This 1932 Maybach Zeppelin DS8 Drips with Hand-Built Luxury, and We Drove It

In order to drive off in the 1932 Maybach Zeppelin DS8, I have to depress the clutch and engage a forward gear, just like I would in any other manual-transmission vehicle. But after that, the novel vacuum-powered pre-selector manual transmission can be shifted, clutch-less, via a pair of Bakelite switches on the steering wheel hub. Pop one side up and down for first and second gears, the other side for third and fourth. For the complex system to function, I only need to lift off on the gas pedal slightly and wait to hear the gear clunk into place at the giant convertible limousine’s rear. Then I know I’m ready to continue to accelerate.

And accelerate we do. The 6,600-pound DS8 was the ultimate expression of the German ultra-luxury marque’s Zeppelin nameplate, with a honking engine capable of motivating the stout four-door to a top speed of over 100 mph. Dripping in hand-built luxury and opulent metal, chrome, leather, and burl-wood trim, it also featured what were, at the time, engine soundproofing innovations for quieter operation.

Mercedes-Benz restored this massive vehicle to help introduce an all-new Maybach convertible, the Mercedes-Maybach SL 680, during this year’s Monterey Car Week. The Mercedes-Benz Classic Center—a wholly owned subsidiary of the brand, dedicated to preserving and restoring vintage Benzes—gave me the opportunity to drive it on a closed course out at the airport in Salinas, Calif., surrounded by private aircraft.

The aeronautic setting was appropriate. Wilhelm Maybach was a mechanical genius who worked with Gottleib Daimler to develop some of the first internal-combustion engines used for transportation—in automobiles, boats, and motorcycles. After a falling out with the top brass at Daimler’s car company, he formed his own, which went on to produce sophisticated motors for the Kaiser’s air force blimps during World War I. When the Germans were prohibited from building military vehicles after losing that conflagration, he decided to get back into the automobile business.

As a means of reminding consumers of his military heyday, and to connect the car to the luxurious travel associated with airships, he decided to name his ultimate model the Zeppelin. In the late 1920s, the brand introduced the first V-12 engine into German automobiles. While these were eventually available in varying, escalating, but always oversized displacements, the one in the car I drove was the apotheosis of the line: an 8.0-liter motor that operates with the liquid smoothness long associated with 12-cylinder power plants, and producing 200 hp.

I could feel all those horses, along with the car’s three-ton-plus weight, as I accelerated around the tarmac. The vehicle felt spirited, though its mass and impact-absorbing suspension gave it a floaty, insulated ride common to high-end cars of that era, when there were few paved roads, and fewer smoothly paved ones. Surprisingly, the automobile has firm brakes, readily capable of shedding speed.

One thing it does not have is power steering, something that was more than evident when navigating any corner at lower speed, or once we hit the end of the runway course and had to pull a U-turn to continue. It was not possible to turn the wheel hand-over-hand, as in a modern car. Even though it was a short drive, my upper arms got quite a workout.

Wilhelm Maybach died in late 1929, and his son Karl took over the operation. Continuing in the family tradition, Karl and company soon returned to war profiteering, this time as engineer and manufacturer of engines for the infamous Nazi regime’s majority of tanks and ground-assault vehicles. It was again forced to exit that enterprise following Germany’s defeat in 1945.

Mercedes acquired the company in the postwar era, and has since resurrected the Maybach name a couple times, most recently, from 2014 until the present, as an ultra-luxury automotive sub-brand. Mercedes’ global design director, Gorden Wagener, published a book some years back called “Sensual Purity” that pulled together various fantastical ideas for an integrated, futuristic world, inspired entirely from his personal and corporate aesthetic. Luxury zeppelins have seen an alleged revival in recent years, but I don’t recall seeing any in Wagener’s book. If it doesn’t mind harkening back again to its ignominious wartime past, the Maybach brand might want to float the idea of revisiting the airship category in the future.  

Click below for more photos of this 1932 Maybach Zeppelin DS8.