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(Mercedes redirects here. There is also a place in Texas by that name; see Mercedes, Texas.)
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A Mercedes-Benz S-Class (model year 2000 or later)
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Mercedes-Benz is a brand of automobiles and trucks from the DaimlerChrysler company (formerly known as Daimler-Benz), commonly known as Mercedes.
The origin of the company dates back to the 1880s, when Gottlieb Daimler and Carl Benz invented the automobile independently, rather close to each other in South Western Germany, Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach in Bad Cannstatt near Stuttgart, Benz in Mannheim near Heidelberg.
In the early 1900s, the Daimler cars were raced successfully by an Austrian dealer named Emil Jellinek, who entered the cars under the name of his daughter, Mercédès. After suggesting some design modifications, he promised the company a large order on condition that he was granted the exclusive Daimler concession for Austria-Hungary, France, Belgium and USA, and that he would sell the cars as Mercedes, the name of his daughter. The name change was also helpful to prevent legal troubles, as Daimler had sold exclusive rights to the name and technical concepts to companies abroad. As a result of that, luxury Cars known as Daimler were and are built in England.
The rival companies of Daimler Motorengesellschaft and Benz & Cie. started to cooperate in the 1920s to overcome the economic crisis of that time, and finally merged in 1926 to become the Daimler-Benz AG, which produced Mercedes-Benz cars and trucks. The brand's logo is the three-pointed silver star enclosed in a circle, which symbolizes Daimler's original quest to provide small powerful engines to travel on land, sea and air. While focusing on land vehicles, Mercedes-Benz also built engines to power boats and airplanes (war and civil), and even Zeppelin.
Mercedes-Benz vehicles have been mainly been upper class, high quality, state of the art, expensive, some very expensive and rare, justifying their cost with an image (mostly justified) of superior engineering, quality, and service. They have often been the vehicles of choice of the rich and famous - the Grosser limousine of the 1930s is now indelibly associated with the Nazi government of the time. Though mainly known for their luxury limousines, they have also produced some notable sports cars, including the early supercharged SSK developed by Porsche, and the Gullwing 300SL in 1954. Yet, the prototypes of the Volkswagen were built and tested in Stuttgart, in an cooperation with Porsche. Before that, Mercedes-Benz also had a similar rear-engined, yet rather unsuccessful small car, the 130 H.
Their products have been known for the introduction of advanced technologies to cars—notably fuel injection and anti-lock braking systems, amongst many others.
Mercedes-Benz has been very successful in motor racing, building a legend of invincibility over decades. The Mercedes Simplex of the early 1900s was the first purpose built race car, much lower than the usual designs that were similar to horse carriages. It dominated racing for years.
In 1914, just before the beginning of the war, Mercedes won the French Grand Prix, which was quite a blow to the French at that time. Benz raced an aerodynamically shaped Tropfenwagen in the 1920s. In the 1930s, with their mighty Silver Arrows, they dominated Grand Prix racing in Europe, together with rivals of Auto Union, while setting speed records up to 435 km/h (270 mph). The team was guided by the big Rennleiter Alfred Neubauer. In 1952, Mercedes-Benz returned to racing with their small and underpowered gullwinged 300 SL, which won the 24h of Le Mans, the Carrera Panamericana an other important races of that time. On July 4 1954, Mercedes-Benz returned to Grand Prix racing with a shocking 1-2 win at the French Grand Prix. A very symbolic and important victory, especially as later that day, the German Football team won the Soccer world championship, too. Till the end of the 1955 season, Mercedes dominated Grand Prix and sports car racing before retiring its teams mainly because there was nothing left to prove. The horrible crash at Le Mans 1955, were a Mercedes 300 SLR collided with another cars and killed over 80 spectators, had given racing a bad name, too.
Mercedes entered some big limousines in Rallying in the 1960s and late 1980s. They returned to sportscar and touringcar racing in the late 1980s, and even Grand Prix in the 1990s, winning several championships, includinge the Indy 500.
Mercedes-Benz claims all of the wood used in its modern automobiles is farm-raised. This claim has not been confirmed at this time.
Michael McClure's song "Mercedes-Benz", famously sung a capella by Janis Joplin, was intended as a gentle satire on materialism, but has actually been used in the company's advertising.
There was a BMW advertisement on German TV where the driver of a BMW Z3 convertible raised his eyebrows after the first "buy me a Mercedes-Benz", and threw out the tape after "my friends all drive Porsches".
Mercedes-Benz was the most popular brand name mentioned in Billboard Top 20 songs in 2003.
Since 1948, Mercedes-Benz builds the Unimog, or "Universal Motor Gerät", a 4WD truck which is the equivalent of a swiss army knife. It features extreme offroad capability (due to offset axles and elastic frame), drive shafts for numerous additional machines, hydraulic and pneumatic connections etc.
Despite its high price, the Unimog is popular as allround work horse, as snow plow, expedition vehicle in desert, jungle and mountains, and it even won the truck class at high speed desert races like Paris-Dakar.
The following is a list of automobiles offered (or soon to be offered) by Mercedes-Benz in the USA as of 2003.
Trivia
Automobiles offered in the USA
References
External links
