More Than a Million Kilometers in a Maybach !
In 2004, Josef Weikinger was one of the few people who bought a Maybach 62, paying $700,000 dollars for it. The businessman owns Europe’s first solar glass company, and had to drive all over the continent for business trips.
Most of the people who bought Maybach sold them a year or two later, wanting to be seen only in the latest vehicles. Josef, on the other hand, liked his big German limo. He decided to keep it a while longer. In September 2009, the odometer froze at an astonishing 999,999 km. The computer was not designed to go on for that long - but the car certainly was.
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To keep going for so many kilometers, the car had a few major services, like an engine rebuild at 600,000 km and a transmission not long after. The car has many more kilometers under the belt today, since it kept rolling for a while stuck at 999,999, and was returned to zero after.
Mr. Weikinger employs a driver for long-distances travel, but he drove the Maybach himself a lot, since he liked the smooth ride and appreciated the power of the car. In August 2013, he wanted to buy another Maybach, but the brand doesn’t exist anymore, so he got himself a BMW 760 Li. The million-kilometer Maybach has found itself a new home, and it is still driven today, racking up even more miles.
A very approximate calculation gives interesting results: If we guess he drove 1.1 million kilometers, the car only cost $0.63 dollars per kilometer! Talk about a nice return on investment!
