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  The next models of the Mercedes-Benz S-Class will be lined up to target the ultra-luxury buyer.

Three big Benzes are about gang-up on heavyweights from Rolls-Royce and Bentley.

They have been drafted into action following the collapse of Maybach. The Maybach brand was brought back from the dead in the late 1990s when Daimler decided it needed an ultra-luxury flagship. It was trying to tap the connection to a name from 1909, when Wilhelm Maybach and his son founded a company that produced ultra-luxury cars.

But the decision was flawed from the start, partly because the Maybach was really only a stretched Mercedes-Benz S-Class with extra entertainment in the back, partly because the $1 million-plus pricetags were too high, and partly because Rolls-Royce hit the road at the same time with it's brilliant Phantom. It also didn't help that no-one outside of Germany knew the Maybach name, as the company effectively went out of business after World War II.

Now, as Mercedes-Benz admits its mistake, the German maker is planning a different strategoy. The sales and marketing boss at Benz, Joachim Schmidt, tells Carsguide there will be three different S-Class models to fill the space previously occupied by the Maybach 57 and 62 - cars named for their length.

"Maybach will continue until 2013 when we bring in the new S-Class. We will have three S-Class variants with the potential to attract Rolls-Royce customers," says Schmidt.

But the new lineup will not include a 'grosser' Benz, the name applied in the 1960s to the ultra-luxury S-Class flagship, according to Carsguide sources. There will be long and short-wheelbase cars, but nothing that could qualify as a grosser or landau.

Ironically, Schmidt says Maybach sales have improved a little in recent years although that still only means 210 cars in 2011 - and a production total that is only 3000 cars.

"At the end of the day we have broken even on the Maybach project," he says.