When Mercedes-Benz announced they would bring together their SL sports car line with their high-end luxury brand Maybach, it should have been an exciting moment — if you could ignore how they’ve handled both brands over the past 20 years.

For the unfamiliar, either badge once meant that the car was instantly desirable and a future classic. The SL Roadster line started with the gullwing-doored 1950s Sport-Leicht coupe — now one of the most valuable classic cars on the market — whose roof was chopped off and engine tempered to make a beautiful, relaxing sports car. The second-generation 230 SL had no race version, but it was an elegant 1960s roadster that turns heads to this day, as does the R107 generation of the 1970s and 1980s, which added a chunkier, muscle-car feel. The fourth- and fifth-generation cars leaned into the grand tourer mentality but were still fast, chic, modern roadsters. With the fifth generation, Mercedes proved the SL could be a truly compelling supercar again. The SL63 AMG was absolutely lethal, the Black Series variant was positively manic, and the SLR spinoff remains one of the most underrated supercars of the modern generation. But ever since, the SL has been abandoned by Mercedes, with each generation becoming softer, comfier, heavier, and uglier. The new R232 generation is a minor improvement in style, looking more like a classic sports car, and is only produced as an AMG model, but it will still age poorly, and nobody is excited about it. The SL remains the car for older men who never got over their midlife crisis.

The Maybach line has been handled even worse. Originally a completely separate company from Daimler, the pre-war Maybachs were grand, stylish, powerful limousines for the elite of German society. Maybach never quite recovered after the war — due to both Germany’s crumbled economy and their wartime efforts building engines for Nazi tanks — and were eventually acquired by Daimler, who only used the name for a few special editions. By the 1990s, Mercedes changed its mind and brought back the name as a true Rolls-Royce competitor with the enormous 62 and 57 limousines. They competed with the best of British luxury but had the highest-end German tech. Although they didn’t sell well when production began in the early 2000s, they were at least ambitious. Along with the standard versions, they produced a convertible Landaulet version and the incredibly aerodynamic, one-off Exelero, long rumored to be owned by Jay-Z. The brand was killed in 2011, but when the Maybach name was brought back in 2014, it was merely a trim tier for high-end Mercedes. The Maybach name no longer means luxury; it means oversized wheels, excessive chrome grilles, and bouncing suspension.

Returning to the new Maybach take on the SL: if this had been announced in the 1990s, it would have been an effortlessly stylish, advanced, luxurious roadster for the elegantly affluent. The car unveiled at the recent Monterey Car Week, the Mercedes Maybach SL680 Monogram, shows just how far it has fallen — an overly heavy, slouchy, ugly roadster, set on huge wheels and fitted with a conflicting chrome waterfall grille. Presumably, the designers thought this was too tasteful, so they painted the bonnet black and plastered it with Maybach crests, as they did to the black soft-top roof.

Mercedes hasn’t announced the pricing yet, but expect it to exceed $250,000 before options. To be clear, excluding the heinous bodywork, this is not just mechanically identical to the standard SL, but worse. Notably, it doesn’t have a V12, retaining the same engine and output as the $187,000 SL63. However, because it weighs so much more than that already overburdened coupe, it is slower to 60 miles per hour than any other SL and is limited to a lower top speed.