Mercedes-Benz doesn’t just make cars for fancy people. If you could credit one company with the invention of the automobile, it would have to be Mercedes, who’s origins reach all the way back to the 1880s.
Here are 15 things you didn’t know about this German luxury brand.
15. KARL BENZ CREATED THE FIRST AUTOMOBILE
Way back in 1886, Karl Benz created what is widely regarded to be the first of the ground-based, internal combustion powered vehicles we enjoy today known as cars.
The Patent Motorwagen (so called because it was the first car to awarded a patent) was a three-wheeled vehicle that consisted of a steel tube frame, wooden panels and small gasoline-powered engine. With just 2/3 horsepower, it was less powerful than an actual horse, which was really the only other option at the time.
14. HIS WIFE, BERTHA BENZ, TOOK THE WORLD’S FIRST ROAD TRIP
Karl Benz didn’t create the Patent Motorwagen on his own. His wife, Bertha Benz, played a huge role by financing the project, and putting herself in charge of marketing. In fact, had women been allowed to hold patents at the time, she would probably be co-credited with the invention of the automobile.
To prove the viability of the Patent Motorwagen, She and her two sons, Eugen and Richard, set out on the world’s first road trip from Mannheim to Pforzheim. The round trip covered about 120 miles. There was no such thing as gas stations at the time, so Bertha stopped at a pharmacy to pick up some ligroin petroleum ether to use as fuel. Presumably, she also picked up a Slim Jim and a can of Red Bull.
Pictured above are she and Carl in the 1984 Benz Victoria Model, a follow up to the Patent Wagon.
13. THE “MERCEDES” NAME CAME FROM A RACING DRIVER’S DAUGHTER
We’ve talked about Benz, but who was Mercedes? Emil Jellinek was a loyal customer of Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft, the company that would eventually merge with Benz & Co.Rheinische Gasmotoren-Fabrik to form Daimler-Benz and eventually Mercedes-Benz. He was a successful businessman in the late 1800s who was also very serious about his hobby as a racecar driver and team manager.
He entered several Daimler-built racer cars under the pseudonym “Mercedes,” which also happened to be his daughter’s name (shown in the corresponding images). Jellinek’s success meant the Mercedes name also earned a good reputation. Daimler registered the name as a trademark in 1902, and started using Mercedes as a product designation for all of its vehicles.
12. THE MERCEDES-BENZ LOGO WAS ALMOST A FOUR-POINTED STAR
Mercedes’ famous three-pointed star logo was nearly a four-pointed star. Each point represented “mobility on land, on water, and in the air,” but there was nearly a fourth to represent space. Mercedes has dabbled in non-land-based forms of transportation, but, in hindsight, it was probably a good idea to leave out the space part.
The three-pointed star started appearing on the front on Daimlers from 1910 onward. The circle surrounding the star was added later in 1916.
11. MERCEDES MADE BICYCLES
By the 1920s, Daimler-Benz, as it was called at the time, found it wasn’t the only car company around anymore. Henry Ford’s Model T was making inroads into the German market, and that, combined with a slow economy following World War I, meant difficult times for the German car industry.
To stay afloat, Daimler experimented a bit od product diversification. A bicycle was sold under the Mercedes name in 1923. A typewriter was considered too, but never made it to production.
10. MERCEDES RACE CARS DIDN’T HAVE PAINT FOR A GOOD REASON
Similar to how Italian racecars were mandated to be red before the 1960s, German cars were supposed to be white. When Mercedes showed up to the Nürburgring in 1934 with its new W25 racecar, the engineers found that it was 1 kg over what regulations required. The solution was to scrape off the white paint, which ended up working out pretty well. The W25 won its first race and set a new track record.
From then on, Mercedes’ racecars, and soon after, other German racecars, became known as The Silver Arrows because of their silver bare aluminum bodywork. Mercedes’ F1 cars are made from carbon fiber now, but they’re still painted metallic silver.
9. ADOLPH HITLER WAS A BIG FAN OF MERCEDES-BENZ
One more thing about those W25 racecars. Turns out, newly appointed German Chancellor Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party funded the entire program. One of his first acts was to fund both Mercedes and Auto Union (the company that would become Audi) as a display of German technological prowess.
The Furor was also fond of Mercedes road cars. His official transport was a Mercedes-Benz 770 with a bulletproof windshield. It was sort of the start of Mercedes being the unofficial car company of despots, dictators and royalty.
Note to car companies: Lebron James and Mathew Mcconaughey are much better celebrity endorsements than Adolph Hitler.
8. MERCEDES BUILT THE WORLD’S FIRST SELF-DRIVING CAR… IN THE ’80S!
Autonomous cars have been a big topic lately, but Mercedes-Benz started experimenting with them over 25-years-ago.
Thanks to some funding from the European Union, to the tune of €800 million, and a few years of development, Mercedes engineered an autonomous S-Class that drove itself from Munich, Germany to Copenhagen, Denmark and back in 1995. Along the way it hit speeds of up to 109 mph.
7. MERCEDES TEAMED UP WITH THE SWATCH WATCH COMPANY TO BUILD A CAR
Remember those Swatch watches that everyone had in the 1980s? Mercedes actually teamed up with that same company to build a car, and it’s probably one you’ve heard of; the Smart Car.
Swatch CEO Nicholas Hayek had the idea to build a car, and apply the funky styling and personalization features as Swatch watches. After approaching several other car companies, he entered into a deal with Mercedes in 1994. Now, Smart is wholly owned subsidiary of Mercedes.
6. LOCALS REFER TO STUTTGART AS “BENZTOWN”
If Mesopotamia was the cradle of human civilization, then Stuttgart, Germany can be considered the cradle of the world’s car industry. Thanks its oldest and biggest company, Stuttgart has earned the nickname “Benztown.” A giant three-pointed star atop the Mercedes headquarters now looks over the city.
It’s where Karl Benz invented the Patent Wagon and Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach started Daimler. Porsche, as well as car parts suppliers Bosch and Mahle, were also founded in Stuttgart, and still call it home.
5. MERCEDES-BENZ BUILT A SPACESHIP
Remember how the fourth point on the Mercedes logo was going to represent space? In a way, it almost worked out.
Princess Vespa, along with her robotic handmaiden Dot Matrix (voiced by Joan Rivers), used her Mercedes-Benz 2001 SEL Limited Edition spaceship to escape planet Drudia, and an arranged marriage to Prince Vallium in the 1987 sci-fi epic, Spaceballs.
4. AMG WAS ONCE AN INDEPENDENT COMPANY IN A BASEMENT
AMG is the high-performance tuning arm best known for turning stately Mercedes cars into snarling, tire-shredding, V8-powered beasts. It’s a fully owned Mercedes subsidiary now, but this wasn’t always the case.
Former Mercedes engineers Hans Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher founded AMG in 1967 in Großaspach, Germany as a race engine company in Aufrecht’s basement, and went to work making Mercedes as fast as the BMWs and Porsches of the time. AMG was eventually acquired by Mercedes in 1999, and is now responsible for building engines for the company’s Formula 1 cars.
The famous AMG tuned Mercedes-Benz 300SEL 6.3, nicknamed “The Red Pig” (pictured above), was AMGs first big success, and is easily one of the most badass racecars ever to take to the track.
3. THE MERCEDES-BENZ SLS AMG SUPERCAR HAS EXPLODING DOOR HINGES
Like the 300SL “Gullwing” that inspired it, the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG supercar has doors that hinge on the roof and swing up when they’re opened. As cool as it looks, it presents a safety issue. If the car flips over and comes to a rest on its roof, then the doors can’t be opened.
To solve this problem, the hinges are fitted with exploding bolts wired to go off milliseconds after a rollover is detected. The small explosion separates the door from the frame, allowing for an easy exit.
2. MERCEDES NOW HAS A TRUCK THAT CAN DRIVE ITSELF
Note the guy in the picture above playing candy crush on his iPad. He’s not being unsafe. He’s behind the wheel of the Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025 — an autonomous tractor-trailer that’s probably smarter than many truckers out there.
Using lessons that started with the autonomous car from 1995, Mercedes has now brought the same technology to trucking. The Future Truck is smart enough to detect when a police vehicle is approaching from the rear and will move to the side to make way. The road is hard for truckers, but soon it will be a lot easier.
1. MERCEDES-BENZ IS WALKING AWAY WITH THE 2014 FORMULA 1 SEASON BECAUSE OF THIS ONE TRICK
Formula 1 engineers get paid loads of money to be very, very clever. Every year there seems to be one team that figures out competitive edge while staying within the rules, and this year, that team is Mercedes.
By splitting the two elements of the turbocharger — putting one in front of the engine and the other behind — the Mercedes-AMG F1 engineers have unlocked a huge amount of potential. Mercedes F1 drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg have won 14 of the 17 races run thus far, and the team has already clinched the manufacturers championship.
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