Unexpectedly Mercedes-Benz exhibits the prototype of a large car called the Maybach at the Tokyo Motor Show and the reactions are immediately explosive. The generous dimensions of the Maybach are striking, nearly six metres long (5.77 to be precise, 56 centimetres more than the S600), as are the unusual colour scheme for our times, the opulence and refinement of the interior appointments, and the name.
Yes, for if in general the historic memory of the car world is short, for the men of Mercedes-Benz, Wilhelm Maybach (1846-1929), designer, is the unforgotten protagonist of several chapters in the history of the German automobile, having developed with Gottlieb Daimler the first Daimler car and brought life to the legendary Maybach twelve-cylinder ‘Zeppelin’, the representative example of the luxury car. But it is the styling of the Maybach that, within the overall acclaim, engenders some perplexity and sceptical comments.
The perplexity originates in the dearth of information over the ‘existence’ of a car expressed in such timeless styling cues. If the Maybach ‘object’ had been presented not under the spotlight of a normal motor show, but on the catwalk of a concours d’élégance, at Pebble Beach say, no dissonant chords would have been heard above the overall acclaim. It was at Pebble Beach, California, during the 1996 edition of the celebrated classic-car concours, that the Maybach idea began to germinate in the minds of the top Mercedes-Benz design people.
“The Concours d’Élégance cars seen at Pebble Beach are generally prestige cars whose continuity has been lost. They belong to the golden age of the automobile before the Second World War and their makers have long since disappeared. Only the Rolls-Royce phenomenon has maintained a clear continuity, there have been a few other sporadic examples, such as the Mercedes 600 in the early nniteen-sixties. So the idea grew at Pebble Beach, where a good part of the past treats the eyes and the memory for a few hours,” recounts Bruno Sacco.
The article continues in Auto & Design no. 107
