This 2008 Maybach 57S was a $380K, 3-Ton, V12 Bit of Mercedes-Benz Insanity Made for the Very Rich 1

Good morning. This is Bill from Curious Cars on a, you know, it's not quite chilly. It's not quite room temperature. I don't know what you'd call it. It's a Tuesday afternoon. I lied about it being morning, but old habits die hard. And today I've got kind of an interesting car. Apologies for not being around last week. I had a bit of a family issue. And in fact, it leads me into something. My dad passed away at the very youthful age of 97. Now, you know, obviously it's a bit of a shock to lose a parent. It's not something you want to do. But when a guy is 97 and, you know, has been ailing for quite a few years, it's not really a shock. So in terms of, you know, it happening, obviously, once it happens, you start to think about it. But, you know, I'm not going to dedicate this video to him. I'm not one of those guys who, you know, sometimes you see like those. Let me just put it to you this way. If I die, even suddenly, instead of, you know, at a normal end of a long life, say another 10 or 15 years from now, I don't want to be memorialized on the back window of a 14-year-old Kia Elantra, or is it a Hyundai Elantra? It really doesn't matter. They're interchangeable. You know, I see those things driving around. They're missing a hubcap. Somebody's weaving in and out of traffic as they tend to do in Korean cars. And the whole back window, blocking the view, is a dedication to some poor soul who passed away, probably before their time. Please, God, I don't want anyone in my family doing that for me. And I offer my dad the same respect and not dedicate this particular video to him. Although I think he would have quite liked this car, being a bit of a regal German type. He wasn't actually German. He just acted German. He was Polish. But anyway, he was a great gentleman, a tremendous guy. He fought in World War II. He was really an old bastard. He had me quite late with mom, of course. She passed away a few years ago. Fought his way across Europe, made it to England, was in the British Army as a Polish division. Ended up coming to the United States in Chicago, married my mother, and unfortunately had some terrible children, myself included. So a fine old guy. I'm going to miss him. Good fella. I wish him well on his journey and loved him very much. So that's all, as Forrest Gump would say, that I'm going to say about that. But I am back. It's nice to be here. I don't mean to bring down the mood at all. Believe me, it's not that kind of thing. And I have this 2008 Maybach 57S. Now, to say this car is special is a bit of an understatement. In 2008, the total Maybach production was, what, 119 cars, if I remember correctly. And that was all of their different models. So in that year, they made 119 of these things. And it's not particularly surprising, because this car, for example, stickered out at about $380,000. I just may have to support the camera again to ponder that number. $380,000. So to say that Mercedes had a little bit of a tough sale on that one, I mean, I don't think it worked the way that they thought it would. They did Maybach as a, it was a show car, a concept car at the 1997 Tokyo Car Show, and then it emerged a few years later. Not coincidentally, BMW and Volkswagen had bought, respectively, Bentley, or sorry, BMW bought Rolls-Royce, Volkswagen bought Bentley. And Mercedes, I think, had decided that they also wanted to be part of the Uber luxury brand. When those two brands were for sale, Mercedes passed. They didn't even try to get them. They figured they had enough with what they had. They also figured they owned the Maybach name. The problem with that is while Maybach certainly was famous for building incredibly opulent cars in the, oh, I guess about 1919 to 1940, they were virtually unknown in the United States. So they didn't have the same cachet that a Rolls-Royce or Bentley did for people in America. And that was a miscalculation on Mercedes' part. Maybach itself, a fascinating company, founded in 1909 by a guy named Wilhelm Maybach and his son. They formed it basically to build Zeppelin engines. That was their thing. They're going to build engines for Zeppelins. And obviously it worked quite well. I don't know if they built the one in the Hindenburg, but they probably did. But by that time they were building cars. So they did that for a few years. In 1919, they started fooling around with making cars. And for the next 20 years, they created some of the most elegant and high-end vehicles that are cherished and treasured by people in the collector market, more so in Europe than the United States. But they built pretty incredible cars. In 1940, of course, the war came along. And that was that. They started building engines for Panzer tanks. In fact, I think Maybach built most of the engines for the Nazi war machine in terms of their tanks, half-tracks, that sort of thing. After the war, they did some car repair. I don't know if they were putting valve cover gaskets on stuff, whatever the hell they were up to. And they ended up being bought by Mercedes in 1960. And Mercedes really didn't do much with them at the time. They did make some higher-end stuff that came around, I don't know, like the 116 chassis, that sort of thing. They beefed up the cars, made them more opulent, made them sort of a higher quality and sold them that way. And the name otherwise really didn't amount to much. And then, in 1997, out came the Maybach as a concept car. And in 2002 in Europe, 2003 in the United States, they released it to the public, and the rest is history. And this car actually was an answer to one of the initial problems with the Maybach line. And that is that Mercedes built them to be basically chauffeured. There was the 57 and the 62. And they were made and designed to be pampering the rear passenger. In fact, even when they had the automotive press over, they didn't want the press to drive the cars. They wanted them to ride around in the backseat because that was the point of the car. Well, again, even people at this level sometimes like to drive their own car. I mean, you can't all be Barbara Streisand. Some people like to hop in in the morning, get where they're going, even if they afford $380,000 for a car. So pretty incredible stuff. The 57 then replied to that and was the driver's version of the Maybach. It's like we talked about with that old Bentley a while back. There was a sports version that the rich English lord would hop in himself and drive to the mansion in the countryside to fool around with the chambermaids and lady chatters and his lover, that sort of crap. And this was the same thing. So it sat half an inch lower. The S stood for special. They beefed up the motor, which was already pretty beefy. But under the hood of this thing, you have six liters, twin turbos, 604 horsepower, 738 foot-pounds of torque, which frankly is enough torque to pull down tree stumps or even houses. It's absolutely incredible. And stiffened up the suspension, sported up the interior, and made it so somebody would enjoy driving it. Let's just get into this thing. There's the Maybach badge. I mean, you'd see these things driving around. People didn't have a clue what they were. You really wouldn't have had a clue. And frankly, it's quite a complicated badge. I mean, it looks like two Ms engaged in a foul sexual act. Let's see if we can get in. So obviously, the trunk lifts itself at this level. You really, frankly, don't need to be opening your own trunk. This car, believe it or not, was built on the W140 platform, not the current generation S-Class when it came out. They obviously lengthened it. This car is almost 19 feet, 18.8, I believe, and rides around on a modified version of the W140 chassis, which we've done many times. But here's the thing about this car. Every single part of it is hand-polished, quaffed, loved on, smooched on. You see it's got this beautiful big chrome strip, although a lot of the instrumentation is right out of the S. You've got this umbrella thing here. I presume that's what it's for. I don't see the umbrella, but that's probably where it would go. Now would be a fine place to put a 300 Savage lever-action deer rifle or something. That's probably what I'd stick there. A little bit too long for a Tommy gun. Now, this is fascinating. The guy who owns this car is a KB Auto Collection, a very nice gentleman named Clemens. You can see some of his other stuff here for sale. There's a Fister. I don't know what we're going to do with that thing, but there it is. But anyway, very elegant guy. So what does this elegant regal German man need with a giant box of Irish spring? Deep scrub action, body wash, gel douche. I find this to be a little bit disturbing, and I'm going to inquire with Clemens what the hell he's up to with that stuff. But anyway, there it is. Maybe he's handing him out his Christmas presents to people he thinks could smell better. The trunk isn't enormous, not really, but it's enough and surely enough to get where you're going. So I don't like seeing my reflection in that thing. Let's have a look under the hood. One of the other problems with this Maybach was it was very hard to distinguish from the Mercedes for some people. It just didn't seem quite opulent enough for $380,000. Let's get that up. I mean, even though you had stuff where the fenders carried over, you know, the hood slanted in like that. I mean, you know, they put the time and effort into it, but because of the branding, they just didn't get it to distinguish itself enough from their normal brand, the Mercedes cars, the way that BMW was able to do with Rolls-Royce. But anyway, there it is. A six meters, high pressure twin turbos. You see it's got the signed thing. Who built that one? I don't think Betty Rodriguez does. She works over at AMG. I think this is, let's see what we got here. It's hard to read. Julie Smith put this one together. So anyway, hopefully she did a nice job and it works well and does what it needs to do. And again, 738 frigging foot pounds. Yeah, I mean, that's just an incredible thing. I mean, it makes this three ton car actually drive in a very peppy fashion. You can see even the hood ornament, you know, has a little Maybach inscription on it. The grill is very special. The lights are special. They have little Maybach things on there. You know, it's just a pretty neat piece. It really is. You see those giant disc brakes with twin calipers, you know, again, to stop three tons of car that's hurtling towards wherever the hell it's going. So you really need that. The S again, rides a little bit lower, a little bit sportier. At the time, this has Pirellis on it, but they had some sort of special Michelin that was made for this car. Really hugged the road properly. And it is quite gorgeous. It is quite elegant. And again, people don't entirely know what it is. I mean, they may just see this big black thing and think, you know, yeah, there it is, another S-Class. But you know better. You know better. You know if you bought this thing now that, you know, you've allowed yourself to have $300,000 worth of depreciation before you got in it. And that's pretty cool. I've got the key in my pocket. And actually, that's another study in why this didn't work so well. Look at that. That's a Benz key. Put a little bit of chrome on it, sure. But it's a Benz key. There you can see the amount of effort and love that was put into this thing in terms of the door panels. Everywhere you look is just hand-rubbed, polished, Steinway black stuff or smooth wood or, you know, everything is just beautifully done in the car. And frankly, it friggin' better be. Again, for your almost $400,000 that you dropped. But let's hop in so it stops beeping at us. Fire it up. There we go. Don't fear the Reaper. I'll try not to. Okay, so there we got a very traditional looking Mercedes instrument cluster that's been dolled up for the Maybach. You see, somebody had installed this caliber, this K40 radar detector. I found it in here. You know, what does a guy who could buy this car need with a K40 radar detector? If he's pulled over, he should just buy the friggin' town the cop came from, you know, and have him fired. It just doesn't make any sense to me. But anyway, you see the beautiful hand-stitched leather on the steering wheel, everything very elegant. These buttons, even if they're meant to look like the Mercedes buttons, they're not. They're, you know, the same Steinway black, hand-rubbed, gorgeous, what have you. The way the wood elegantly meets that. You've got basically the Mercedes-Benz command unit there, but somehow it's just different. You know, what did Homer say in the Simpsons once about those cocktail sauce? It looks like ketchup, it tastes like ketchup, but man, it ain't ketchup. Well, you know, you could almost say the same thing with the instrumentation on this car. Whenever you press things, they elegantly happen. That is now a Mercedes-Benz Bluetooth unit, but I bet back in the day that was a phone that popped up so the chauffeur could dial, or I guess you'd be driving this thing yourself. There's a nice set of books in there. I guess we press that to get it back down. You know, again, part of the reason, I guess, that this thing was so expensive is that they engineered that to be cool and not break, so God bless them. And then look at the lines. I mean, everything is just this incredible leather everywhere. Alcantara headliner, big sunroof. Yeah, it's just all very cool. Up front, you have heated and cold seats. You've got all your standard mirror stuff. You've got an incredible spot. Now, if you're the chauffeur, you're going to need to maybe protect the guy in the back, so there is a lovely spot to put a very large handgun or two with a bunch of extra clips, so you'd be ready to go. Very, very nice. You also have an additional storage spot here with a dog leash, so I don't know what kind of a dog you own if you have a Maybach, but it's probably going to be elegant, I would think, which leads me to get into that in a minute. But anyway, so all very nice stuff. And they are pulse seats, I believe, so they're heated, cooled, and they'll give your chauffeur a massage. And all these buttons, for love of... Comfort, Sport, or Standard, ESP Off. You've got your Airmatic Control for the suspension, another Airmatic Control for the suspension, DISTRONIC Cruise Control. This will set the distance for your DISTRONIC. I have no friggin' idea. Maybe it turns off the parking sensors or something. This will run back the headrests, and... No, that turns off the parking sensors. What does this one do? Honestly, I don't have a friggin' clue and it may not matter. Let's hop in the back. That's where it's much more fascinating. It's going to be dark in here. Okay, so here is what technically the Maybach was supposed to be all about. Opulent comfort for rear passengers. Even though this is the one you drive yourself, this is the essential point of the Maybach. Again, the incredible door panel treatments. You can tell it's very elegant. I don't know where they found the $380,000, but they found it, obviously, in abundance of these rather lewd emblems. You also have more gun storage in here. Very nice stuff. And you don't have it... Well, you got one up here as well. I don't know what you put in here. Maybe a pen where you sign business deals or maybe a little baggie of narcotics. All very nice. Let's hop in. See what we got. And we've got a screen. More Maybach logos. Why are all these things on? How do you turn that off? Maybe just leave it on for the moment. What do we have? We have curtains. Where the hell did I see that earlier? There's a control for those things. Is it here? Yeah, all right. It's got power curtains. So they're up now. Here, that's how we get them back. So if you need privacy, you can just run those things forward. And I'll get them on the other side too. Now we're running them back. Nice. And then the rear curtain slide. And so now you can let in the outside world. You know, probably you've already pulled over. You've let out the prostitute and she's on her way. What do we have here? A pretty standard looking ashtray. Then we've got SOS buttons. We've got map. There's the map light. Thank God. Now that's off. Lock and unlock. Another map light. A dimmer. Your rear seat air conditioning, which works quite well. A little control thing. And there's a really nice place for a bag of drugs right in there. I don't even know if the state trooper will find that. Then you've got more stuff here that I don't know what it does. What the hell was that? Oh yeah, 12 volt outlet down there. This thing, what we've got a Maybach phone still with the car. You've got your Maybach remote control. If I close this and open this up, look at this. So not only do we have these lovely little grippy handles for whatever, we did talk about having the lady of the evening in here, but now you've got a cooler so you can celebrate with a bottle of champagne or a nice cold Pabst Blue Ribbon. So there you go. Built-in cooler in the back. Nice little armrest. Then we've got more compartments. Lovely little place for a handgun there right at the top or whatever it is you want. I guess there's, it looks like bottle storage. Maybe that's where you put the flutes for the champagne, the little crystal glasses. More Maybach logos. That's your DVD underneath it. Down here, there's your DVD drive or CD, whatever the case may be. And then another fantastic storage compartment. So lots of ---- going on back here. You also have a makeup mirror if you need to powder your nose. Very nice stuff. Love the lens and the light treatment. And then here are these fascinating little gauge setups. So this is an actual speedometer so you can tell if the driver is following your commands or not. I don't know why the, what the hell was that? Why did the temperature jam like that? It was weird. Anyway, you got your Fahrenheit temperature there and you've got a clock so all that crap right up there on top. Very, very neat stuff. And of course a beautiful Alcantara headliner. The rear seat is also power. Now I'm reclining. Lovely. Headrest. Backrest. It's heated. It's cooled. Heated and cooled at the same time in case you can't make up your mind. Ah, wouldn't it be nice? This is a great little DVD screen if you want to put on behind the green door or whatever it is you watch. You'll be able to see it from there. Or with Clemens, as the case may be, die hard. He reminds me a lot of Die Hard number two. Not the second movie. The second in command, Klaus. They, it's kind of every time I see him I want to say shoot the glass. Of course the doors suck themselves in. Very nice stuff. Let's hop in. Now of course, you know, over here this is a guy I know, Marco. He is a friend of Al's who happens to be living over at Al's. Now this is all very interesting ----, so let me just pull over here and go through this for a minute. Marco, thank God, saw me doing a video and thought, wow, I'm just gonna water all these ******* shrubs while Bill is standing there doing the video because that should make him extremely friggin' uncomfortable. Anyway, Clemens, this elegant German guy, has lived here for many, many, many years. Not that long ago, a couple years ago, Al, a friend of mine that I spec Miata race with, finds this house for sale, that one there, wants a car collection, so it's got this big garage in the back with mother-in-law quarters and stuff, so he moves in. He buys, and I feel so bad for Clemens because again, I mean, even his dog is detailed. I mean, Clemens has a, even his little dog is, you know, manicured and lovely. And then Al comes in like the Beverly Hillbillies, you see he's got his Miata there, there's a Mustang and Primer, there's a Ford that they're turning from a long bed into a short bed, you've got a, you got this RT Dakota with bad paint now, a trampoline designed to kill and maim children, and of course, the RV that I think Marco's living in, so he just empties the shitter every morning, boats and lights. I remember the last guy who moved in, you know, Clemens was upset because they had a volleyball court there and a basketball hoop, so God only knows what he thinks of Al. The only thing I will say is I did notice he recently put the house up for sale. Massage seat signed. Now let's go for a spin in this thing. Thanks again, Marco, I appreciate that. What the hell? I wouldn't mind having someone living around watering my shrubs from time to time, I could do it all myself. Now you can see it's getting dark, that's why I prefer to do these videos in the morning. Oh God, my seatbelt. It's even hard in a $380,000 car, you think it'd be easier? I think everything would be easier. Hang on to meander our way to the front. You know, typical Mercedes, this is obviously meant to be the sporty version, and you can hear that they've allowed you to hear a residue of this V12 engine noise. Is it a V12 or a V8? I always forget, I think it's a V12 with the twin turbos. Anyway, they just let you hear a residue of it. Now how does this gate work? But it does nothing? I thought gates were automatic, you just, you see, oh there you go, okay, it is automatic. I figured you just drive up to them and they open, unless they're trying to keep you in. Tell you what, if a German keeps you in their compound, you better, better be careful. Let's see where the dimmer is. I'm going to try turning this on. Let's see what we've got on the radio. Commercials, obviously, we'll try that again in a minute. Let's go for a spin. Oh my God, the way this drives. Wow. Okay, I will say this, you can instantly feel the difference between this car and an S-Class, I'll tell you that. This thing's just gliding. Holy God. It's like you had a team of Swiss scientists re-engineer the ride on a 72 Cadillac. Damn, that's amazing. Okay, so, you know, you've got this feel, you've got all this juice under the hood, you've got 6,000 pounds of rolling momentum, you've got manhole covers for brakes ready to put you through the windshield if you need to panic stop, and it just feels weird that a car this big, 19 feet long, heavy, 6,000 pounds, can be as agile as it is. I mean, let's see, we're stuck here. Absolutely stuck. It's like five o'clock traffic and we're behind. Well, it looks like my old Silverado. But anyway, that's one of the terrific feats of engineering that they did with this car is made it drive so exceptionally well. Now, the problem with this car is that it just couldn't take it to Rolls Royce and Bentley as done by BMW and Volkswagen. The whole Maybach thing was a giant miscalculation on Mercedes' part. They thought they would sell 2,000 of these things over the course of a few years. They thought it would be successful. They thought they'd have like 70 dealers. None of that came to pass. Holy ----. Wow. Well, there was zero to 60 in about five seconds. I'm not sure what the quarter mile time is. I don't know why we've been able to get cops. Wonderful. At least it works. That is pretty wild stuff. I mean, it is a rocket ship. And I was saying that they let you hear the engine, but they really don't. That was almost like completely silent. I could hear very little out of it. Not even really a residue. That's amazing. Yeah, I mean, you definitely get the feeling that you're driving something that's pretty special. I can't say you don't. I wish we had a curvy road to go on instead of just the straight line and, you know, the estates area here. But anyway, the feel from the wheel, the feel from the pedal, the feel from everything. I got to say, it doesn't drive like any other car that I've driven. This is my first Maybach. This is the first time I've driven a Maybach. And wow. Yeah. Yeah. That is a completely different experience from hopping in an S-Class. You can feel it's heavier, but at the same time, you don't feel it's cumbersome. The steering feel is different. Wow. Let me just give it a little kick down again. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty special. Holy cow. Neat stuff. Anyway, I wish I could go out on the highway in this thing, but I'm not going to because the hell with it. The hell with it. It's like 10 miles away. That's why you don't want to hear me talk all that amount of time. See if I get my little cheat sheet out here. OK, forgive me. Forgive me that little pause. So the test drive is going to be as much as I hoped in terms of going around to somewhere twisty or curvy. There's just not that much to find. If you have an interest in this car, I'm working with KB Auto Collection on this one. You can find him on kbautoelection.com. His name's Clemens. He's an incredibly nice guy. If you have any interest in this car, give him a call. He was kind enough to provide it for the review. Doing a little U-turn right here. You can reach him at 239-250-3003. And that's 239-250-3003 on the web at kbautoelection.com. You won't be sad you called him. Very nice guy. And you know, you can ask him what the hell he was thinking, giving me the keys to this thing. Hopefully he gives me the keys to that Fisker and I'll have some fun with that thing. But there it is. Really appreciate you guys having a look. I should have something fun for tomorrow. Not sure what it is yet. Maybe a Lincoln Mark V that I've been putting together. I don't know. We'll see. Otherwise, we'll definitely try to get another one out before Christmas. Thanks for having a look. Thanks for all your comments, all your support. It means more than you could know. I really appreciate it. Keeps me going. Honestly, the only fun I'm having in the car business is this stuff. So we will see you with the next one. Take care.