Virgil Abloh’s Project Maybach, An Electric Show Car Forever Inspiring The Future Of Design

Paying homage to Virgil Abloh, Mercedes-Benz opens the doors of the Rubell Museum to present Project Maybach, a collaborative electric show car designed to inspire the next generation.

Representing a humble contribution to Virgil’s vast legacy, the Mercedes-Maybach show car exemplifies the possibilities of future design. 

Driven by a joint passion to enrich the conversation of luxury design, and also the result of a current alliance with the polymath artist, architect, creative director, fashion designer, and philanthropist. 

It took place on December 1 and 2, 2021, with access on the first day offered exclusively to students from local design schools.

Mercedes-Benz AG expressed, “Mercedes-Benz is devastated to hear of the passing of Virgil Abloh. Our sincere thoughts are with Virgil’s family and teams. Now opening the world of our collaboration and Virgil’s unique vision to the public, we want to respectfully celebrate the work of a truly unique design talent, who created endless possibilities for collaboration through his unbridled imagination and inspired all that knew his work.” 

Project Maybach is a design unlike anything that has been developed by Mercedes-Benz, every element of it has been built from scratch.

Abloh, along with Gorden Wagener, has interpreted Mercedes-Maybach’s luxury identity with a new design language and pushed the boundaries of function, style, and collaborative creativity.  

Notably inspired by the great outdoors, it recontextualises a traditionally urban brand within a distinctly off-road environment. 

To paint a picture, the 2-seater, battery-electric off-road coupé combines huge Gran Turismo proportions, large off-road wheels and distinguishing attachments. 

Most importantly, key for both Abloh and Wagener was a responsible vision of future design and complete creative freedom.

Untethered by production requirements, it enabled the design teams to conceptualise what the future of electric travel could look like. 

Under the transparent surface of the show car’s hood for instance, are solar cells that increase the imagined range of the Project Maybach.

Plus, the X-Factor nature of this masterpiece results not only from its characteristics and breath-taking size, which is almost 6,000 mm long but above all, from its unique contrasts.

Especially through how naturally authentic Mercedes-Maybach design elements are harmoniously combined with a new outdoor adventure design motif.  

The power of Abloh’s work is not only from the product design, but also the exploratory conversations that his work ignited.

All in all, the Mercedes-Benz teams praise Virgil Abloh for the inspiration to explore every day the power of cross-industry dialogue to imagine a better, more inclusive future.