Daimler to discontinue ultra-luxury Maybach car
28 Nov 2011
German carmaker Daimler is planning to discontinue producing its ultra-luxury Maybach car after trying for nearly a decade to match sales of rivals BMW-owned Rolls Royce and Volkswagen's Bentley.
Daimler, which revived the Maybach car in 2002 after stopping production for more than 60 years, is reported to have invested more than €1 billion in the brand.
The German luxury car maker will stop production of the Maybach brand in 2013, and focus on its flagship Mercedes-Benz marque in the luxury car segment, said Dr Dieter Zetsche, chief executive of Daimler.
German luxury car manufacturer Maybach-Motorenbau GmbH was founded in 1909 by Wilhelm Maybach, a technical director at Daimler, who along with his son first built an experimental car in 1919 and introduced a production model two years later at the Berlin Motor Show.
Production of the luxury car was stopped during WW II and Daimler-Benz acquired the company in 1960. The company had produced around 1800 Maybachs before WW II.
Post 2008 financial crises, Daimler held talks with Aston Martin to engineer and style the next generation of Maybach models along with the next generation of Lagonda models based on a new Maybach chassis.
