SDNR
Kraftwagen König
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Absolutely
This really is the main issue. Technically, the Maybach is every bit as outstanding as the Rolls-Royce (with the 57S/62S having just about the most spectacular engine ever used in a production car).
I think DCX approached the design of the Maybach pretty much in the same way they do for all their cars -- and that was the big mistake.
Rolls-Royce didn't hold its market position for the past 40 years by producing the most technically outstanding cars in the world -- nearly all owners of Rolls-Royces and Bentleys from the 80s and 90s have stories about the unreliability of their cars. I remember a gentleman called Sir Francis Renouf complaining that you can always rely on your Rolls-Royce to leak oil when it's parked at the tennis club next to the BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes -- that was just the way it was.
So why did people continue to buy these outrageously expensive dinosaurs?
....because there was nothing else like them in the world. No matter how fantastic the quality of an S class or the technical advancement of a 7 series, a Rolls-Royce or Bentley was in a different league, owned for different reasons, to be judged by different criteria.
Rolls and Bentley are not sensible cars, they are massive, gas-guzzling tanks that some people hate simply because they are such blatant expressions of wealth and (in Britain at least) social class. Perhaps no other car (or maybe no other brand) makes such a clear and deliberate statement about a persons bank balance than a Rolls-Royce ...and for much of the marque's 101 year existence this has been one of its biggest selling points.
Rolls-Royce is a universally understood symbol of Capitalist success and excess -- a byword for wealth and privilege. The brand is loaded with powerful metaphors which are etched into the consciousness of our global culture.
Now that the technical aspects of the marque no longer betray the standards of excellence Rolls-Royce has always purported to stand for, the Phantom is the natural winner in this category.
I still don't think Maybach is a lost cause ...but it will never beat Rolls-Royce at its own game.
Maybach needs to etch out its own market segment.
Instead of building another luxury limo with the usual wood and leather interior, Maybach needs to go beyond the ordinary, be totally original, create something truly amazing, something sublimely new and cutting-edge.
The problem is, BMW is currently so far ahead of DCX with this way of thinking. Ironically, I believe it is BMW who would have made Maybach the greatest luxury car in the world; not by giving the world a German answer to Rolls-Royce, but rather, by giving us a whole new interpretation of a luxury vehicle ......something that is at the very edge of design and engineering.
The market for luxury products has changed and expanded greatly over the past decade. The high-end of the market is far more design conscious than ever before; these are the people who commission great architects to design their houses, collect experimental design objects and contemporary art -- this is the market Maybach should be aimed at.
Leave the Phantom for the traditionalists, Maybach should be for the futurists.
,anyway i really think that MB will never let MM suffer like that anymore,there must be a huge plan in the works to bring it back BIG and the EXcelero concept i believe would be a hell of a good start!
