by Ross Finlay (20 Aug 01)

So the idea of the forthcoming super-luxury saloon to be built by a specialist division of DaimlerChrysler being marketed under the wishy-washy name of "Maybach by Mercedes-Benz" has been scrapped. Excellent. Maybach on its own, now the confirmed choice, was always a better idea.

In any case, the original Maybach company, long since re-named MTU Friedrichshafen, is now a DaimlerChrysler - read Mercedes-Benz - subsidiary, and Mercedes is able to put a prototype of the modern Maybach alongside one of its 1930s forebears. Allowing for the passage of time, the old Maybach is not badly shown up by the comparison.

It has taken many decades, but one of the finest car designers in the early motor industry has finally been honoured in the most appropriate way. Wilhelm Maybach was technical director of the original Daimler company, and designed the first Mercedes. But there were so many other names to be accommodated on that trend-setting machine that Maybach's was omitted.

Yes, there was a Maybach car, produced from 1921 till 1940, but that was the work of Wilhelm's son Karl.

After leaving Daimler in 1907, Wilhelm set up his own business at Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance, to build aero-engines, in particular for the Zeppelin airships. One of those engines later came to the UK, installed in Count Zborowski's Brooklands racer Chitty-Bang-Bang. The Friedrichshafen factory also turned out much smaller motor-cycle engines.

The first post-WWI Maybach car engine wasn't put, in the first place, into a Maybach car, because such a thing didn't exist at the time. Engines were supplied to Dutch manufacturer Spyker.

Then The Good Times Started

But in 1921, Karl Maybach started to produce some of grandest cars on the Continent. They were expensive, produced only to customer order, and like Rolls-Royces were turned out in chassis form, then given bodywork by the best German coachbuilders.

Maybach was among the first German manufacturers to use four-wheel brakes. Right from the start it fitted pedal-controlled two-speed epicyclic gearboxes, and later added what amounted to an overdrive gearbox to create a transmission known by a name as formidable as its construction: the Maybach doppelschnellgang. Chauffeurs sometimes suggested that the operation and maintenance of this device were a formidable prospect too.

By the 1930s there was a seven-litre V12 engine in a model known as the Maybach Zeppelin.

After the war, Maybach didn't go back into car manufacture - there was no market for the expensive and lavishly equipped machines it had produced before. It concentrated on diesel engines, and it was in that guise that the company was taken over in 1966 by Mercedes-Benz. It's now part of DaimlerChrysler's MTU diesel engines division.

So there was the Maybach Zeppelin - a car on the grand scale, usually chauffeur-driven, a V12 engine and some formidable technology. What does that sound like? Well, it sounds rather like the modern Maybach planned to be delivered to the first owners in just over a year from now, with the first right-hand drive UK cars coming in 2003.

The price is likely to be well over £200,000. Substantial deposits are required (they're being placed in interest-bearing accounts) and several UK customers have already booked their cars. Although the expression sounds ludicrous, the "entry-level" Maybach will be a long-wheelbase affair intended mainly for owner-drivers, while there's an ultra-long-wheelbase version for the chauffeur-driven.

In fact, the Maybach is going to be such an enormous machine that most owners will almost certainly leave the driving to a professional, and, having investigated the contents of the on-board drinks cabinet, recline in the aircraft-style rear seats with their automatically extending leg-rests and foot-rests.

Using a twin-turbo V12 engine which will also find its way into some of the top-rated Mercedes-Benz models, the Maybach will be hand-built to order at what's being called the Maybach Manufaktur division at Sindelfingen in Stuttgart.

The Badge Is Back

That's quite a crafty choice of name, because it allows the company to use a slightly modernised version of the original Maybach's MM badge. Then, the initials stood for Maybach Motorenbau.

There will be no catalogue for the new Maybach, not even a list of standard equipment. In an example of one-upmanship that will be hard to beat, before Maybach Manufaktur starts any kind of work at all on an individual order, "a detailed exchange of ideas will first take place between the customer and a customer consultant."

Technical details, colour schemes, trim materials, inlaid woodwork, high-tech business and communications equipment for the rear cabin - all these things will be up for discussion.

A purpose-built Maybach service centre is to be built at Sindelfingen, and it will be the pattern for "consultancy centres" to be provided in various countries to which the car will be exported. The biggest markets are expected to be in Western Europe, the US and Japan.

Maybach Manufaktur will have the capacity to build between 1000 and 1500 cars per year. Some observers reckon the problem will be, not so much to find first-time customers, as to attract more in the second and subsequent years. Just how many millionaires are there, with other soon-to-be-launched super-saloons jostling for their attention?

And think hard if you're in a country liable to left-wing revolution. A Maybach will hardly be a sign of inconspicuous consumption.

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