Gottlieb Daimler & Karl Benz set up Mercedes Benz in the 1880s. It is said that the two men never in fact met each other! They worked independently of each other and Daimler looked after the racing cars. A dealer from Austria called Emil Jellinek got the cars into races and was very successful. He named the cars Mercedes after his daughter.

Eventually Jellinek placed a big order from Daimler and his friend Wilhelm Maybach. They were in agreement that Jellnek could change some of the designs.

1886 Benz built his first motorized tricycle. The first production car was the Benz Velo in 1894 which competed in the first ever recorded car race, Rouen to Paris. It was in 1895 that Benz first built his truck.

It is said that Daimler did not enjoy driving! In March 1990 he passed away leaving overall control of the company to Wilhelm Mayback. By November of that year they had produced a special car, the Mercedes which was lighter & smaller than the average car of the day and was able to reach top speeds off 55mph.

At the start of the 1st World War both factories had to turn their hand to the production of war materials, although both of them reverted back to the production of cars after the war. With fuel being scarce plus a 15% luxury tax car production was affected badly.

The economy in Germany grew more desperate and a new Mercedes Benz would cost as much as 25 million marks. It is interesting to note that 15 million cars were registered in the world in 1923 and over 80% of these were from the UK and over half were in fact Fords. The Mercedes was considered to be too costly.

In 1926 a new insignia was designed in the shape of a 3 pointed star wreathed with laurel to signify the merger of Benz and DMG.

In the 1930s their largest and most prestigious car was introduced, it was called the 770 Grosser and was powered by an 8 cylinder, 7.6 ltr engine. The cars in this era produced a lot of success on the racing circuits.

In 1945 after the war, the plant at Unterturkheim which had been bombed out had to stop their car production and instead produced trailers for bicycles.

However in 1946 the production of cars was started again and by 1949 a diesel version of the 170 was being made which became a best seller.

Alongside all of these elegant car models a number of vans have been produced which are used a great deal for Mercedes van leasing. One such van is the Mercedes Sprinter which has the reputation for being highly reliable and fairly economical.

By the 1990s Mercedes became the first manufacturer in the world to fit a 4 valve diesel engine into a car. This new engine offers enhanced performance & smoothness which is all that the Mercedes name stands for.

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