A Maybach for Christmas?

Although it’s one of my older/unused pics, this was originally caught near Christmas.

It’s also one of those cars I find slightly unusual in these days of leased, or similar cars, which people change every few years, as it’s a 2015 car, I’m assuming still with the original owner (because of that 5 AK registration), so it’s 10 years old.

It’s the only Maybach I’ve come across, a black S600 (but listed as a Mercedes-Benz S-Class). Model variation make it hard to be exact, but today this is still selling for around £100,000 – they’re not cheap!

I had to look at the price after pulling up the MOT report, and getting a surprise – at its failures.

It’s only covered about 43,000 miles, but has failed 5 of it 13 MOTs with various tyre failures and damaged wheels, including a fracture. While the tyres aren’t down to Maybach, the wheels are. While they resulted in advisory notes, the brake disks are also down to Maybach, and given their price, shouldn’t really be distorting/wearing at that mileage.

I drove up to 30,000 miles a year in a cheap company car, and never had failures or warnings like that. I did wear out a set of disks, and did have a weird failure on an Alfa Romeo, where a set of inboard disks quickly wore to look like a mountain range, and had to be replaced.

When I later went more upmarket, I’d have been less than pleased if I’d been presented with repairs like that, and their bills!

Oh well.

Maybe think again if thinking about buying a Maybach

As far as I know, I’ve only ever come across one Maybach on my travels, and it came with a surprise.

This one passed me back in 2019, and the pic fell into the ‘Filed and Forgotten’ pit of despair.

Having come across it again, my usual dip into the public records of the vehicle were surprising.

Originally a stand-alone brand, Maybach was eventually acquired by Mercedes-Benz, and greets visitors to its website with:

Mercedes-Maybach redefines what luxury means in our time: the utmost grace and maximum comfort, attention to detail, the aura of grandeur. Welcome to the world of Mercedes-Maybach.

That made it a surprise to see that this 2015 car’s MOT history showed it had failed in 2018 with two defective front tyres at only 12,978 miles (perhaps not the car’s fault, but since these would surely have been the factory items, had I been the owner, I would have been less than satisfied by the factory’s choice), and an advisory that both front wheels were slightly distorted. Well, maybe it began life as a TV or film stunt car.

At 22,688 miles, the 2020 MOT failed with much the same problem reported for the front nearside tyre.

At 28,241 miles, the 2021 MOT failed for an excessively worn offside front lower suspension arm ball joint.

Just saying, we had company clunkers that ran for longer and made more miles before they suffered at the hand of the MOT inspector – I’d have thought the superior engineering of a Mercedes-Maybach would have lasted a little longer before beginning to throw up issues.

Bear in mind the purchase price, massive depreciation, and dealer service charges (and parts) if something does go wrong, and you’re not a DIY owner.

From dealers, I see that as I write, a 2003 example can be had for around £40 k, bearing in mind a new one today would be around £250 k once some options are added to the base (and who buys base).

While a few offerings have reached six figure mileage, it looks as if many spend their life as big taxis or ferries, and clock up only a fraction of that. Too many variable though, so look up second-hand sales if you want to get a better idea.

Sadly, especially with recent models, it’s also worth bearing in mind that they’re packed with numerous electronic modules, which are costly, and few in number for a low volume car.

When those parts fail, and the spares are used up too, then cars such as this, which were technological flagships, often the first to use new tech, will be dead and effectively unfixable.

Think of the Formula 1 cars, the newest ones are confined to museums as their tech is dead once there’s nobody left who knows the software, and the computers used to configure them are obsolete and also no longer available, or working. There may be ways around that, but it all costs money.

Luxury cars don’t have lead balloon depreciation without there being good reason.

The example may be quite different, but consider that in the US, a car/vehicle may end up in the scrapyard even if the ONLY issue is an ‘end of life’ dead cat (catalytic converter) which MUST be fitted to keep it road legal. The cost of supplying and fitting a new cat can easily exceed the depreciated value of said vehicle. Don’t forget the rest of the part and engine may have covered over 250,000 miles, so they’re probably thinking about developing faults, and let’s not forget they can also have two or three dozen electronic control modules too.

2015 Mercedes-Maybach [5 AK]

Interestingly, with so many registrations often moving to new cars when I eventually get around to posting, this one is still on the same car today (2022).

Perhaps those odd hiccups at the front were the only issues, and should be forgiven and forgotten.

No car on our lovely roads is trouble free.

I’ve referred to Maybach, but only because it was the pic subject – obviously most of these glum thoughts apply to ALL such cars packed with this tech, even humble family models nowadays.