Maybach Exelero - 8 million dollar car !

[ShaidarHaran]

I initially read the 8 million dollar figure as sale price, but after a little digging noted that was indeed the build cost. Maybe a thread title change is appropriate? I mean, who knows how many millions other car manufacturers have spent building any of their prototypes. I'm sure cars like the Chyrsler ME412 aren't cheap...

 

[SugarCoat]

Am I the only one getting a "Batman Animated Series" Batmobile vibe from that thing? Looks spot on.

first thing that came to my mind was looney toons. You know the cars they drew up to show a ritzy character where the hood is about 10x longer than the rest of the car [for its huge engine] and the driver sits in what would normally be space for the trunk.

or perhaps that would be the result of if a cadillac and a hearse had sex....in germany of course

 

[Sonic]

Ehh, I know someone in the past (uncle) who's had lots of trouble. It's tainted me and made me biased against the cars. I freely admit to it. And yes, it makes me a hater.

 

[_xxx_]

I initially read the 8 million dollar figure as sale price, but after a little digging noted that was indeed the build cost. Maybe a thread title change is appropriate? I mean, who knows how many millions other car manufacturers have spent building any of their prototypes. I'm sure cars like the Chyrsler ME412 aren't cheap...

Hehe, I built some parts for the ME412, specifically the electronics for the additional turbos. It should have gotten an AMG 6.5l engine but with 4 turbos. But that prototype was a dead duck anyway, since Ricardo never got the transmission working properly. Would have been a great car though, pity they stopped it in the product council. They saw no market demand for it, at least that was the official explanation. Though I believe it was rather because of the split with Chrysler, politics and all. Guess we'll never get the full truth.

Sonic: Maybach was a bit rushed and had loads of bugs initially, but the second year models and onwards are all rock-solid. The car simply has LOADS of stuff inside and it was a huge hurdle to get it all working properly. Think at least 2x S-Class as far as the amount of electronics goes.

EDIT: the ME412 info on that site is full of it. The guy got quite a bit of it totally wrong. The transmission was from Ricardo, very much like that in Veyron. Had to laugh on that "look what Chrysler did in 12 months" - all they did was the chassis, AMG did everything electronics related inside.

 

[Sobek]

Say what you want, I think that car is SEXY. I'm typically a 4wd kind of guy, but if I were looking at a custom car (because I were some over-monied upper class tyrant), this'd be right up there on my list.

The side-on is awesome.

 

[_xxx_]

The car was to become great, I wasn't bashing it It was just way too early in development and was stopped before it reached a more reliable stage. It IS sexy as hell, I'd like to see them on the road too.