Matt Prior

Searching Autocar's online archive for 'DS8' just now didn't bring up the latest posh Stellantis model as I'd hoped. (That would have taken the more accurate 'N°8'). Instead it pulled up a story about the Maybach DS8 Zeppelin, a German-made, V12-engined luxury car from the 1930s.

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Obviously, because I'm on a deadline and I'd already spent some time on the Morgan configurator this morning, I read the story, plus the one after it about racing driver Rod Millen's four-wheel-drive Mazda RX-7 (perhaps more on that another time).

Vying with the 'Grosser' Mercedes-Benz 770K to be Germany's most prestigious car of the time, the DS8 was vast, opulent, extraordinarily expensive and so heavy that in Germany its drivers needed a bus licence (although because most DS8s were chauffeur-driven, this was less onerous than one might think).

Aside from numerous business tycoons, owners included royalty, emperors and presidents, admirals and ambassadors. Neville Chamberlain was driven in one when he visited Germany in 1938 to meet Adolf Hitler.

In all, 340 examples were made. In the 1983 story I stumbled across, we reported that only 25 still survived. The last time I can find one being auctioned was in 2015, an elegant convertible formerly owned by a maharaja.