Maybach - The Luxury Car Designed From Poverty

1939 Maybach SW 38

Michele Hamer

When the father and son team of Wilhelm and Karl Maybach took the first car bearing their name to the 1921 Motor Show in Berlin, Maybach became established as a luxury brand which exploits all technological possibilities to the fullest. Their cars would not be cars for the common man, but for those of great wealth and discriminating taste. And the design genius behind the Maybach, was a homeless orphan.
It was in the summer of 1865 in Reutlingen, Germany, at an institution with adjoining production facilities built and run by orphans and the homeless, for orphans and the homeless, that Wilhelm Maybach caught the attention of the workshop manager, Gottlieb Daimler. Daimler, who founded Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG), a company which later merged and became Daimler-Benz, watched the nineteen year old Maybach produce an endless stream of design drafts for manufacturing machines, scales and farming implements.
The close bond between Maybach and Daimler was fueled by Wilhelm’s need for a father figure after being tragically orphaned at ten, and Daimler recognizing Maybach's potential as a designer. This was the beginning of a partnership that would last thirty five years and bring about many automotive innovations, like the four stroke engine in 1876 and the first fast running engine with a vertical cylinder run on petrol with Maybach's float carburetor design. In 1889, Maybach developed a water-cooled, two-cylinder, V-type engine and then a four-seater belt-driven car by 1899. In 1900, the same year of Daimler’s death, Maybach designs the Mercedes, which