Mercedes Relaunches Maybach Brand

Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz Cars unit is reintroducing its Maybach super-luxury brand, this time in the form of three variants of its S-Class sedan.

Mercedes will publicly unveil the first of the new models, the top-of-the-line Mercedes-Maybach S 600, at the Los Angeles and Guangzhou auto shows at the end of this month. The car is fitted with a 6.0-liter twin-turbocharged V-12 engine that makes 530 hp.

The S 600 will be joined by the 500 (455 hp V-8 engine) and 400 (330-hp V-6 engine). The company says it has no immediate plans to add crossover or hybrid models to the sub-brand.

Daimler revived the Maybach brand in 2002, but sales never matched expectations. The company discontinued the brand in 2012.

Daimler won't announce pricing until mid-December. But it says the cars will cost less than the previous generation models, whose prices sometimes reached €800,000. The company predicts China will be Maybach's largest national market.