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Maybach brand will die

Ultra-luxury automotive brand Maybach will die

Ultra-luxury automotive brand Maybach will die

Daimler, parent company of Mercedes-Benz, will kill off the Maybach ultra-luxury brand by 2013 and replace it with new, more expensive versions of the Mercedes S-Class. Because the Maybach 57 and 62 have sold poorly, Daimler will attempt to grow the appeal of the S-Class by launching new versions of the luxury sedan.

The Maybach brand, one of the world's most prestigious luxury names and a favorite of business tycoons, footballers and government officials the world over, could be shuttered in favor of top-of-the-line Mercedes-Benz models by 2013.

“We came to the strong conclusion that the sales chances for the Mercedes brand are much stronger than those for Maybach,” Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

When Maybach was launched in 2002, Daimler planned to sell about 2000 examples per year. Instead, global sales of the Maybach 57 and 62 have averaged about 200 cars per year. In the U.S., Maybach sold just 63 cars in 2010 and 66 cars in 2009. Sales of the Mercedes S-Class in the U.S., by contrast, numbered 13,068 in 2010, 11,199 sales in 2009, and has already sold 9804 copies in the first 10 months of 2011.