At the Paris Motor Show, Maybach announced it was taking orders for its new open-topped Landaulet at $1.4 million a pop. The car, first floated as a concept at last year’s Middle East International Auto Show, seems calculated to appeal to oil-rich sheikhs. In Paris the company displayed its one-off example in Gulf-friendly white with a two-tone Grand Nappa leather interior - black for the chauffeur’s compartment and white for the passengers, reinforcing the fact that this car is made for those who do not have to drive themselves.

The hand-built to order Landaulet, ready for delivery later this fall, harkens back to the open-topped limousines that popes and kings used to be driven around in. It’s based on the Maybach 62 S, billed as the world’s most powerful series-produced luxury saloon. At $1.4 million, the Landaulet, Maybach’s fifth model, is second only to the Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport in terms of the world’s most expensive production cars. No doubt they’re hoping the economy improves so they can sell some of them. Continued

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Okay, it just hit us: eccentric. That’s what the Maybach 62 Landaulet is, in a word. In fact, you could apply that to the whole Maybach venture. Like Dennis Hopper said in the Keanu-tastic action flick Speed, “Poor people are crazy, Jack. I’m eccentric.” Daimler is evidently hoping that there are enough “eccentric” people in the United States to warrant bringing over the head-scratchingly-strange Maybach 62 Landaulet to the American market.

With trepidation and a considerable measure of revulsion, we’ve covered the emergence of the Landaulet from the initial rumor, through the preview before the car’s unveiling in Dubai (where else), the first video footage, its North American debut and its eventual production confirmation. It’s been a long and crazy wind-tousled process, and now comes confirmation that it’s coming our way. Oh, and the price? Ultimately confirmed at $1.35 million. That’s not a typo, and it’s higher even than the highest estimates we received previously. In case you, like us, are wondering who would spend that kind of money on a convertible version of a car that ordinarily costs (an already exorbitant) $433,750, ask Hans-Dieter Mulhaupt, the VP in charge of the Maybach program: “The Landaulet is for a superrich individual who wants something that is extremely extraordinary and enjoys being driven in a car with acres of sky above them.” There you have it: “extremely extraordinary”, for a million-dollar premium.

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