Good Man Maybach – The heir to the automobile dynasty

Original Maybachs are cherished in museums and in the temperature-controlled garages of collectors. The name evokes images of luxuriously soft leather seats, a hallmark of their unparalleled commitment to elegance and comfort. The ultimate status symbol. Over a hundred years have passed since the success story began with the legendary Type W3 automobile. Relaunched in 2002, the Maybach brand was acquired by the Mercedes-Benz Group in 2014.

Ulrich Schmid-Maybach: Automobile legacy in third generation

Do you drive a Maybach yourself?

Bike is my preferred mode of transportation, although I drive to the office in my 25-year-old Mercedes. But our family owns a Maybach in Germany and I have a Virgil Abloh special edition Mercedes-Maybach S680 in California.

You grew up in San Francisco, where your father worked as a doctor. Given the vital role that Heilbronn and Friedrichshafen played in your family’s business, how significant were these places to you?

German culture was a strong presence in our household. My parents only spoke German with me and my three siblings, and we went to German school on Saturdays. I also wore lederhosen which, unsurprisingly, didn’t go down very well in seventh grade. My mother was on the board of Maybach-Motorenbau GmbH at the time and made regular trips to Lake Constance back in Germany. One of my earliest memories is of attending one of these meetings as a small child and listening. We also went to the classic car rallies held in Friedrichshafen, the place where my grandfather had started his company and where my mother grew up. The city is the birthplace of some of Germany’s best-known industries. ZF Friedrichshafen AG, Dornier and Maybach are allbased here. These companies started in Friedrichshafen because Count Zeppelin decided to build his Zeppelin airship there at the turn of the last century. He later co-founded Maybach-Motorenwerke with my great-grandfather Wilhelm Maybach. He built the first high-speed internal combustion engine, motorized the first boat and the first bicycle and, together with Gottlieb Daimler, designed the first modern car, the first Mercedes.

“Wilhelm Maybach and Gottlieb Daimler designed the first modern car.”

Ulrich Schmid-Maybach

Engines & revolutionizing innovation: Maybach's history

How did Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach meet?

Via the Bruderhaus in Reutlingen, the semi-religious orphanage where Wilhelm Maybach lived from the age of ten after the death of both of his parents. Attached to the orphanage was a toolmaking factory run by a young engineer called Gottlieb Daimler. My great-grandfather was originally supposed to become a baker, but when Daimler happened to see some sketches that he had made, he was so impressed with the boy’s talent that he decided to take him on. The two later went to work for other engine factories but, for contractual reasons, Maybach was not allowed to work on projects that originated in one of the companies that had previously employed him. Daimler therefore put his name to Wilhelm Maybach’s work and designs around this time and also applied for patents using his own name instead of Maybach’s. This only became known many years later. Mercedes fully acknowledges the pivotal role that Maybach played in its history, as it was his engineering genius that laid the foundation for the company’s vehicles.

And did his son Karl, your grandfather, follow in his footsteps?

My grandfather built the engines for the Zeppelins. That was also in Friedrichshafen. The Zeppelin was an industry icon that spawned several other “spin-off” companies, from gas works to manufacturers of gearboxes and airplanes and – in the case of Maybach – engines and drive systems. While Maybach is known for its luxury vehicles, many people don’t appreciate the brand’s heritage in high-precision engines and inventions. Wilhelm Maybach’s development of the combustion engine helped bring the age of the steam engine to an end. Like his father, Karl Maybach possessed a natural talent for engineering, which he channeled into ships and trains and then, almost by chance, into cars. Karl Maybach’s great achievement was the development of the high-speed diesel engines that ended the dominance of the steam locomotive and revolutionized the railways in Germany. Locomotives powered by his combustion engine could achieve speeds of up to 200 kilometers per hour, cutting the travel time between Hamburg and Berlin by half.

Mentoring program Wilhelm & Karl Maybach Foundation

Your grandfather might never have been able to develop his talent without Gottlieb Daimler. You embraced this idea when you set up the Wilhelm & Karl Maybach Foundation, which offers a carefully tailored mentoring program. What inspired you to do so?

I attended a series of events at the Cannes Film Festival in the early aughts. It was wonderful, but demanding, and I was quite exhausted by the end. But I came away knowing that I wanted to make a difference. On the flight back to the U.S., I struck up a conversation with the man sitting next to me, who turned out to be a doctor. We spent almost the entire flight talking about his work. He specialized in infectious diseases and trained doctors in East Africa. His name was David Bangsberg and I asked if it would be possible to support his work. This led to our first project. We subsequently supported Conrad Muzoora, the chief physician at his hospital and one of East Africa’s most widely published medical researchers, for five years.

How do you select mentors and mentees?

It varies from project to project, depending on who approaches us. For example, we completed an athletics project in South Africa that helped a young man from a very poor Zulu family become an exceptional rider. The British Polo Association approached us and explained the project to us. Through a multi-year mentoring program, we connected this young man with polo legends in Argentina and around the world. This experience propelled him to become the first person of color to play for the South African polo team.

How can success stories like this be scaled up?

I can’t say too much, but that’s exactly what we’re working on right now. First of all, however, we are putting the finishing touches to the Maybach Museum, which is being built in the pedestrian zone in Friedrichshafen. I also think it’s important to remind people in Germany that the risk-taking spirit of innovation we currently associate with Silicon Valley was alive and well on Lake Constance 120 years ago. So, the question is: how do we get back there? How do we restore this mindset?