Got a spare $358,000?

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Wheels for those rollin' in the dough As the rich get richer, the market booms for truly exclusive cars Michael Taylor, Chronicle Staff WriterFriday, February 6, 2004 If you have to ask how much these cars cost, well, stick with that Honda you just paid off. It will cost you $358,000 to get behind the wheel of the 2004 Maybach 62. That's the stretch version, the one in which you should be driven rather than drive yourself. You'll need about $150,000 in spare change to buy the latest, greatest Bentley. Top-shelf Rolls? Fork over $320,000. These and other high-end cars -- costing up to $1 million -- are made slowly, carefully and expensively. They are being snapped up as quickly as the factories can churn them out, largely because the rich are getting a lot richer and they'll pay just about anything for a set of wheels that guarantees them a measure of exclusivity in a world gone bland. Maybach dealers say they've already sold nearly a dozen of the cars in and around the Bay Area, while Bentley San Francisco boasts a three-year waiting list of 100 buyers for its much-anticipated Bentley Continental GT. "California, in general, is going to be the No. 1 Maybach market in the U. S., and even though everyone associates that with Hollywood, we definitely see Northern California as contributing to the car's overall success," said Mercedes spokesman Geno Effler, whose firm produces and markets the Maybach. "Northern California is awash with car enthusiasts." Auto analysts say it's the perfect time to bring out cars like this. "There are more rich people every day, and the spread between the people who have money and those who don't is getting greater," says Aaron Robinson, technical editor of "Car and Driver" magazine. "So the prices, which seem ridiculous to 99 percent of the population, are not." What the manufacturers clearly understand is that the profit on a $358, 000 car will be greater than on, say, a $29,000 Mercedes-Benz C230 sedan. That disparity, of course, has an impact on production. Although Mercedes would not disclose what the difference in profit margin is, Effler said "a more affordable, high-volume vehicle will have a narrower profit margin than a low- volume, custom-made automobile." The average price of a new car these days is $26,371, according to the research and marketing firm J.D. Power and Associates. But those cars are made and sold by the hundreds of thousands -- Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, Nissan Altima, that kind of thing. The new luxury cars -- made, for the most part, in Europe -- are sold in the hundreds. Roughly half of them are sold in the United States, particularly in California, Florida and the New York area. This pantheon of the rare also includes the new Rolls-Royce Phantom ($320, 000), the Ferrari Enzo ($643,000, with some trading among collectors for up to $1 million), the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren ($430,000, or more), the Aston Martin Vanquish ($231,000), the incipient Bugatti Veyron ($750,000) and a few others. In an effort to learn why anyone would pay those prices, The Chronicle took a look at the new Maybach and the new Bentley Continental GT. Wheels for those rolling in dough