Mercedes-Benz History

Mercedes-Benz is one of the top three major luxury car producers in Germany, with the dance between their competition and themselves constantly consist of them edging and sometimes surpassing each other in the field of the highs and lows of a demanding market. Their parent company is Daimler AG, and Benz now specialize in a wide variety of products that have evolved and grown together with the company, for example trucks, engines, buses, and their flagship product of high performance luxury cars. Mercedes-Benz has a lot of history and a huge heritage to keep up in this technological advanced time, as they continue to strive to extreme excellence in all that they put their name on. Their current headquarters is located in Stuttgart, Germany.

Founded by the first forerunner of the bunch Karl Benz in 1871, but back then it was known as “Benz & Cie.”, and it was the biggest one out of his other companies, also putting Mercedes-Benz as the oldest of the top three at a staggering 137 years old. And because of its long historical ties back to the beginning of the first automobiles, Mercedes-Benz is the world’s oldest continuously producing car line. Benz’s unique patented motor wagon was very progressive and forward thinking at the time, because in 1886, Karl had already developed a four stroke engine, and is officially accredited with being the creator of the very first automobile, and had a chassis created from scratch. Whereas Daimler’s initial noted creation was constructed from a horse carriage, and had an engine placed within.

In 1890, both Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach founded Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG), but Daimler passed in 1900, then Maybach left the company seven years later. As the years as moved on Benz and DMG were strong rivals, but after World War I, 1924 to be exact, both parties indoctrinated into an “Agreement of Mutual Interest” due to tough times, necessity for both companies to survive, as the agreement would be valid until the year 2000. Under the agreement they both can produce and sell under their respective brand names, and after the official merger they became known as Daimler-Benz. But the name could not stick for license reasons, and it was later christened as Mercedes-Benz, from Maybach’s daughter. Later in 1998, Daimler-Benz and Chrysler agreed on another merger, and the newly formed body was designated DaimlerChrysler AG, but Chrysler LLC was brought out as a separate entity and was subsequently sold, but still having a 20% stakehold in the company.

Mercedes-Benz has made many innovations when it comes to the technology and safety features that have become standard in most vehicles today. The biggest safety feature to date is the “Safety Cage or Safety Cell” structure, with front and back crumple zones, which was first created back in 1951. ABS system, traction control, pre-tensioned seat belts, and even airbags were all Mercedes-Benz innovations released in 1978, 1986, 1981 and 1980 respectively. Stability control, brake assist were first applied and used into passenger cars by Mercedes-Benz. All immensely huge innovations in the increasing of total safety for the passengers, and car production and design would definitely not be the same without them. Mercedes-Benz also has more new innovation in safety with the “PRE-SAFE”, which uses radar to detect all the potential symptoms of a crash, and then takes all the possible measures to respond accordingly. Also they are in the process of designing a “fatigue-detecting system”, so as to warn the driver of the imminent dangers of falling asleep.

Mercedes-Benz has also created a number of other innovations on performance, including the “7G-TRONIC”, the world’s first seven speed transmission. Also the most potent naturally aspirated 8 cylinder engine in the entire world, the “Mercedes-AMG, 6208cc M156 V8 engine”, as the engine itself is the first to combine big displacement along with high-revving ideals. Thus, the engine produces approximately 20% more torque than normal naturally aspirated engines. Another great innovation in performance is the setting of three endurance records with E320 CDI (W211), which is turbocharged (VTG), 3.0 V6 common rail diesel engine, as the engine covered 100,000 miles in record time, with an astounding speed of 224.823km/h (140mph). They also have the fastest automatic road car in production, the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren at 334km/h (208mph).

The Mercedes-Benz has over an eighty-year legacy with motor racing, starting with their separate histories in the 1894 Paris to Rouen. But despite this long history Mercedes-Benz has stayed away from the entire motor sport arena because of the 1955 Le Mans disaster, where their car collided with another car and then kill over eighty spectators. Mercedes-Benz returned to racing back in the late 1980’s to the Le Mans race, the absence was out respect to all those involved, and because they strive to represent safety in all aspects. They were successful in the early 1990s for winning quite a number of titles, and races of all kind, from and even going back into GT racing as well with CLK GTR. Mercedes-Benz is currently participants in three kinds of motorsport, DTM, Formula One, and Formula Three.

Mercedes-Benz has also a lot of passenger cars with A, B, C, CL, CLK, CLS, E, G, GL, GLK, M, R, S, SL, and the SLK Class, with the SLR-McLauren. All high performance mixed in with luxury as a main factor. They also produce durable, strong buses with the factory located in Argentina, but also Mercedes-Benz produces vans, Vito, Sprinter, Sprinter 414416 CDI ambulance, Sprinter 316CDI light ambulance, and the Vario, with previous models including TN, and the T2. They are also the world’s largest producer of trucks in different sizes, Atego, Axor, Actros, Econic, Unimog, 1828L (F581) Mobile Casualty Treatment Centre, and the 1517L Mobile Casualty Treatment Centre. They also make bicycles as well.

Throughout their history they accumulated and produced quite a number of specialty, concept, and passenger cars. Most of the specialty, notable and concept cars are limited production, with more ideas cropping up everyday. The concept models range from the C111-III sportscar to the recent F700, which is one of their hybrid models in addition to the other have debuted six hybrid models at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 2007. They were also the first ever persons to create a robot car back in the 1980’s, but the project is growing thing and it is still in the development phase with random tests being taken at intervals.

Since its very beginnings, Mercedes-Benz had made themselves the safety provider, quality, and durability with a lot of innovation, and as records and markets show that they are growing, and moving upwards to the high end of the producers of merit-filled cars.