MOTORING: Mercdes-Benz quietly shuts down Maybach, it’s ultra luxury division – after nearly a decade of losses

Ok this isn’t new… but quite a few people I’ve spoken to recently (even car guys) didn’t know. 

The discontinued Maybach

Ending almost a decade of losses, Daimler is shutting down its ultra-luxury Maybach brand.  It would not make sense to develop a successor model," Chairman Dieter Zetsche said,  "The coming S-Class is in such a way a superior vehicle that it can replace the Maybach."  (Talking about the soon to be released 2013 S-Class)

The discontinued Maybach

Here's how the Maybach brand came into existence: When Rolls-Royce and Bentley came up for sale at the end of the 1990s, Mercedes decided it wasn’t interested. One executive said at the time, "At the end of the day, we said we didn't want to play this game. The price was too high."

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The discontinued Maybach

Mercedes's German rivals did want to play, however. BMW bought over Rolls-Royce, and Volkswagen got Bentley. Fearful of being left out of the high status game, Mercedes re-thought its position and decided it needed to be in the ultra-luxury business too, but it went after it in a remarkably clumsy way by developing it on an aging S-Class chassis rather than the approach of Bentley and Rolls – Developing a new car from the ground up.

It just didn't compute. Even the booming luxury car market in China wasn't enough to move Maybach off the starting line. It quickly became apparent that the brand was in trouble, and Mercedes sensibly never invested in updating the model line. In 2010 only 157 Maybachs -- from a brand nearly a decade old -- were sold globally, according to Automotive News, while BMW moved 2,711 similarly priced Rolls. That’s very poor performance sales-wise.
Mercedes plans to expand its top-of-the line Mercedes segment -- the S-Class -- to six variations from the current three when a new generation of the flagship model is launched in 2013 in an attempt to fill in the void in the Ultra luxury segment.

Taiwo Onalaja’s Thoughts: RIP Maybach… But hold on… The thought of an S-Class that can match Bentley / Rolls-Royce??? That’s DEFINITELY  worth waiting to see!!!