A true ghost of the luxury era was spotted in Slovakia – a 2003 Maybach 57 sedan, and with Ukrainian license plates. The car was recorded in Košice, and the footage immediately appeared on the benz_of_ukraine Instagram page.
On the body are “CD” stickers, which are usually used to mark diplomatic vehicles. But instead of a diplomatic corps, there are ordinary Zakarpattia license plates. A check in OpenDataBot shows: they were obtained during re-registration back in 2020. And this is where it gets interesting – because the license plate “0001” quite unambiguously hints that the car’s owner is far from an ordinary person.
The Maybach 57 is the base version of the ultra-luxury sedan, which in the early 2000s was meant to compete with Rolls-Royce and Bentley. Only 1,104 of these pre-facelift cars were produced worldwide, so encountering one is almost like finding a black-and-white photo of a young Steve Jobs in a frame at a flea market. And although the model was built on the basis of the Mercedes S-Class, its length of 5.7 meters and an interior with wood, leather, and a panoramic roof immediately made it clear: this is not just a “big Mercedes.”
Under the hood is a 5.5-liter V12 twin-turbo with 550 hp and 900 Nm. It weighs almost three tons but still accelerates to 100 km/h in 5.2 seconds. The top speed is 250 km/h, and the air suspension makes the ride feel more like sailing on a yacht than driving on asphalt.
And here’s the most interesting part: who is this connoisseur who not only preserved such a rarity but can also drive it abroad? Because the “0001” license plates hint that the owner could easily afford a brand new electric Rolls-Royce Spectre, but… for some reason, it was this old-school “ship” that set off on a journey to Slovakia. Perhaps it’s the charisma of the old Maybach, which can still make a bigger impression than any new battery-powered luxury car?