. . .all you need to know about Mercedes-Benz
Born: 1924
Nationality: German
The two different companies that bred the nameplate Mercdes-Benz both began their automotive businesses in 1886, when Carl Benz built a motorised tricycle and Gottleib Daimler built a horseless carriage, which is credited as the first four-wheel petrol-powered car.
The name Mercedes came in 1901 when the Daimler motor company built a special car for a customer, Emil Jellinek - it was named after his 10-year-old daughter, Mercedes (below), whose name meant "grace" in Spanish. Daimler himself had died by then, leaving his company to his chief engineer, Wilhelm Maybach.
The first Benz four-wheel car, the Victoria, was rolled out in 1893, and a year later his first actual production car, the Velo, took part in the first recorded car race, from Paris to Rouen.
There was already a rivalry between the two companies, and to meet the challenge of the Mercedes, Benz produced a two-cylinder car in 1903, called the Parsifil.
In the tough times after the first World War, the Benz company approached Daimler with a view to merging, which didn't succeed that year, but economic necessity forced them to eventually sign an 'agreement of mutual interest' in 1926. This was represented by the arrival of the three-pointed star with Mercedes at the top and Benz at the bottom, the whole encircled in a laurel.
In 1928, M-B produced the first of the cars that would reflect the luxury ethos that was to be its hallmark, the SS, and two years later the first 770 Grosser, 210 inches long and powered by a 7.6-litre engine.
After the second World War, the company rebuilt itself, mainly with the 170V. Through the 1950s, the company began again to become a luxury icon. At the same time, a "small" M-B, the 190, gave it a foothold into the executive market, from which it has become one of the two most desired brands in the business.
The coupé/cabriolets built in the 1960s attracted the new rich coming out of the swinging times, while the Model 600 that first appeared in 1963 harked back to the Grosser in many ways. It gave way to the S-Class, and new nomenclature for the models developed in the 1980s and 1990s invented their own individual motoring iconography, with the E-Class middle model luxury saloon eventually reaching the status of the best-selling luxury car in the world (paradoxically also becoming one of the most common taxi models in Europe). What has now become the C-Class brought back a degree of the accessibility of the original 190 to aspiring M-B owners who were still some way from the top of the executive ladder. The A-Class "small car" which presaged the commoner car MPV-style had an inauspicious beginning when the notorious "Elk Test" forced an expensive rejigging of the suspension.
In 1998, the company merged with Chrysler to form DaimlerChrysler, a union which has had its own difficulties for the overall group and which is still arguably, in automotive parlance, in "pre-production" stage.
Best Car: Probably the E-Class, but for this writer the 190 of the early 1960s.
Worst Car: A-Class
Weirdest Car: "We do not understand the concept . . ."
- Brian Byrne