CarBrandLogos archive · Maybach · 2005

MaybachMaybach Exelero

A one-off coupé commissioned by a tyre company, and later a rapper's video prop.

Photo: Simon Davison from Los Gatos, United States · CC BY 2.0

The story

A defining chapter in Maybach history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Maybach Exelero, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

The Exelero exists because Fulda, a German tyre manufacturer, needed a high-speed test vehicle and wanted a piece of theatre to go with it. In the 1930s the company had used a streamlined Maybach SW38 for the same purpose; for the launch of a new wide tyre in 2005 it commissioned a modern equivalent.

Maybach Exelero IAA 2005 · LSDSL · CC BY-SA 3.0

Design and engineering

The design came from a student competition at Pforzheim, won by Fredrik Burchhardt, and was built as a running car by Stola in Turin on a Maybach 57 platform. It is enormous — a two-door coupé nearly six metres long, entirely black, with a nose that quotes the pre-war streamliner and almost no decoration anywhere else. The 6.0-litre twin-turbo V12 was reworked for the job.

Maybach Exelero wheel · LSDSL · CC BY-SA 3.0

In production

Only one was built. It ran its high-speed tyre programme at the Nardò ring, then went on the show circuit, and later passed into private hands, appearing in music videos and a period of celebrity ownership that gave it a second, stranger life. It was never intended for sale and no series production was ever planned.

At a glance