Mercedes bringing back the Maybach
Mercedes-Benz will be bringing back the Maybach name for the extra-long-wheelbase S-class, which is expected to go on sale by the end of this year.
Gangster rappers and royalty rejoice — two years after the brand was axed due to poor sales, the ultra-luxury limousine marque is making a return.
The new ultra-luxury cars will be ultra-long-wheelbase versions of the company’s new flagship S Class model and will take the comfort up to 11. The cars will have larger, rectangular rear doors for effortless ingress and egress, and the rear compartment will contain every creature comfort needed to work or recline in comfort while someone else takes care of the driving.
When Mercedes first revived the Maybach luxury brand, in 2002, it did so with two cars — the long wheelbase Maybach 57 and even longer wheelbase 62, which were meant to be Mercedes’s even more luxurious answers to a resurgent Rolls-Royce.
Based on an older S Class platform, they were devised to offer rear seat passengers an experience equivalent to flying business class — fully reclining leather seats, panoramic glass roof, a wine chiller and slide-out solid wood picnic tables.
Despite finding a cult following within the rap community, the marque bombed so badly that Mercedes’s parent company, Daimler, was forced to pull the plug in 2011.
But they didn’t fail because they were too expensive, they failed because they were built on an already out-of-date platform which couldn’t offer any of the advanced driver or passenger features that were on all of Mercedes’s new cars at every price point form city car to executive sedan.
This time around it looks as if it has learned its lesson. The current S Class is the most technologically advanced car currently available and one of the best big cars to drive. Therefore, anything that makes it even more comfortable will make it even more desirable.
According to Autoweek, this time around the cars are expected to cost $250,000-$300,000 before customization or bespoke treatments — in other words roughly the same as a Rolls Royce or Bentley.
The new Maybach is expected to launch some time in 2014 and could make a surprise debut at the upcoming Geneva motor show this March.
