i'm gonna be in the minority here and express my dislike of this car. but i'm gonna bore you and tell you why
it is true on paper this car is astounding and wonderful, after all it has acres of woods, swabs of rocks, more tech and gizmo than appolo 13, the space to play two concurrent games of soccer at the same time in the back, enough power to actually send that appolo rocket to the moon, and would probably make cows an endangered species if it were a wee bit more successful
on paper it has nothing less than any other car in the segment, notably the rolls and bentley competitors, and on top of both it has the flashiness of a convertible combined with the comfort of a LWB limo
but why then is it not so special?
the answer is not as simple as one might think, but it boils down to the simple fact that maybach is the lexus of the top 3 uber brands. how dare i say such blasphemy? simple let's figure out together
maybach is a resurrected brand with almost zero historical value beyond some goggle eyed librarians who still think 3 gears is more than enough in any car. from this point alone it loses a big selling point, and a huge justification for price tag, when you buy a maybach you are not entering into an exclusive club that counts amongs its members illustrious people ranging from rudyard kipling, to the monarchs of brittain and passing by john lennon, at most you are joining the king of porn, larry flint (although from a practical point of view it would be a better offer to be friends with flint)
moreover a maybachs selling point is not the wood, leather, and craftsmanship, rather its is the trillions fo gizmos that would put my college's engineering labs to shame. just like lexus the selling point of a maybach is primarily the reclining chair, the tv's, the trillions of buttons that control everything from lighting to how fast the AC system would evacuate your farting smells. in this respect the centerpiece of the maybach is essentially those buttons which are a bonus for the game boy generation, but ultimately not a selling point in this segment.
furthermore maybach designers one upped lexus in offering the most insipid design of all times. in a segment where design and character sells, the maybach designers pulled a korean and copied another design (cannibalizing the S design through a 3 generation span from W140 to W221), whilst offering nothing exceptional in terms of luxury, ostentationeous, and old school stateliness, nor in terms of vulgarity or poseur values. instead offering a souped up mercedes with basically the same functions but on steroids and trippling the price. and to drive the nail a bit further, you can chose to have a tacky bright wood finish, or the greatest blasphemy of them all granit as a trim, as if the car had a kitchen sink.
and the worst part is that in doing so the maybach designers and engineers made it a time specific car, a car that needs to be facelifted, a car subject to the stormy winds of the tech worlds that kills off as fast as it creates. and a car whose customers are likely to judge it in those terms.
but where the key difference with lexus lies is in sales, where lexus has been the joy of upper middle class citizens who think they are buying into a social elite by purchasing the cheaper and more seemingly gizmoed and wooden (though ultimately fake) luxury alternative to the other brands, maybach has not been blessed with the same success.
whereas mercedes market analysts overlooked the fact fact that though people spending hundres of thousands on a car are filthy rich, many of them also have some senses, and have worked a bit for their money.
as for this abberation specifically, well first the landaulet nomenclature is an attempt to approach the brand mercedes in an attempt to capitalize on mercedes success, and might point out to a future even closer rapprochement.
but at the end this is an offense to the original landaulet which was a car for people with subtelty and class, not bling and cash. today sensible nobility and fortuned people do not drive these needless cars, most of them waft along in a simple audi A8, which is more than adequate, in our modern world, it is not good to flash your bucks, and for those who are in high positions, security only permits them to drive in armored cars.
so who may i ask will want a landaulet? a rapper who wants to throw counterfeit bills of one dollars on whores in vegas streets? or a filthy rich bankrupt to be son of the internet boom?
fact is these cars are not sensible today, and where the image counts it is not a selling point. although among those who are fortuned but tasteless it might be sort of a success.
as to the design per se of this landaulet, this bulge on the back can only remind me of van wylder's bulldogue's testicles. in its outrageous size and sheer idiocy in an attempt to capitalize bootspace at the expense of real design. or worse even if it turns out that this solution was the cheapes instead of having a comoplicated boot folding mechanicsm.
at the end of the day, i would never want this car, and at this price level the maybach, and more so this car (where they charge you almsot double to have your toupet winded off your head) are just legal theft. there are cars for less than half the price of the cheapest maybach that would move you in the same speed, comfort and tech heaven, not least of all is mercs own S, and the cras that cost as much as amaybach at least have the added guarantee of history, stateliness, old world quality, and sheer luxur in its most reserved and vulgar dichotomy possible.
thank you for losing so much time with me
) about historic MBs that were the symbol of the brand and everything they stand for, especially with cars like this caliber (Landaulet). Those are the cars that i admire and those are the cars that no other carmaker can even get close to.
Oh, did i say it's a BS? Yes it is.
