Mercedes-Benz had some very lofty hopes for the Maybach, the super-luxury car it hoped would compete with Rolls Royce and Bentley. But its failure has been a very costly mistake - to the tune of almost half a million dollars per car.
That's roughly how much the British magazine Car estimates Mercedes has lost on every Maybach it sold. It calculated that Mercedes absorbed 330,000 Euros of red ink on every Maybach it sold, which translates to about $437,000 and change apiece.
Maybach (pronounced MY-bock) marked a revival of a brand that first came to life in 1909. The modern version debuted seven years ago and Mercedes thus far has sold about 3,000 of the luxury cars worldwide.
Car estimates that Mercedes sank $1.32 billion into the venture, which is how it came up with its calculation for how much the company lost per vehicle.
This is the final year for the luxury car, which Mercedes announced in November it planned to discontinue. Instead, it will focus on the S-Class as its premium luxury models.
Says Car, "Was it the name, the product, the positioning, the price? Short answer: all of the above." Car once reported that Mercedes and Aston Martin had talked about teaming up to build a new generation of Maybachs, which would have come in five body styles.
Instead, Maybach is likely to live on only in the hands of its very few owners, and in this scene from Sex and the City 2, where Carrie Bradshaw and her friends are each given their own Maybach to drive around Abu Dhabi.
