Daimler has targeted Chinese drivers to spur the revival of its moth-balled Maybach luxury brand, which returned on Wednesday with a global debut in the southern city of Guangzhou.
Maybach limousines once competed with luxury rivals such as Rolls Royce and Bentley, until Daimler axed the struggling brand three years ago.
The German carmaker revealed last week that it would relaunch the Maybach as a top-end variant of its Mercedes Benz sedans, and selected Guangzhou and Los Angeles as the debut venues for the new Mercedes-Maybach S-Class.
Daimler’s decision to launch the Maybach at this week’s Guangzhou Motor Show highlights the strategic importance of the China market, where its Mercedes unit is attempting to catch up with VW’s Audi division and BMW.
China is the world’s largest automotive market, with 18m passenger cars sold last year, and is on track to surpass the US as the world’s largest market for premium cars by 2020.
“It’s a smart move,” said Clemens Wasner, a Tokyo-based partner with automotive consultancy EFS. “If there’s any customer base in the world that could revive Maybach, it would be China’s.”
In 2013, Daimler posted a board member, Hubertus Troska, to Beijing to oversee operations in the world’s second largest economy and close a long-standing gap there separating Mercedes from its two main rivals.
Daimler sold 138,000 Mercedes sedans in China in the first half of this year, compared to unit sales of 269,000 and 225,000 respectively for Audi and BMW.
Speaking earlier this month at the formal opening of Mercedes’ new research and development centre in Beijing, Mr Troska said China sales increased 30 per cent over the first three quarters compared to the same period in 2013, and reiterated his company’s 2015 target to sell “significantly higher than 300,000 units” in China.
“We believe six per cent average growth over the next 10 years is highly likely for [China’s] passenger vehicle market, and premium cars tend to grow higher [than the industry average],” Mr Troska said. “There is a lot of catching up we can do, so even if there were not such strong growth I see no reason why Mercedes should not grow above average.”
Daimler sold just 200 Maybachs in 2010, the brand’s final full year before it was discontinued, compared with more than 2,700 units the same year for Rolls Royce and 5,000 for Bentley.
It is uncertain whether the new Maybach’s positioning as an S-Class “sub brand” will have the same appeal for Chinese drivers as Rolls Royce and Bentley, which maintain entirely separate brand identities from their parent companies.
Last month, Mr Troska said the company wanted Mercedes cars to “command a slight premium above the respective vehicles from our competitors”.