Mercedes-Benz History

Send This Page To A Friend
Fade To White
Mercedes-Benz History


 

Mercedes-Benz

 1926 - Present
Country:
Germany
We all know that Mercedes-Benz is one of the oldest marques in the world. Many also know how the double-barrelled name came into being. For all practical purposes the first two men who built and managed to sell motor cars were Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler, who, strange to relate, worked independently and never even met each other, although both were Germans, both were building horseless carriages at the same time, and obviously each must have been fully aware of the achievements of the other.

Around 1900, Daimler's concern was in some financial difficulties and furthermore Herr Daimler was in very poor health. Under these circumstances the firm was approached by Emil Jellinek, a wealthy Austrian, who offered to purchase a large number of cars, subject not only to certain technical conditions but also to the trademark "Daimler" being changed to "Mercedes". Jellinek wanted to sell the cars in France, and he knew that anything German-sounding was anathema to Frenchmen, so one of the first stipulations he made was that Daimler be wiped off; the Mercedes came from the Christian name of one of his daughters.

Anyway, Daimler A.G., headed by Daimler's life-long friend Walter Maybach, agreed to the change, and thus the Mercedes marque was born. Meanwhile the Benz concern started out very strongly, but then for some time they were in financial difficulties, mainly due to old man Benz' reluctance to modify his cars to keep up with technical advances of the day. They managed to carry on, however, until 1926, when it was decided that the Benz firm should amalgamate with Daimler A.G., producers of the Mercedes cars. Out of this amalgamation was born the present Daimler-Benz A.G. and the Mercedes-Benz marque.

The Karl Benz Tricycle



Around the time of this business merger it was decided to set up a museum which would perpetuate the technical achievements of the firm and thus, in a way, give the visitor of future years a very good idea of the progress of the automobile since its birth. Still on show there is the world's first practical, or at any rate saleable motor car. This was not a four-wheeler but a tricycle, the patent of which was taken out by Karl Benz in 1886, although the first example had been built one year earlier. It had a single horizontal cylinder with the big-end exposed (i.e., no sump) with a geared horizontal flywheel, plainly visible. Transmission was by an arrangement of pulleys. The cylinder was cooled by an ingenious thermo-syphon arrangement and the carburettor was of the surface type with exhaust-heated light oil to assist vaporisation. The transmission gave two speeds, one for starting and hillclimbing, and one for mainroad cruising. Benz had to persevere for months to get this strange vehicle to function properly, and time after time he set out from his workshop in Mannheim only to have to push back. A couple of years later he was busy producing these cars for sale.

Early Daimler Motorized Boat
Early Daimler Motorized Boat.

Early Daimler Motorized Boat
After boats came the 1894 Daimler 35hp Twin-Cylinder.

Early Daimler-Benz Racers
Early Daimler-Benz Racers.

The Daimler Side



Unlike Benz, who built his own car 100 per cent, Daimler had been building statonary engines for some time before he decided to make a car which, however, did not go into production. A year or so previously he had built a crude motorcycle with a vertical single-cylinder engine and a ring-gear final drive to the rear wheel, with belt primary drive. This motorcycle was not intended for production but to try out the internal combustion engine as a prime mover for a passenger-carrying vehicle. The car, built a year later, was a converted horse-carriage with the engine located between the two seats. It was a 1.5 h.p. air-cooled unit which drove the rear wheels through gears and had a crude differential with leather discs which slipped when one wheel tried to rotate faster than the other.

Daimler did not at first seem to be very interested in the commercial possibilities of the motor car and, instead, turned his attention to power-driven boats. In spite of the inevitable opposition, Daimler eventually managed to produce his internal-combustion-engined boats on a commercial scale. Some time afterwards, Daimler started producing cars and also engines for separate sale, and in fact the early Peugeots and Panhards, which between them won all the motor-races of the time, were fitted with Daimler vee-twin engines. In 1894 a typical Daimler product was a little surrey-with-the-fringe-on-top, using the twin cylinder 3.5 h.p. engine.

Things started to change for Daimler in 1900, when Jellinek pumped a large quantity of money into the concern. The first Mercedes car is considered the forerunner of the modern automobile. It incorporated a number of modern features, of which none were actually indigenous to this vehicle, but all had never before been grouped into one motor car. Some were a wheel for steering, a foot accelerator, beehive radiator, with water pump and fan, and a four-cylinder engine with mechanically operated inlet and exhaust valves (most engines of the time had automatically operated, or suction operated, inlet valves which were very inefficient and unreliable).

The 1908 French Grand Prix



In 1908 Mercedes won the most important race of the year, the French Grand Prix, with the huge 13-litre monster seen in the immediate foreground. Then they retired from big-time racing and in 1914 came back to win again with the 4.5-litre car of which there are two surviving examples (one of them marked No. 28). Mercedes made some incursions into sports car racing (see The History of the Mercedes SL), but it was in 1934 that they came back again and this time they stayed in front until 1939, when the war started. In the same picture two of the 1934 model, 750-kilo racing cars can be seen. These 3.3-litre cars developed 334 b.h.p. at 5,800 r.p.m.

Subsequent Mercedes models were enlarged to 5.6-litres and 646 b.h.p. at 5,800 rpm. Other Mercedes-Benz milesones included a streamlined racer which lapped the Avus track at 174 m.p.h. in 1937. A later stage in Mercedes Benz history is represented by two versions, racing and sports, of the basically similar 196 project of 1954 - 1955. In 1954 the racing car appeared, with streamlined bodywork, and won the French Grand Prix with great ease, although subsequently the streamlined bodywork was scrapped in favour of the open-sided type. This car bristled with technical innovations like fuel injection, des-modromically operated valves, drum brakes, flap brakes, and what-have-you.

During their racing life both were unquestionably the fastest vehicles in their respective categories. Project T.80 was another a very interesting aero-engined car built to try and wrest the Land Speed Record from the British in 1938, but which failed to run due to War intervening. It had a 44-litre "inverted-V" aircraft engine which developed nearly 3,000 b.h.p. There is plenty of Mercedes-Benz history on the Unique Cars and Parts site, and particularly our sister site, Unique Cars and Parts USA - so this brief article acts as a simple introduction to a vastly interesting topic.

Also see: Mercedes History | Mercedes SL's By Model | The Daimler-Benz Story - Built To A Standard Few Could Hope To Achieve (USA Site)
Benz Tricycle
Benz Tricycle
Latest Classic Car Classifieds


Sell Your Car or Parts Browse the Classifieds It's Absolutely Free! - Find Out More