Special to the Daily News
So your AmEx black card is burning a hole in your pocket and you’re standing there trying to decide which of the three world-class luxury cars to buy. Few of us are ever going to be in a position like this, but hey, they can’t arrest us for fantasizing, right?
Over here you’ve got your Rolls-Royce Ghost, the essence of Old World class and style, still peddling the virtues of hand craftsmanship – and making us want it, somehow.
Next, you’ve got your Bentley Flying Spur, also a major player in the Old World class/style game, but leaning a little less heavily on craftsmanship — instead buffing up its motorsports heritage/get-up-and-go credentials.
And then, new to the game, you’ve got what looks like a Mercedes S-class on steroids, all sleek and serious, dressed to the nines in its designer suit by gravitas (noun: dignity, seriousness or solemnity of manner), literally festooned with high-tech gizmos and sporting a lapel pin that reads Maybach. It’s a name known only to devotees of automotive history, those who gleefully celebrate world-class marketing blunders and fans of early seasons of Celebrity Apprentice (who will recognize it as the car that the losers loaded their suitcases in for that long, soul-searching drive off into the Manhattan night).
For you history buffs then, the short version: In 1901, engineer Wilhelm Maybach and Paul Daimler created what is widely regarded as the first “modern” automobile, the Mercedes 35 HP.
Maybach went on to found his own company, and between 1921 and 1940 built a small number of what have become world-class collector cars. For the marketing-blunder crowd, Mercedes bought Maybach in 1960, using it as a satellite builder of custom models and, in 1997, decided to take a shot at the Rolls-Bentley market. Over the course of a decade, about 3,000 modern Maybachs were built, each one – even at prices ranging from $350,000 to $1.3 million – represented an estimated loss of $500,000 per car.
Which bring us to the current reincarnation, as a $200,000 luxury version of Mercedes’ top-of-the-line S-Class, with the company stating there will be a Maybach Pullman limousine designed for oligarchs.
There also are hints that the future holds more Maybach models, including SUVs – given that Rolls and Bentley, along with Aston-Martin, Lamborghini and Jaguar, are getting ready to enter this unlikely but wildly popular and profitable market.
Presented with a choice between history, gravitas and gizmos, you’d think the serious money would opt for the first and second, but if you can get all three in the same package, so much the better. And the Maybach S600 is that package: serious, smooth, sensual and solid. Eighteen feet long. Twin-turbocharged, 523 horsepower V-12 under the hood. All-wheel drive. Zero to 60 in 5 seconds.
And the gizmos? Working from the ground up — tires filled with foam rather than air to keep road noise to a minimum. Computerized suspension that lets you roll over speed bumps at 25 mph without noticing they’re there. Five colors of disco-worthy fiber-optic interior lighting and rear seats that would be equally at home in a G5.
And there’s more, much more. Google and be amazed. Presented in such profusion, technology trumps history.
As my wife – she who cares nothing for cars — pleaded after riding in the Maybach to see a thoroughly modern Hamlet (complete with guns and cell phones) at the Seabreeze Amphitheatre: “Honey, forget about that new house we’ve been talking about. Buy me this car.”
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