奔驰迈巴赫豪车黯然退场

    持续将近10年的亏损后，戴姆勒汽车公司（Daimler）终于关闭了豪车品牌迈巴赫。戴姆勒董事长迪特尔•柴奇对德国报纸《法兰克福汇报》（Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung）表示：“为迈巴赫研发后续车型没有意义。即将上市的奔驰S级是一款非常优秀的车型，足以取代迈巴赫。”

    柴奇将会很高兴终于能够摆脱迈巴赫。迈巴赫和亏损的奔驰Smart微型车，加上并购克莱斯勒失败，都是柴奇的前任尤尔根•施伦普留下的失败遗产。柴奇需要解决更紧迫的问题，而迈巴赫已经这样不痛不痒地存在了许多年。柴奇显然对这个品牌没有多少尊敬之情，因为他认为迈巴赫对于公司财务无足轻重。

    如果为死去的迈巴赫写篇墓志铭，碑文恐怕不会很体面。这款车型借助了梅赛德斯奔驰的光环，以便为35万至140万美元的天价正名。但光鲜的车身内，实际是一台不怎样的二流车。它唯一拿得出手的就是价格。有钱人们很快发现了这一点，于是纷纷敬而远之。可见占社会0.0001%的富豪们也并非钱多人傻。

    关于迈巴赫还有一些鲜为人知的故事：当上世纪90年代末，劳斯莱斯和宾利谋求出售的时候，梅赛德斯奔驰决定不参与收购这两个品牌。一名高管当时说：“经过考虑后，我们表示我们不想玩这场游戏。价码太高了。”

    不过梅赛德斯奔驰的另外两个德国竞争对手却“玩得起”。宝马公司（BMW）收购了劳斯莱斯，大众（Volkswagen）收购了宾利。由于担心自己成为高端豪车市场上的局外人，于是奔驰变了卦，决定自己也需要进军超奢华汽车业务，但它走的却是一条非常笨拙的路。

    宝马在收购劳斯莱斯后重新为其开发了一款全新的车型；大众则走了另一条路，在现款奥迪A8的基础上开发了一款新的宾利。但这两种办法奔驰都没有采取，而是拿了一个过时的奔时S级轿车的底盘，在上面扣了一个长得离谱的车身。这样一款超级豪华轿车就诞生了，它足有20英尺长，看起来就像一辆Airstream牌房车。

    下一步就是为这个不受待见的产品起个名字了。追溯历史和传统，奔驰决定以德国著名工程师威廉•迈巴赫的名字为其命名，他曾在上世纪20和30年代生产过一系列豪华轿车。后来他与格拉夫•齐伯林一道，设计和生产了以他的名字命名的飞艇发动机。奔驰一开始考虑过“迈巴赫•齐伯林”这个名字，不过他们二人设计的飞艇也叫这个名字，奔驰也明智地认为把自己的汽车和飞艇扯在一块儿不是什么好事。

    Ending almost a decade of losses, Daimler is shutting down its super-luxury Maybach brand. It would not make sense to develop a successor model," chairman Dieter Zetsche said to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "The coming S-Class is in such a way a superior vehicle that it can replace the Maybach."

    Zetsche will be glad to wipe his hands of Maybach (pronounced MY-bock). It was one more embarrassment -- like the money-losing Smart car and the failed Chrysler merger -- left over from the reign of his grandiose predecessor, Juergen Schrempp. Maybach has been hanging around for years while Zetsche, who clearly had little respect for the brand and dismissed it as financially inconsequential, dealt with more pressing problems.

    The Maybach epitaph will not be a not pretty one. It was a remarkably cynical effort by Daimler to use the halo of its Mercedes-Benz brand to justify prices of $350,000 to $1.4 million for an inferior automobile wrapped in a glitzy package. Maybach strived for a prestige that it tried to ground on price alone. The wealthy figured it out in a hurry and stayed away in droves. Appearances to the contrary sometimes notwithstanding, the top 0.0001% didn't accumulate all that money by being stupid.

    Here's the Maybach back-story: When Rolls-Royce and Bentley came up for sale at the end of the 1990s, Mercedes decided to pass. One executive said at the time, "At the end of the day, we said we didn't want to play this game. The price was too high."

    Mercedes's German rivals did want to play, however. BMW wound up with Rolls, and Volkswagen got Bentley. Fearful of being left out of the high status game, Mercedes backpedaled and decided it needed to be in the ultra-luxury business too, but it went after it in a remarkably clumsy way.

    Rather than develop a new car from the wheels up, as BMW did with Rolls-Royce, or cleverly use the underpinnings of an existing model like the Audi A8 for a new Bentley, Mercedes took an aging S-class chassis and plopped an absurdly elongated body on it. A top-of-the-line auto was born: more than 20 feet long with all the grace of an Airstream trailer.

    The next piece of business was to find a name for this ungainly creation. Borrowing a patina of history and heritage, Mercedes decided to name it after a German engineer named Wilhelm Maybach, who had produced a line of limousine-size cars in the '20s and '30s. He later collaborated with Graf Zeppelin to design and produce engines for the airships that bore his name. Mercedes toyed with the name "Maybach Zeppelin" but sensibly decided the blimp connection might not be a positive one.