The history of Mercedes-Benz or Mercedes for short (and sometimes even “Benz” or “Merc”) is quite an interesting one. Mercedes is a German company founded in 1871. In the beginning there were three people: Gottlieb Daimler together with Wilhelm Maybach and Karl Benz. Karl Benz and the other two were able to invent the internal combustion car independently of each other. However, it is very interesting that at that time they were only sixty miles apart.
Karl Benz was working in Mannheim. There he had a workshop that was the place where he invented the first real car powered by internal combustion. The year was 1885 and the following year Karl Benz obtained a patent for his new creation.
The car was called “Benz Patent Motorwagen” and it had three wheels and the design is reminiscent of a horse-drawn carriage perhaps because the main design model was taken from a carriage. The first engine was patented by Karl Benz in 1879 and was designed by him.
Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach obtained a patent a year before Karl Benz’s internal combustion model car. The year was 1885 and the exact date: August 29. The engine they made is believed to be the first prototype of today’s gasoline engine and they called it a “grandfather’s clock engine”.
The following year Gottlieb Daimler bought a stagecoach in which he planned to put the internal combustion engine. Many people made these purchases at the time, but Gottlieb Daimler is perhaps the first to have the idea of the engine in mind. Daimler and Maybach worked together to adopt this diligence to meet the needs of the engine. The official words used by Mercedes for this model is “a carriage without horses”. It is horseless but with conventional drawbar steering and internal combustion engine.
Shortly after, in 1889, they built a complete model from scratch, which was the first car powered by a four-stroke engine. It was four-wheeled again and after the foundation of DMG in 1890 they were able to sell the first model of their car two years later, in 1892.
On the other hand, Karl Benz was able to sell his first model in 1888, a year before Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach were able to build their model. Karl Benz did that after refining his Motorwagen model a bit and maybe this gave him this advantage over the years because he didn’t start from scratch like Daimler and Maybach did.
In 1899, Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft cars made in a city near Stuttgart took part in a race led by Emil Jellinek. Jellinek was a diplomat and businessman and was very enthusiastic about the idea of automobiles. In 1896 he went to see the designers Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach and soon after bought his first car from them: the Phoenix. An interesting story about that car is that Emil Jellinek painted the name of his daughter Mercedes Adriana Manuela Ramona Jellinek on the car for good luck. Years later, a whole series of cars received that name.
Jellinek wanted faster cars and for the 1900 DMG to be the first to bear his daughter’s name. It seems that Jellinek was obsessed with the idea of his daughter’s name because he offered and made a contract for 550,000 marks for the purchase of 36 models of the new car with a 35 hp engine just to see his daughter’s name on this car. The new engine was called the Daimler-Mercedes engine thus containing only the name of the developer and Mercedes.
Very shortly after, he made a deal for another 36 models but from another series, with 8 hp engines. After that, at a higher price, he was able to sell these models in the US, Belgium, France and Austria-Hungary markets and that quickly made him one of the biggest car sellers at the time.
Of course, his daughter’s name Mercedes continued to appear on new car models as “Mercedes 35 hp”. Jellinek’s obsession with the name Mercedes grows and she even changes her own name to Jellinek-Mercedes. For eight years Jellinek participated in the meetings of the Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft board of directors from 1901 to 1909 but withdrew from all activities related to the automobile due to his diplomatic charges.
In 1924 the two great companies DMG and Benz & Cie. it eventually started to cooperate, but due to World War I and problems with the German economy at the time, they were able to merge two years later in 1926 and used the name Daimler-Benz AG. Of course, the Mercedes name was not lost. They started the production of tracks and cars and used the Mercedes-Benz name for them. From Daimler they got the name Mercedes and Benz was from the former company Benz & Cie. A clause in the merger agreement required the two companies to remain together until the year 2000.
They focused on creating land-based models of vehicles, but also made ship and aircraft engines for civil and military organizations. They were even able to make zeppelins powered by their engines and soon after, in 1929, Karl Benz died.
Most of the company’s efforts were focused on creating limousine models and its glory is known today for that. Still, they made some sporty models like the first SSK model designed by Ferdinand Porsche. Another product is the amazing Mercedes-Benz 300SL. With its gull-wing doors it was an interesting sight.
Of course, Mercedes-Benz also made less expensive cars for the general public. In Stuttgart they were able to create and test Volkswagen models in cooperation with Porsche. Before that car a model called A-Class went into production. It is a small family car and maybe that is why the popular name of that car is Baby Benz. The first generation of Baby Benz was created in 1997 and years later, after a restyling, it appeared again in 2004.