Maybach Fails to Dent the Lead of Rolls, Bentley

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The brand's history dates to Wilhelm Maybach, an engineer who helped Gottlieb Daimler develop engines for the first automobiles. Wilhelm and son Karl made engines as well as luxury vehicles such as the Zeppelin in the 1920s and 1930s. The last of 1,800 original Maybachs was made in 1941.

Daimler decided to revive Maybach in 1998 under then-CEO engineered the failed merger with Chrysler. The goal was to compete with Munich-based BMW and Wolfsburg, Germany-based Volkswagen in elite motor cars after their acquisition of the Rolls-Royce and Bentley brands. Maybach also was intended as a showcase for the best of Mercedes-Benz technology.

"With Maybach, Daimler possesses the brand with the greatest mystique ever," said Helmut Hoffmann, Maybach Club president in Germany. "Daimler will never again dispense with this brand."

Iceology's Brown isn't so sure.

Understated Luxury

"The Maybach is a stealthy, slip-in-and-out kind of luxury vehicle," he said. "There is always a contingent of people who prefer to be much more quiet about their wealth, but the growth is with those consumers who wanted to flaunt their wealth."

Flashy status-symbol cars like Ferrari, owned by Fiat SpA (FIATY:US), and Lamborghini, a VW brand, are also outpacing Maybach. Lamborghini made 2,430 cars last year, and Ferrari's sales advanced 2 percent to 6,587 vehicles.

Competitors have increased pressure on Maybach with new models. Rolls-Royce has the Ghost, a smaller complement to the Phantom. Bentley launched the two-seater Supersports and the top of the line Mulsanne, which boasts a leather-covered steering wheel that takes as many as 45 hours to stitch by hand.

Maybach looks like a stretched version of the top-end Mercedes-Benz S-Class, which detracts from Daimler's dominant brand, said Jim Hall, principal of auto consulting firm 2953 Analytics in Detroit.

"They diminished Mercedes while never having the stuff to match with Bentley, much less Rolls-Royce," said Hall. "They introduced Maybach and took Mercedes down a notch."

To contact the reporters on this story: Chris Reiter in Berlin at creiter2@bloomberg.net and Mike Ramsey in Southfield, Michigan, at mramsey6@bloomberg.net.

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