That left Mercedes-Benz without an ultra-luxury marque and only a handful of brand names with similar cache to possibly vie for the super-sedan limelight. As it happens, in 1960 Daimler acquired a majority holding in one of pre-depression Europe's most prestigious automotive marques, thus it made perfect sense to resurrect Karl Maybach's 60-year old brand. Now DaimlerChrysler had the super-luxury brand it needed, complete with a superlative history and distinguished logo.
The restyled badge sits front and center, above a wide and deep, very Mercedes-like waterfall grille. A muscular hood bulge tapers down from the steeply raked windshield arriving at stylized headlamp clusters capping the front fenders. These flow back along broad shoulders dividing upper and lower sections into two-tone painted halves, finalizing in a classic drooping taillight bar framing an equally elegant raised deck lid. Inspired by the Spohn-bodied Maybach Zeppelin, the overall look is as impressive as its size, which is between 5.72 to 6.12 meters in length, depending on which one of two appropriately named Maybach 57 or Maybach 62 vehicles is chosen.
Impressive doesn't even begin to describe its interior appointments. Unlike most Mercedes-Benz cars the best seat isn't behind the steering wheel. Most owners would rather enjoy lounging in the executive-jet styled rear quarters, where fully-reclining leather clad seats divided by dual wood, leather and metal accented multi-purpose consoles fulfill almost all guests every need. A four-zone automatic climate control system keeps occupants comfortable at individually chosen temperatures, while ventilated comfort seats and a state of the art 600-Watt DVD entertainment system provides Dolby surround-sound to every seating position. Of course, a full arrangement of features can be custom ordered, including office electronics, a wet bar and a refrigerated compartment to name but a few. Altogether, Maybach estimates it offers approximately 2.2 million possible feature variations.