10/10: Maybach Landaulet.
If the Maybach 57/62 was luxury’s missed note, the Landaulet is its grand, ceremonial crescendo in this truly discordant symphony. A limousine transformed into rolling theater, it was engineered not for transportation, but for spectacle itself. This is the limousine for the customer who says, “I want to be the pope, but I’m not Catholic and I don’t want to mess up my hair with that hat.”
Imagine a Maybach 62, its roof removed from the rear, the driver cocooned under glass, and the dignitaries displayed beneath open sky, as if for a parade that never ends. Only eight Landaulets were built, each specified with gold-flecked granite trim, an electrochromic partition, and a price tag that crested seven figures. Jay-Z, Birdman, and DJ Khaled appear on the owner rolls; the rest vanished into private collections and Dubai garages, rarely glimpsed but always discussed in hushed, awed tones.
Every detail of the Landaulet is a study in ceremonial excess. The rear compartment is not so much a seat as a throne, upholstered in leather that, for the right client, could be sourced from Hermès by special order. The granite inlays, glass partition, and convertible top suggest a state visit, not a commute. The Landaulet is the final word in automotive pageantry. It is a limousine for monarchs without a kingdom, constructed to ensure its passengers could be seen, photographed, and mythologized, while remaining thoroughly isolated from the world around them.
Where the standard Maybach was a monument to committee-driven luxury, the Landaulet is its baroque apotheosis. It is a vehicle built for an age that had already moved past limousines and convertibles, but which could not resist one last act of gilded spectacle. It is less car than procession, a coda to the era of opulent excess, circling the boulevard for an audience that may never exist again.
That’s the end of the 10/10 axes of absurdity. Below is where absurdity becomes indistinguishable from insanity.