The original, pre-War Maybach Zeppelin was the first V12-powered German car. The new Maybach Zeppelin gained little traction with the luxury market.
The long-struggling Maybach brand will soon be euthanized – though few will likely notice considering the German luxury maker’s continually weak performance.
Parent Daimler AG has finally given up on the marque which was originally conceived as an all-new alternative to better-known Bentley and Rolls-Royce – future efforts focusing on a new, high-line version of the Mercedes-Benz S-Class.
“We came to the strong conclusion that the sales chances for the Mercedes brand are much stronger than those for Maybach,” Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Zetsche signaled earlier this year that a review of Maybach’s options was underway, a shift in Daimler’s previous position that it was willing to support the brand as long as necessary.
With prices for models such as the Zeppelin starting at $375,000, Maybach was aimed at the most exclusive tier of automotive buyers. Daimler officially launched the brand in late 2002 as an alternative to Bentley and Rolls-royce – after the Germans backed out of the bidding for the two British brands several years earlier.
Bentley ultimately was sold to Volkswagen, Rolls to BMW. But Daimler bet it could match the success of those brands by introducing an all-new line that revived the Maybach name – which had been one of Germany’s most prestigious brands back in the 1920s and ‘30s.
The initial offerings, the M57 and M62, were based on a Mercedes S-Class platform but underwent significant revisions. The rear seat of the bigger M62 could be ordered with business class-style reclining seats and an electrochromatic roof that could shift from clear to opaque with the touch of a button. The more recent Zeppelin model even featured a built-in, automated perfume atomizer that could provide a whiff of an owner’s favorite scent at regular intervals.
The maker even established a network of 25 Maybach Centers where customers could come to customize their purchases like one-off yachts. Early on, Daimler officials estimated there were about 8,000 customers annually that might be in the market for a vehicle like a Maybach, Bentley or Rolls-Royce, hinting their own target was about 1,000 sales annually for the reborn brand.
But sales never approached those numbers, last year Maybach falling short of the 200 mark with little likelihood it would gain more traction. On the other hand, demand for Bentley and Rolls models – after a sharp dip during the 2008-2009 global recession – have been gaining momentum. Bentley, in particular, has nudged past the 10,000 mark in recent years by adding the lower-priced Continental line to its model mix.
For Daimler, the decision to abandon Maybach will leave it focusing on its core Mercedes-Benz brand. The ultra-luxury nameplate will disappear in 2013, the same time Mercedes will launch its new, top-line S600 Pullman.
The current S-Class line-up begins at about $92,000. The Pullman, which will incorporate many of the high-line features of the outgoing Maybach line, will nudge the S-Class closer to the 200,000 mark.
The benchmark in its segment, the S-Class generated about 80,000 sales for Mercedes last year. Making up the lost volume for Maybach won’t be difficult, though it remains to be seen if those most demanding of buyers will move “down market” to Mercedes or migrate to the Bentley and Rolls-Royce brands.