Daimler has made it (almost) official: It will shut down the superluxury Maybach brand to end almost a decade of losses from an auto that sells for more than $350,000, when a revamped version of the flagship Mercedes-Benz S-Class comes to market in 2013, Bloomberg News reports.
"It would not make sense to develop a successor model," CEO Dieter Zetsche said in remarks confirmed by Daimler spokesman Marc Binder. The coming S-Class is such a superior vehicle, "it can replace the Maybach."
Daimler hasn't made a profit on the Maybach after deciding to reintroduce the 1930s-era marque in 2002, Zetsche said. Mercedes will double variations of the $95,000 S-Class to six as it seeks to boost annual vehicle sales by at least 10,000 a year and step up its challenge to BMW as the world's top luxury-car maker.
BMW and Volkswagen's Audi have grown at more than five times the pace of Mercedes in the past decade by adding new offerings faster. The 125-year-old manufacturer, which has also dropped to third in profitability, lost the luxury-car sales lead to BMW in 2005 and slipped behind Audi this year.
"Mercedes is now also mounting the attack in the high-end segment," Zetsche said in comments to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, to be published today. "We have always dominated this segment, and that should continue to be the case. We don't want to wait until the others pull ahead."
Daimler held internal discussions on "which route promises the greatest possible success in the luxury segment," before concluding that sales prospects were better at Mercedes than at Maybach, the CEO said.
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