When Daimler resurrected the Maybach as a standalone brand in 2002, the German manufacturer wanted to create a competitor of Rolls-Royce, Bentley, and the likes. A few years prior to its reintroduction, the marque hinted at its plans with the Benz Maybach concept from the 1997 Tokyo Motor Show, a prototype that later evolved to become the production Maybach 57 and 62. Daimler wanted to sell approximately 2,000 copies per year with at least half of them coming from the United States, but that plan never materialized.
Maybach 57 – Driving the V12 Biturbo Phantom Fighter (POV Binaural Audio)
In total, a little over 3,000 Maybach examples were sold and the German manufacturer decided to stop its production in 2012, due to unprofitable operations of the Maybach brand at the time. Today, the Maybach 57 and 62 are pretty rare birds on the used car market, and a new video brought to us by the Tedward channel on YouTube shows us a 2004 model. This particular car had a price of about $350,000 when new and that’s probably one of the main reasons the model never reached its projected sales numbers.
Nevertheless, the Maybach 57 is an opulent sedan for four passengers that has a stately appearance and many, many luxury features. To a certain extent, given its rarity, it’s a “new classic” and seeing one in such good shape makes us very happy. Of course, the luxury features are not the only aspects of this car that make it unique. For example, this sedan has six brake calipers as the front wheels actually have two calipers on each side, based on two separate brake-by-wire systems.
The 57 version was the shorter of the duo with its length of 225.5 inches (5,728 millimeters), and in this configuration, the limo had a 5.5-liter twin-turbo V12 engine. Good for 542 horsepower (405 kilowatts) at 5,250 rpm and 664 pound-feet (900 Newton-meters) of torque between 2300-3000 rpm, the 12-cylinder unit propelled the Maybach 57 from a standstill to 60 miles per hour (0-96 kilometers per hour) in 5.1 seconds. With a weight of about 6,030 pounds (2,735 kilograms), the car had a better power-to-weight ratio than a Honda S2000.
