Mission Accomplished.(Column)

Nobody knows what it is, but everybody wants a ride. I only had it overnight, but must have explained it to 20 people. They called it a "gizmo-fest,'' a "rock star car'' and "over the top.'' The one thing they didn't call it was a Maybach.

Casual onlookers may be forgiven. The Maybach 57, this example painted a nearly subtle all-silver scheme rather than the two-tone seen most often in photos, didn't even bear its name on any panel. It just had that MM hood ornament and a similar trunk badge. I had to explain that it stands for Maybach Manufaktur and that it is Mercedes-Benz's answer to Rolls-Royce. That's the simplest explanation; the one that sets heads nodding.

Given lunch hour in the latest luxury wagon with a price tag over $300K, some folks would head for the nearest fancy restaurant with valet parking. We're a little perverse about such things. We parked the Maybach right out front of the local "slider'' burger joint, Hunter House, where its massive presence caught a lot of sidelong glances but few overt comments until owner Mark Papazian came along. He is a pal of the magazine, an owner of enthusiast cars, and he needed to look it over. Opening the car's doors opened the floodgate. Soon, all kinds of people were swarming over it, stockbrokers and lawyers lunching at the fancier place next door, construction workers from the Hilton going up across the street, the usual urban hipsters. One guy nearly drove by in his S500, noticed something odd out the corner of his eye, stopped the Benz and backed up to take a better look. This is exactly the kind of effect Mercedes-Benz hoped to have with this car.

Wherever we went, people had absurd amounts of fun checking out such truly non-automotive features as the fridge between the reclining rear seats, the magic motorized cellphone holder in the dashboard alongside the glovebox, the DVD player ...