This year, Mercedes-Benz‘s uber-luxury brand Maybach will go extinct, as the German brand could not see the potential for making a profit in the ultra high-end luxury car segment.

However, that does not mean the brand will vanish off the face of the Earth, thanks to a coach-building company called Xenatec. They take a four-door Maybach 57S and get rid of two of its doors. Since they kept the wheelbase the same as the donor car, they gave it longer doors  and a sleek coupe body to fill in the gap.

Mechanically the car remains standard because Xenatec wanted the car to be servicable by any Maybach dealer around the world. So while you’ll have the standard cars 6.0-liter, twin-turbo, V12 engine that produces 621-hp, you’ll now also have a sportier looking body to travel around in.

And how much would it cost to have this conversion done? It’ll cost as much as the original donor car. A Xenatec 57S Coupe will cost you a cool $940,000. That’s very nearly Bugatti Veyron money.

Despite the stratospheric price tag, Xenatec has sold quite a few of these uber-coupes through their three main distributors; the factory itself in Germany, a dealer in Saudi Arabia and an armor car firm in Russia.

Finding one of these rare exotics would thus be hard, but we have. A Xenatec Coupe is looking for a new home. It is listed for sale at an exotic car dealership in Dubai, U.A.E. According to the advert, it has no mileage on it. While it is sitting at a used exotic car store, the car is still new.

So while you can still get in touch with Xenatec and pay them to build you a coupe out of your donor 57S, a fully finished example is awaiting you in a desert oasis.

Afterall, we at AutoGuide get a fuzzy good feeling by uniting the rich with expensive cars.

GALLERY: Xenatec Coupe

[Source: Alain Class]

If you’re a fan of car porn (and really, who isn’t), you have to feast your eyes on the new showcase video for the Nissan GT-R.

Brought to you by motor sports film company Clash Production, this flashy video will keep you mesmerized for 2:12… which turns out, is not nearly long enough. Shot against the backdrop of Dubai, we’re treated to the beauty and art that the Nissan GT-R can inspire.

Watch the video after the jump – it’s just over 2 minutes long. But be warned… this video is so cool you may feel the urge to light up a cigarette after it’s done.

[Source: Youtube Via Crank and Piston]

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Nissan Europe and JRM Racing will be campaigning this fantastic looking GT-R NISMO GT3 at the upcoming Dubai 24 Hours race. As an official entry for Nissan Europe, the GT-R will be driven by four of Nissan’s championship drivers in 2011.

Almost a dream team if you will, the four drivers campaigning this race car in Dubai are Michael Krumm from Germany, Alex Buncombe from UK, Tom Kimber-Smith from UK and Franck Mailleux from France. Krumm was the FIA GT1 World Champion driving a GT-R GT1 race car last year, while Buncombe was the Blancpain Endurace Series GT4 champion while running a Nissan 370Z. Kimber-Smith took victory at the Le Mans Series and is the LMP2 champion while Mailleux had success at the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup and is the LMP2 champion.

Over the last six months, JRM has been rigorously testing and developing the GT-R NISMO GT3 race car, which is powered by a 3.8L twin-turbo V6 with 500-hp and 479 lb-ft of torque. Transmission in the GT-R is a Hewland six-speed sequential. It’ll be racing on lightweight 18-inch Rays center-locked, aluminum forged wheels and sports a set of vicious Brembo brakes. The majority of the body components are constructed from carbon composite and plenty of aerodynamic tweaks were done.

Sometimes a negative can really be a positive. Take the Blackberry outage that had users scrambling for a way to communicate earlier this week. It turns out that traffic accidents and fatalities fell drastically during that time period.

The three-day Blackberry service interruption and its effect on driving were especially evident in the Middle East. The National, a local English-language newspaper, reported that in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, accidents fell by 20 to 40 per cent.

“The roads became much safer when Blackberry stopped working,” said Brig. Gen. Hussein Al Harethi, director of the Abu Dhabi police traffic department.

In Dubai and Abu Dhabi, police said they noticed a significant decline in traffic accidents. The drivers most likely to be involved in distracted driving accidents are young men, and traffic accidents fell 20 per cent in Dubai and 40 per cent in Abu Dhabi. Even better news – there were no traffic fatalities during this time. Both countries have recently launched crackdowns on cell phone usage while driving, so this unplanned experiment couldn’t have happened at a better time.

It may take a few weeks to find out what the service interruption’s impact was on driving habits and accidents in other countries around the world.

[Source: Toronto Star]

The Chevrolet TrailBlazer was killed off in 2009 to make way for GM’s new range of car-based crossovers, but evidently there’s still demand for a mid-size, truck based SUV, as Chevrolet has announced a new TrailBlazer based on the upcoming Colorado mid-size pickup.

Given that the Colorado was developed for world markets by GM’s Thailand division, expect the new TrailBlazer to differ from the outgoing vehicle, which could be had with a 6.0L small-block V8. The new TrailBlazer will be unveiled alongside the Colorado at the Dubai Motor Show in November. In the mean time, check out the press release below.

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Looking to find a Ferrari Enzo at a steal of a price? Preferably one without water damage? Then look no further than Dubai where this ultra-rare Ferrari supercar sits abandoned in the sun.

While there are folks in Dubai that can afford to simply toss away a million dollar Enzo, this car, found sitting in a police impound, appears to be one of a growing number of vehicles left behind by people fleeing the country’s strict bankruptcy laws.

With just 400 Enzos ever made (the 400th being a gift to the Pope), this 651-hp V12-powered exotic is destined to be one of the most valuable Ferraris ever.

GALLERY: Abandoned Ferrari Enzo

[Source: MotorAuthority]

The $1.6-million Aston Martin One-77 is the fastest and the most powerful production car ever made by the luxury sportscar brand. With just 77 units planned to be produced (hence the name, One-77), it is also quite rare.

So imagine our surprise when we stumbled upon the website for Alain Class Motors, an exotic car dealership in Dubai, U.A.E., who has not one, but two brand new examples of the One-77.

The ad is not a hoax either. This is not some dealer using file photos from the manufacturer to lure people and collect deposits for the possibility of ordering the car. No, this dealer has both of these cars (and plenty of other exotic machinery) sitting in the showroom.

Have your pick from either the white example with the red interior, or the more James Bond-esque gun metal grey with a white interior. Both examples have just delivery miles on them.

The One-77 uses a 7.3-liter, V12 motor that produces 750-hp. Power is sent to the rear-wheels via a six-speed sequential gearbox with paddle shifters. It can cover the sprint from 0-60 mph in just 3.5 seconds and will keep going all the way to 225 mph.

So if you haven’t been hurt by the world’s financial meltdown and you don’t want to order and wait for your car to get built, these two can be had right away. We surely would, if only we could.

[Source: Alain Class Motors]

You have so much money, you don’t know what to do with it. We’d like to offer a suggestion: send your car to the spa. The price tag: A mere £10,000 a week (roughly $16,000).

The “in” thing for car lovers to do seems to be to send their precious automobiles to the “Car Spa,” otherwise known as the Monza Ultimate Detailing and Protection Company in Dubai. To give your car the special treatment (and for that price, we hope it gets a “happy ending”), the service uses the latest in nano-technology to give expensive cars the luxe treatment. It takes a week to complete, and no bare human finger will ever touch the body of the car to ensure perfection.

For the detailing process, the spa uses special microscopic cleaners that remove dirt not visible to the eye. Upholstery is cleaned times before it gets a natural oil rub down, which promotes extra sheen and finishing. To ensure there are no holograms (patches left behind by regular car washes), the spa won’t lay a bare finger on the car during the exterior wash.

If you’ve got a Rolls Royce, Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini or Jaguar, feel free to bring it in for a week-long pampering session. Right now, most of the customers are British nationals who have shifted base to Dubai, but that doesn’t mean North Americans aren’t welcome. If you’ve got the cash to fly your luxury automobile over there, we’re pretty sure you won’t need to book an appointment to this spa.

[Source: Born Rich]

Modifying wagons isn’t very widely accepted, especially not in Dubai. And that’s a shame because nicely tuned wagons look killer. Needless to say, we were pretty excited as soon as we saw this Cadillac CTS-V Wagon Race Car. Then reality stepped when we realized it’s just a rendering.

The concept is the child of Lap 57′s Emirati race driver Omran Al Owais, and in his own words, “A typical Emirati thinks a wagon is as cool as a chauffeur driving an old smelly Camry Wagon with trunk full of fish baskets.”

Omran and his brother Mohammed both imported CTS-V Wagons from America in hopes to stir the pot a bit in Dubai. “We are hoping this fetish might catch on with other Emiratis and see them ditching their X6Ms and G55s, so that we start seeing serious girls on the road such as the RS6/E63 or the new exciting M5 Wagon. The streets of Jumeirah at night will never be the same.”

Currently the two brothers plan on taking their wagons from Dubai to the Nurburgring and then converting one of them into a true race car, ideally making this rendering a reality. They’re hopes are that these renderings get to the hands of famed Cadillac tuners such as D3 and Hennessey Performance here in America so that brothers can campaign a CTS-V wagon in the UAE GT Championship.

We’re thinking that if the guys want a CTS-V Wagon race car, they should call the team behind the Corvette race cars, Pratte & Miller.

GALLERY: Cadillac CTS-V Wagon Race Car

[Source: Jalopnik]

Apparently shiny gold wraps are already out of style, and in the land of bold and flashy cars, a matte gold Nissan GT-R has surfaced. And surprisingly, this GT-R in Dubai, UAE looks pretty darn good in its matte gold shade.

Your first assumption, probably much like ours, would be that any gold GT-R has no place on this planet. And while it still might be a little too bold for some, we’ll be happy to admit that the matte gold goes really well with the GT-R. Something about it gives the GT-R a little bit of class and luxury, despite it being a very powerful and sporty machine. We could just imagine how killer this car would look if it had some suspension mods to lower it on a set of 20-inch wheels sporting a gold face.

GALLERY: Matte Gold Nissan GT-R

[Source: Autogespot via GTSpirit]