Goodbye to all that

CELEBS may have loved them but Maybach's comeback was shortlived, seen off by a Ghost.

The Rolls Royce Phantom

CELEBS may have loved them but Maybach's comeback was shortlived, seen off by a Ghost.

A quick question: What do Mitsubishi 380 owners and rapper Jay-Z have in common? No points for "criminal convictions", I'm afraid. Jay-Z got off. And as any Croc Dundee knows, that wasn't a knife. No, the correct answer is, "They all bought automotive orphans." Nameplates that have been discontinued, never to return.

Maybach, favoured by Jay-Z, is the most recent and easily the most upmarket casualty of the global economic meltdown. It goes straight to the head of a list that includes Pontiac, Saturn, Hummer, Mercury and - unless you believe in Swedish fairy godmothers - Saab.

For the price of Jay-Z's Maybach, which sold here for $1.15 million and up, he could have bought three dozen 380s before the Adelaide factory finally stopped making the sedans three years ago. Or roughly a year's production.

However, while Mitsubishi still makes other cars elsewhere, for Maybach the model and the brand were effectively one and the same thing. The Maybach model line-up consisted of one extremely long, very luxurious limo that looked for all the world like an enormous Merc. For a bit more, like Jay-Z, you could buy the stretched version. Eventually, there was even one with an open-air rear passenger compartment, perfect for those times when you need to head an armoured convoy and do a bit of public saluting.

It was called the Landaulet, although I prefer to think of it as the Uganda Special.

When Mercedes decided to revive it in the late 1990s, Maybach had been dormant for decades. Its motivation was straightforward. In the musical chairs of car industry consolidation, Volkswagen had just added Bentley to its stable and BMW had grabbed Rolls-Royce. The British blue bloods could command prices and respect like nothing else in a showroom. Mercedes' most expensive models sold for about half the price of a Rolls. In the super-elite car world, Mercedes didn't have a seat.

But sitting on the shelf in its intellectual property department was Maybach, one of the pioneering luxury brands between the 20th-century wars and whose founder had close ties with Mercedes during its early days. Maybach had built huge road-going Zeppelins powered by V12s that were classics of auto extravagance. During World War II, it was recruited to make tank engines but when it returned to civvy street its market had evaporated.

Since surviving examples still figure prominently on the wish lists of collectors, Mercedes decided that Maybach had the pedigree for a comeback.Unfortunately, the result was something of a rush job. Mercedes wanted the Maybach to hit showrooms before rejuvenated Bentleys and Rolls. If the Maybach looked like an overpriced S-Class, Mercedes' home-brand limo, that's because underneath that's pretty much what it was.

Mercedes also underestimated what BMW had in mind for Rolls. Once it unveiled the Phantom, which looked like a country house on wheels, the block-of-flats Maybach didn't stand a chance. Both brands expected to sell about 1000 cars a year to the ultra-rich. While Rolls has hit that target, Maybach struggled from the start. Last year it sold just 200 cars and over 10 years only 3000 have been built. Rolls sold more than that last year.

Maybach betrayed its desperation with anachronisms like the Landaulet; Rolls planned an entirely new model line. The Ghost is smaller, less formal and, at two-thirds the price of a Phantom, affordable by people who are merely super-rich. Ghost was the reason for the turbocharged sales last year.

So Mercedes was faced with a decision: if it wanted to persevere with Maybach it needed to overhaul the original then offer a whole range of Maybachs, preferably including some that were cheaper and more appealing. Trouble is, that would trepass into traditional Merc territory. And cost squillions.

Mercedes' head of sales and marketing, Joachim Schmidt, says the decision to delete Maybach is as rational as the original decision to revive it. "We came to the conclusion to make a Maybach successor only at the top level with a small volume doesn't make sense, and to enlarge the portfolio would cost a lot of money in terms of investment and would squeeze into our portfolio with Mercedes.

"We said the potential of the Mercedes brand is so high we will expand the portfolio and try to get as many customers from the upper-luxury level as we can."

So the Maybach replacement, like the reborn original, will be a version of the S-Class due next year, only this time without the thin veneer of marketing an alternative brand provides. It will be the definitive test of whether the Merc star really has stellar qualities.

Meanwhile Maybach, with the unique distinction of having been deleted twice, will go down as the Ernest of the car world. As Lady Bracknell might have said: "To be ditched once may be regarded as misfortune ... to be ditched twice seems like carelessness."

Philip King is the motoring editor of The Australian.