, Wall Street. We punch the navigation button, and a voice informs us that Wall Street is ten miles away, which would put it somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. Chamillionaire points to a glowing-red SOS button near the rearview mirror. "We're in trouble," he says. "Better hit that." A guy with a better grasp of road maps comes on the line. It turns out we're two blocks away.

As Chamillionaire readies to leave for a Manhattan studio to work on his follow-up, Ultimate Victory, he gives the car a final look, shaking his head. "Now we've got to go back to reality," he says. L.C. SMITH