My, My, Maybach: Bad Yarn Debunked
Yesterday, Chinese site auto.sina.com had what our Ed Niedermeyer called “a belly-laugher of a wild-ass rumor: they say BYD has its eye on Daimler’s zombie luxury brand Maybach.” Funny as it may be, media all over the world jumped on the story. Now, the story is heading right to Snopes. After what must have been a round of heated phone calls between Stuttgart and Shenzhen, Daimler denounced the dumb-ass tale:
“Maybach is an important part of Daimler’s product portfolio. There is no other decision,” a Daimler spokesman said to Reuters. BYD didn’t even feature.
Paul Lin, a spokesman at BYD was similarly dismissive: “It’s not true, it’s market speculation. We got calls from the media and we have checked with Chairman Wang.”
Asked whether BYD had had any initial contact with Daimler on buying Maybach, Paul Lin replied: “No.”
At least we received one piece of hard data out of the story: “Daimler sold just 200 units of the Maybach brand last year,” says Reuters. They didn’t say how many were given away as presents.
Volkswagen sold 4,616 Bentleys in 2009. BMW sold 1002 Rolls Royces.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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I get my S550 serviced at Manhattan Mercedes and they have a Maybach there that I get in while I get my oil changes. Maybach's mistake was using the old S-class interior and charging a ridiculous fee for its cars just because they use insanely rare materials like hummingbird feathers for pillows and wood snatched from the most innacessible parts of Europe. This car is $100,000 overpriced and should be sold as no less than a bulletproof protection model. The S-class offers so much more.
I would love to have the nickname "Chairman Wang".
http://www.businesstimes.com.hk/c-20100610-20545/Maybach-Exelero Maybach have sold her only 1 Exelero to someone with lots more mulla than the sum of White & Grey Matter all added together. The closing was about 8 mil, well is just a statement that I have bought a car for that price, is there any real value to that? The down side is they're start making a few more of them, unlike a Bugatti Royale, it has only so few around. Wonder when is Merc going to produce a new model? Those folks in Qatar didnt care about the Hemmorrhage yet.