Bentley Eyes Jay-Z, Samuel L. Jackson and Other High-Profile Maybach Customers

After Daimler announced that it is killing off its failed Maybach brand to concentrate on the next Mercedes-Benz S-Class, Bentley immediately started eyeing up Maybach's customers such as music singer/producer Jay-Z (who, incidentally, destroyed one in a video), King of Spain Juan Carlos, Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and the Sultan of Brunei.

“The withdrawal of Maybach is a business opportunity for us and we’re going to use it," Bentley CEO Wolfgang Duerheimer told Reuters during the Detroit Motor Show

Duerheimer added that he would invite current Maybach owners for VIP tours in Bentley’s Crewe factory as he wants to create “a specific welcome zone” inside the brand.

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Are 2011 Luxury Car Brand Record Sales a Good Sign for the U.S. Economy?

Bentley saw its global sales increase by a whopping 30 percent worldwide last year. while Rolls-Royce, helped by the launch of the Ghost, sold 3,500 cars in North America, smashing its 2010 record of 2,711 deliveries.

The first thing that comes to mind is that, in the midst of a recession, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

Bentley’s North American president Christopher Georges, however, sees things from a different perspective, in that booming sales of uber-luxurious cars are reflecting a confidence in the economy.

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Coachbuilt Maybach 57S Cruisero Coupe Caught on Video

With Mercedes-Benz's parent company Daimler ready to pull the plug on its Maybach brand less than a decade after its resurrection, Xenatec's plans to build a total of 100 units of the Maybach 57S-based Cruisero Coupe may be seriously compromised.

However, the German coachbuilder has already built some examples of its Maybach-endorsed coupe, one of which was filmed on the road by YouTube user Marchettino, and which you can watch in the video after the break.

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Auf Wiedersehen: Daimler to Pull the Plug on Maybach Brand

During the past decade or so, many carmakers have looked into their past to shape their future: the BMW Group's new Mini, the Fiat Group's 500 and the Volkswagen Group's Beetle are among the most well-known examples. But as Mercedes-Benz found out the hard way, not all second comings prove successful.

And now, only a decade after resuscitating Maybach, Daimler is ready to accept defeat and stop producing the $350,000 luxury limousine when the next generation of the Mercedes-Benz S-Class hits the market in 2013.

“It would not make sense to develop a successor model”, Daimler Dieter Zetsche said in an interview with German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “The coming S-Class is in such a way a superior vehicle that it can replace the Maybach.”

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Hollywood Aroma for 2011 LA Auto Show Design Challenge Concepts

For the past eight years, the LA Auto Show has been playing host to a design contest aimed at automaker design studios. Each year, a new Design Challenge theme is chosen with the studios showcasing their conceptual ideas during the press days of the show.

For 2011, the motorshow organizers are asking six automotive design studios from around the world, including Honda, Hyundai, Subaru, Mercedes-Benz, Smart and Maybach to come up with Hollywood’s next hottest movie car.

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