After fading out in 2011, Mercedes-Benz is all set to revive the Maybach brand, with the launch of the long-wheelbase S600 limousine.
MercedesBenz India is all prepped to bring its first Maybach sub-brand offering to the Indian shores, with the impending launch of the feature-packed Mercedes-Maybach S600 limousine on September 25.
Automotive connoisseurs will most definitely remember the high degrees of luxury that the Maybach brand once offered, albeit with some glaring issues, the most painful of which was the colossal losses faced by Daimler. Mercedes-Benz is now all-prepped to revitalise the luxury brand's once heralded name, globally, with its imminent launch in India this month.
The S-Class may be a trend-setter, indicative of features that may become prevalent on future automobiles, but the new Maybach S600 takes the S-Class’ luxury element even further.
Mercedes-Benz missed the chance to enter the upper echelons of the luxury automobiles market when it was reported that the company passed on an opportunity to acquire Rolls Royce and Bentley in the 90s. As a result of ruing its missed chance, Daimler created the uber-luxurious Maybach brand in a bit of a rush and the results weren't well received. Unlike the exclusivity that the BMW-owned Rolls Royce and the Volkswagen-owned Bentley brands offered, by creating and engineering purposefully designed luxury cars from scratch, the Maybach range was, in essence, a larger, more cumbersome version of the ageing S-Class, making for some poor driving dynamics. As a direct consequence of its below-par research and development, 2011 saw the end of the Maybach brand from Daimler's portfolio due to its abysmal sales figures.
Fast forward to 2014. Parent company Daimler AG took the executive decision to revive the Maybach brand by making it an ultra-luxury sub-brand of Mercedes-Benz, similar to how the AMG sub-brand was created to sell high performance variants of the pre-existing line of Mercedes. The company believes that selling Maybach-branded Mercs is a drastically improved sales idea, in contrast to the originally independent (yet dependent) Maybach brand.
While deliveries for the Mercedes-Maybach S600 began internationally in February this year, the German conglomerate is ready to unveil its elite sedan in India on September 25. With the burgeoning number of millionaires and billionaires in India, the luxury car market has seen a steep rise over the past few years, a trait that hasn’t gone unnoticed by almost all big-name players in the segment. Mercedes is, in fact, well on track to complete its promise of '15 in 15' whereby its India portfolio will receive 15 newcomers by the end of this year. The Maybach S600 will be the 12th name on its list.
The Maybach S600 is around 200mm longer than the long wheel-based S-Class limo, and features the Exclusive trim package on the inside, with a lengthy list of noticeable features, including a lovely wood trim theme in the rear seating section, a hot-stone massager, fine-leather recliners, 3D surround Burmester audio system, champagne flutes, panoramic sunroof, and an air filtration system with Maybach's own signature fragrance.
Under the hood lies a mammoth 6.0-litre V12 bi-turbo, capable of delivering 530PS of power at 4,900-5,300rpm and 830Nm of torque at 1,900-4,000rpm. Mated to its beastly engine is a silky smooth 7G-Tronic Plus automatic gearbox. The combination of the two translates to the near-2.4 metric ton machine reaching 100km/h from a halt in a smidgen over 5 seconds! And to add to that mind-boggling statistic, Mercedes claims that the Maybach S600’s cabin is the quietest in the world due to some witchcraft engineering performed at the company's new aero-acoustic wind tunnel. Even the seat-belts have been worked on to produce lesser sound. The underpinnings are of the highest calibre as well. The aptly named Magic Body Control suspension works on over-time, and paired with an intelligent scanning system that prevents the car from driving over bumps, ensures that the enormous sedan boasts of a supremely comfortable ride.
No doubt, the Mercedes-Maybach S600 will come with a dizzying price tag, considering its European cost exceeds 187,000 EUR (approximately Rs 1.4 crore). Despite the company owning facilities that assemble the standard S-Class in India, the even longer Maybach S600 will arrive as a completely built unit (CBU), which means that after taxes, the car will most-likely possess a hugely inflated price tag.
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 "Mercedes-Benz Maybach S600")
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