Maybach: An arm and leg experience for Mercedes-Benz

After talks between Daimler and Aston Martin abruptly collapsed during fall of 2011, the chances for Maybach to survive against all odds rapidly diminished. Even though there were some speculations the Germans would reconstruct the exclusive luxury brand from zero, the inevitable happened: Mercedes-Benz officials took the decision of axing Maybach beginning with 2013, partly motivating that costs to build a new generation of uber-premium models would be too expensive to afford all the subsequent risks.


To compensate the demise of Maybach starting with 2013, Mercedes-Benz is allegedly working on a comprehensive lineup of new versions based on the future S-Class (W 222). Speaking about money, journalists from CAR Magazine have calculated the total amount of loss the Stuttgart-based carmaker had to endure since Maybach was revived back in 2002.

In the past years, Mercedes-Benz poored a total of €1 billion into the brand, adding to the fact they never actually managed to sell more than 3,000 units during this entire period. More precisely, this meant that, with each Maybach sold, the company lost no less than €330,000, which obviously never came back at least as a slight profit. It is hardly a surprise, but knowing the original picture, it could have been a lot worse than that. No wonder Maybach can be easily seen as a financial blackhole, as it sucked a great amount of cash and struggled so much during its entire existence due to a bad planning, execrable management and poor investment in renewing the lineup and the technologycal package of the car models produced under the "MM" badge. Even though the dices are already thrown, unlucky Maybach will likely stay as it is: a beautiful, refined luxury automaker for select customers. At least in our memory.

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