Requiem For A Dream: Maybach To Fold After One Last Facelift
Remember Maybach? With eight years and untold millions now spent in a futile attempt to dethrone Rolls-Royce at the tope of the automotive pecking order, it seems that the monument to Daimler’s arrogance and greed will be going the way of Pontiac and HUMMER. Auto Express reports that
The firm plans to launch mildly facelifted versions of its three-model line-up – with new grilles and LED lights likely to be the only changes – before the marque is allowed to slip away.
Bosses have now privately admitted plans to wind down the brand – resurrected in 2002 – due to disappointing sales. The Maybach decision is part of Mercedes’ wider plans to take the next-generation S-Class upmarket.
Will there be any tears for the world’s most pimped-out S-Class? Of course not. Despite actively courting celebrities, and later, actually marketing the brand, Daimler was never able to break its super-luxe brand into the stratosphere of household-name luxury. At least not for more than a few months during relatively go-go economic times. As we recently noted, t he experiment has conclusively failed. Maybach has nowhere to go but the ash heap of history. If we ever miss it too much, we’ll be sure to buy a brand-new, fully-loaded S-Class and take it to the least-tasteful tuner we can find.
More by Edward Niedermeyer
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Sadly, German engineering arrogance, not excellence, is what drives Daimler these days. That piece of ???? should never have been built.
Even in the good old days, Grosser 600 were never any threat to RRs. And with the Maybach copied from S550 - 600 how any folks will pony another 200 grand? Merc's share holder are not willing to use good money to chase after bad to sink more mulla in for another new model.
The original concept of building an ultra luxury car with superior dynamics made sense but the execution failed miserably and even more so as time went on. Plus the fact that RR is a household name and Bentley is just about one while Maybach was known only to enthusiasts and those knowledgeable about the auto industry.
MB and VW made the same mistake, but in opposite ways. Instead of launching Maybach as a new car division, MB should simply have marketed its vehicles as above-the-S-Class MBs. Instead of launching the Phaeton as a VW it should have been launched as the first product of a new, superior class car division (vide Lexus, etc.).