Only 3,321 examples of the Maybach 57 and 62 were ever built, across the entire eleven-year run of Mercedes-Benz’s revived ultra-luxury marque, according to production records for the model line. One of those cars — a black 2006 Maybach 57 that Elizabeth Taylor bought new and drove until the final weeks of her life — is on public display this week at Barrett-Jackson’s Las Vegas auction, ahead of a no-reserve sale at the company’s Scottsdale event in January 2027. Barrett-Jackson has documented the car’s ownership history and condition in its consignment materials, and the pairing of full provenance with genuine rarity is what auction houses build entire sale weekends around.
A Flagship Built to Beat Rolls-Royce
Maybach was Daimler’s answer to Rolls-Royce and Bentley, revived in 2002 after sitting dormant since the 1940s and positioned as a standalone marque rather than a trim level. The 57 designation refers to the car’s length in decimeters — 5.7 meters, built for owner-drivers — while the longer 62 targeted chauffeured buyers. Taylor’s car uses the standard 5.5-liter twin-turbocharged V-12, rated at 543 horsepower and 664 lb-ft of torque and routed through a five-speed 5G-Tronic automatic transmission with manual shift control. Base 57 pricing in period ran close to €310,000 in Europe, with U.S. transaction prices running higher still, per the model’s documented pricing history. Daimler pulled the plug on the entire Maybach line in 2013 after selling roughly 3,000 cars worldwide against a much larger sales target, reportedly losing money on nearly every unit — a scale of failure that only reinforces how few of these cars exist to find their way to auction at all.
A Star’s Actual Daily Driver
What separates this particular 57 from the rest of the surviving fleet is that it was used, not stored. Taylor owned the black-on-caramel sedan until her death on March 23, 2011, after which she willed it to her longtime friend, hairstylist Jose Eber, according to Barrett-Jackson’s account of the car’s chain of ownership. Eber kept the Maybach largely garaged for roughly fifteen years before consigning it, and the odometer reflects that: just 7,200 miles. The rear compartment still carries the details that made these cars rolling private suites rather than simple transportation — a small refrigerator mounted between the seats, privacy curtains, and the original fold-out canopy cover — all intact rather than replaced or removed, which is the kind of detail collectors use to separate a genuinely preserved car from one that has simply been kept clean.
What Actually Happens This Week
The Las Vegas leg of the sale, running September 10 through 12 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, is a public preview rather than the sale itself — the car does not change hands until it crosses the block at no reserve in Scottsdale next January. Barrett-Jackson has not published a formal pre-sale estimate for the lot, which is typical for a no-reserve consignment: the format means bidding opens at zero dollars and the market decides the number in real time rather than the auction house setting expectations in advance.
That makes the “how much” question genuinely open, but not directionless. General market data for Maybach 57s — cars without a documented celebrity chain of ownership — puts typical transactions in the $35,000 to $55,000 range, according to pricing compiled by CLASSIC.COM’s market tracker, with the priciest recent examples pushing toward $80,000. Even a rare Zeppelin-spec 57 with a documented low mileage count carried a $245,000 reserve at a past sale and still failed to find a buyer at that number, underscoring how thin and unpredictable the market for these cars really is. A no-reserve Taylor-owned example is a different proposition entirely: celebrity-provenance vehicles at Barrett-Jackson have repeatedly blown past ordinary comps when bidders start chasing the name on the title rather than the spec sheet, and a six-figure result would not be a shock for a car this rare with a story this specific attached to it.
Whatever it brings, the number will say less about the Maybach 57 as a car — a genuinely engineered, V-12-powered flagship that never found its market — than about what happens when actual celebrity ownership, not just a marketing claim of it, gets attached to a title. Barrett-Jackson is betting the two together are worth more than either alone, and in three days Las Vegas crowds will get the first read on whether that bet is right before Scottsdale settles it for real.