In the 1930s you were a respected man if you could afford a car at all. But only the richest could afford a Maybach to show off their wealth. One of these Maybachs was called the Zeppelin. This name wasn’t used because Maybach’s chief was an avigeek, it was used to show that the car’s V12 engine was built using Maybach’s experience from building airship engines. The V12 that powered the big Maybach had a massive displacement of 7922 cm³ and gave it access to 200 horsepower. Unfortunately the Maybach isn’t exactly a budget car, neither when it was new, nor now at the age of 90. In the 1930s it had a price of at least 30,000 Reichsmark, or in other words 10 times the price of a middle class Opel sedan. And since only around 25 Zeppelin DS8s were built, it isn’t a bargain today either. In 2015 a DS8 was supposed to be sold for 2.7 to 3.2 million Euro (= 3.2 to 3.8 million Dollars/ 2.3 to 2.8 million Pound Sterling). But in the end none of the bids were high enough so it wasn’t sold.
