HansBlix

Here are 5 random pics (hope this works)

I'm not including the various pics of Maybachs at car shows or dealerships (cause thats cheating). I have photographed every single Maybach I have seen, except one, when a 57 pulled in behind me at a gas station and I chatted up the owner - but didnt have my cameras with me.

A couple pics are from Paris, others are from Washington DC. The original size of the pics is about 5MB each, so in reality theyre not as crappy at the ones I resized for this thread

BklynBenz

they are all over nyc. you see them waiting outside all the office buildings and restaurants

slk320

yep, they are all over Vegas too.. last night I saw a Vanguish and a Maybach 57 parked at 7-11. I guess everyone gets thirsty once in a while.

akburton

That rearview mirror pic is slick. Looks like the 2nd picture was taken on Connecticut Ave in DC, is that correct?

HansBlix

Objects in Mirror are More Expensive Than They Appear

Hehe, close, its Mass/Embassy Row, around the south korean embassy and that mosque. I've seen this 62 at least 5 times - the chauffeur actually wears a special suit and one of those caps, lol, "Home, James!" The person he drives lives pretty close by to where that pic was taken.

BTW, where in DC are you?

akburton

I work downtown between the whitehouse and World Bank. The 2nd picture you posted was not on Connecticut Ave?

HansBlix

Nahh, thats Embassy Row as well, I rarely drove on CT ave, the traffic there scared me for some reason, plus rarely had a need to go there

pic locations

1. Paris - some square off of George V
2. Paris - Champs Elysees
3. DC - Embassy Row
4. DC - Wisc & Prospect, 1 block north of intersection of Wisc and M
5. DC - Embassy Row

I went to American, graduated last year, lived in Bethesda

HansBlix

Here are a couple more from DC

1. Same 62 as on Mass, this time on California, a little past the intersection of Cali & 23rd

2. 57 going for a test drive outside M-B dealer in Bethesda

blazinginder

Is that indian guy in the last picture the one whos about to take it for a drive

HansBlix

Yup, he did, on two separate occassions I saw him driving it with his wife and no one else in the car, dunno if he bought it.

Kinda makes you wonder how you convince a dealer to let you drive one off the lot by yourself. Dunno what he showed up in, probably an S-class (at least nothing jumped out at me when I took a look at the parking lot of the dealer). Lets face it - statistically there are lot more wealthy guys in the states who look like college students in their early 20s, than there are wealthy old Indian guys. I guess he didn't look like he would have floored it from the light.

A month before I took those pics a black/gray 57 pulled in behind me at a gas station about a mile from that dealer - I talked to the guy driving it, some oldtimer with bad hearing, turns out he bought that one off the floor from the same dealer (as opposed to actually "commissioning" one).

ohnoes

Great pics, HansBlix! I live just outside of DC, in Fairfax, VA, but I haven't seen a Maybach driving around anywhere in this area -- in the suburbs or the city. Perhaps I haven't spent much time really driving around the city (I don't even know the city very well), but your pics are definitely more than I've ever seen, let alone in this city. I did see one driving around in Manhattan the other day, which was really cool (along with some Bentley Continentals).

I didn't even really recognize where the pictures were taken. However, which MB dealer was that in Bethesda? Was it Euro Motorcars, by any chance? I've been to restaurants in that area, and they look like they have some killer cars in the showrooms.

Also, regarding taking a test drive of the Maybach by yourself, I think both the dealer and you would have to be pretty gutsy to do that. From your perspective, even if you went along with a salesperson, what if you wrecked it? The insurance would cover it, but it would still be a huge shame, not to mention a dent on your driving record. Plus, the dealer probably wouldn't get another one in for a month or two.

You seriously gotta wonder what people like that Indian guy (or whatever ethnicity he is) do for a living to afford cars like that!

Anyway, great pics; thanks for sharing them! I know I've revived a relatively old thread, but I felt the pics were relevant to me, so I decided to post.

HansBlix

Yup, thats Euro Motorcars in Bethesda, they had a couple Maybachs in the showroom at one point. BTW, they've got a pretty impressive parking garage, they've gotta be in the top 20 most successful M-B dealers in the country. They also own the Bentley dealer which sits on the small street behind them, the Bentley showroom is awesomely tiny in size, only fits about 2 cars, its right next to a chinese place.

Most of the Maybachs around DC hang out in Potomac, Bethesda, Georgetown, and Embassy Row areas. I was able to get most of the pics that I got because I was pretty much expecting to see one. Every time I drove through any of those areas I had my camera with the lens-cap off sitting in the passenger seat.

Dunno who the Indian guy is, but he is not the Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi ambassador to the US or trade representative from those countries to the US.

By the way, here's a pretty neat site, the name of which is pretty self-explanatory. http://www.exoticspotter.com In the Maybach section there's another pic that was taken by somebody of the Paris Maybach 57 in my second pic above, the dark colored one on green diplomat plates. That 57 belongs to Grenada's UNESCO representative to France (took about 30 minutes of searching on the web to decode the plates)

ohnoes

Ah, that's really cool. Yeah, I think I remember seeing their Bentley showroom before and remarking on just how tiny it was. But, I guess most of the wealthy people in Maryland and the DC Metro area purchase their Bentleys there. I wouldn't know, though; I'm not in that crowd.

That's not surprising. Potomac, Bethesda, G-Town, and Embassy Row are all nice areas; Chevy Chase is nice, too.

Maybe next time I'll take my camera with me when I go to the "richer" parts of the area. Around these parts, there are tons of Mercedeses, BMWs, Land Rovers, Jaguars, Corvettes, etc., but I've rarely seen an exotic car. Oh, there's this guy that lives somewhere in Great Falls that has a Ferrari... not sure which model, but I've seen it parked out in the parking lot of the retail store I work at several times. Not sure if he was going into my store or the neighboring stores in the shopping center. Maybe he just needed to get some milk from Safeway.

Really. Do you know these ambassadors? He's probably some businessperson.

That's an awesome site! Thanks for sharing. I knew there had to be something like that on the Web. I guess a little searching would have produced it.

BTW, how do you find the owners of certain plates on the Web? Did you use a special service, or can you do it simply by Googling? I would doubt that organizations publish their cars' plates on the Net.

HansBlix

I just looked up the websites of those three embassies and compared the pics of their ambassadors to the "Indian guy" in the pic. That doesnt rule out him being an ambassador from some country, cause he could be a couple dozen other ethnicities, LOL.

It was pretty easy to find out who that Paris Maybach 57 belonged to, because it had a diplomatic plate U 358 CMD1.

U - stands for UNESCO, (there are diff prefixes for embassies, consular offices, etc)
358 - stands for Grenada, Grenada's country code is 158, but you add 200 for UNESCO series plates, so you get 358
CMD 1 - stands for Chief of Diplomatic Mission, 1 is always the ambassador's car

The organizations themselves dont publish these things, cause nobody gives a crap, but since license plates are legislated and regulated by the govt, they are part of law which is accessible to the public. Here's one of the French license plate collector sites which discusses their diplomat plate system http://plaque.free.fr/f_cd1e.html.

Not too diff from systems of diplomatic plate series in other countries, including the US. Here its pretty much the same system, prefix of D, C or S, then 2-letter country code, then the digits. Ambassador's cars always have the digits 001 or 0001, so they're always easy to spot. For example, D PG 0001 is the Belarus ambassador's car, as PG is the code for Belarus. Lists of country codes are everywhere on the net, they were made public by the Dept of State. And yes, I have too much time on my hands.

ohnoes

That's really cool; thanks for sharing! I never noticed patterns in diplomatic plates, but maybe I've never seen an ambassador's car.

BTW, do the diplomats themselves have special plates? Being just outside of D.C. and all, where many diplomats live, I see many diplomatic plates. However, I notice nothing special about them, other than the diplomatic designation on the top of the plate. Is there a pattern for those, as well?

HansBlix

For the regular diplomatic staff of the embassies - there's no single system for dividing up those plates, they are issued by the State Dept in order of the car's arrival into the country or the registration date. So its first come - first serve.

However, if you really take the time, you will notice that the lower the number on the plate - the nicer the car. 0001 is the ambassador, 0002 is usually the chief of staff, 0003 is the usually the trade representative, and so it goes down the line, but its different for every embassy. So more often than not, plates 0001 though 0010 mean something.


2-letter country codes - a mostly complete list of country codes can be found here, http://cicentre.com/LINKS_Plates.htm each country has at least one code, though some have as many as 4 (Israel for example). A good portion of the two letter codes are mnemonic, sometimes in a racist or insentitive way, believe it or not. If you spend enough time pondering these (which I do not recommend, for the sake of your mental sanity), you'll see what I'm talking about.

ohnoes

Very interesting. However, I did not notice anything particularly mnemonic, racist, or insensitive. Could you give me an example? I guess "YR," as stated in the article preceding the list, could be construed a few different ways, but other than that, I didn't notice any patterns or anything.

Thanks!

boylston

I haven't heard recently any talk of an S-class based Maybach- at one point it was referred to as a 52. Anyone heard anything?

HansBlix

I think they're having enough of a hard time selling the 57, as Maybach suffered a drop in sales after the W221 premiered in the fall, to make the 52 a worthwhile venture. Overall sales of the Maybach have not met expectations, as potential buyers are satisfied enough with the S600, at a third of the price of the 57. The current Maybach was devised in a slighty diff time, and went on sale long after the dotcom bubble burst. The spread of terrorism around the world also has those who can afford such cars preferring to buy armored S-class and BMW 7 sedans. Wealth prefers stealth. And I agree - you don't get a whole lot more with the 57 than you do with an S-class, except the need to hire a chauffeur/bodyguard to keep an eye on it whenever you take the car somewhere. I think 57/62 sales are spread about 40/60 respectively, meaning that more people buy the Maybachs to be driven in them, which creates even less of a case for the 57's (and 52's) existance. Its not even confirmed that the current Maybach models will be replaced after their 10 year production cycles comes to an end, but I wouldn't be surprised if only the 62 gets replaced with a new model.

Germancar1

I guess the 57S hasn't ignited any interest in the Maybach brand either huh? If so thats too bad because the 57S is really what the Maybach should have been in the first place, at least what the 57 model should have been from the start.

M

ohnoes

BTW, I saw a diplomatic plate yesterday in Clarendon (the ritzy part), and the first letter was a "D," leading me to believe he's an ambassador? Or is he just a diplomat? I forget most of the license plate; I had my camera, but there was too much going on to take it out and snap a picture.

apdesign

Are there actual people that thinks this car looks great. IMO I think it looks like a domestic car and also for the price... I rather have sometime else. I heard a lot about Maybach and finally decide to look at it... boy do they look ugly.

HansBlix

Well, IMHO the design of the car itself doesn't look "done", and there's a definite whiff of Korean. One doesnt really have to see the car is person to notice that the car has a slightly unfinished air to it. This is especially evident on the front fascia, with the grille and headlights, that, despite some clever touches, were never really perfected. The slabby sides, which just drop off into nothingness, and the slapped-on overstated chrome grille reek strongly of large Korean sedans.

Even though the two-tone paint is supposed to hide its size, it only amplifies the awkwardly tall roofline of the car. In turn, the best looking Maybachs I have come across were either all painted the same color, or had similar looking colors for the top/bottom. Also, keep in mind that only until a few months before the car was publicly unveiled, it was to be badged as the Mercedes-Benz Maybach, so this project suffered from a serious identity crisis. Heres a pic of one of the scale models from 1998 that demonstrates how little of the design changed between then and actual production.

On a side note, a lot of overpayed journos at automotive magazines here and in the UK like to, out of simple-minded ignorance, attribute the trunk on the W221 to having been influenced by The Bavarian Bangler's 7 series, while this scale model and other sketches prove that the trunk design of the Maybach, and the W221, was in the works before W220s even rolled off the assembly line, and waaay before the E65 premiered.

apdesign

HansBlix,

Thanks for the time and giving me a little knowledge about the vehicle. You are absolutely correct... it does look like a Korean built car.

rsnpride

Very nice pictures. An acquaintance of mine owns a Maybach in Los Angeles. Beautiful car. Other than his car, I've never seen any Maybachs around.

In NorCal, I'd say they're pretty rare.