Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes-Benz is a German brand of automobiles, buses, coaches and trucks from the DaimlerChrysler company (formerly known as Daimler-Benz), commonly known as Mercedes. Mercedes-Benz is the world's oldest automobile manufacturer. Mercedes' primary competition includes BMW, Cadillac, Jaguar, Audi, Lexus, Acura and arguably Infiniti. The famous three-pointed star was designed by Gottlieb Daimler to show the ability of his motors for land-, air- and sea-usage. The sign first appeared on a Daimler vehicle in 1909. The Benz laurel was added in 1926 to symbolize the union of the two firms. The plain ring seen today was first used in 1937.

History

The origin of the company dates back to the 1880s, when Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz invented the internal combustion engine-powered automobile independently, in southwestern Germany. Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach, who together invented the four-stroke engine, worked together in Cannstatt (a city district of Stuttgart); Benz had his shop in Mannheim near Heidelberg. There is no record of the two inventors ever having met.

In the early 1900s, the Daimler cars built at Untertürkheim (also a city district of Stuttgart) 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 the conditions that he was granted the exclusive Daimler concession for Austria-Hungary, France, Belgium and USA, and that he would sell the cars branded as "Mercedes." The name change was also helpful in preventing legal troubles, as Daimler had sold exclusive rights to the name and technical concepts to companies abroad. As a result, luxury cars known as Daimler were and are built in England. A fire that gutted the old Steinway piano factory in New York that had been converted to produce Mercedes cars cut short the dream of an American-built Mercedes.

The rival companies of Daimler Motorengesellschaft and Benz & Cie. started to cooperate in the 1920s to deal with the economic crisis of those years, 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 (military and civil), and even Zeppelins.

During the Second World War, Mercedes-Benz is known to have exploited more than 30 000 forced workers and POWs, some of whom would eventually strike and be sent to concentration camps. This working force soon became essential to the production capacity of the company since 1941, and was a key to the construction of the nazi Germany's Luftwaffe and war machine.

Mercedes-Benz vehicles have a focus on high quality and state of the art engineering. As a result they have often been expensive and are made in lower volumes compared to cheaper cars. The company has carefully cultivated an image of superior engineering, quality, and service. The cars are often the vehicle of choice for the rich and famous. Perhaps most famous for limousine models, a number of notable sports cars have also been produced. For example, the early supercharged SSK developed by Porsche, and the Gullwing 300SL in 1954. However, Mercedes-Benz has also produced higher volume, less expensive cars. Interestingly, 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. However, it does not always work: recently, an active brake system installed in over 600,000 cars has been recalled to fix potential problems. In addition, the brand's reputation of reliability has been called into question when it was recently ranked rather low in consumer surveys. To address the problem, the brand invested heavily in recent years to stem the problem.

Motorsport

Mercedes-Benz has been successful in motor racing throughout their history. 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 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 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 24 hours of Le Mans, the Carrera Panamericana, and other important races of that time. On July 4, 1954, Mercedes-Benz returned to Formula One racing with a one-two win at the French Grand Prix. This was a very important victory, especially as later that day, the German football team won the Soccer world championship. Until the end of the 1955 season, Mercedes dominated Grand Prix and sports car racing before retiring its teams after a terrible 1955 crash at Le Mans, where a Mercedes 300 SLR collided with another car and killed over 80 spectators.

Mercedes entered some big limousines in Rallying in the 1960s and late 1980s. They returned to sportscar and touring car racing in the late 1980s. On August 13 – 21, 1983 at the Nardo High Speed Track in southern Italy, the new compact-size W201 190 class, sporting a 16-valve engine built by Cosworth, broke three world records after running almost non-stop (with only a 20-sec pit stop every 2 1/2 hours) in a total of 201 hours, 39 minutes and 43 seconds, completing 50,000 km at maximum speed of 247 Km/h. It went on to become the 190E 2.3-16 touring model.

In 1994, a car won the Indianapolis 500 with an engine from Mercedes who, realizing that the loophole in the rules for production-based engines would include any pushrod engine, therefore built a very unusual purpose-built for the race pushrod engine with a significant power advantage, knowing that the loophole would be closed immediately after they took advantage of it and so the engine would in fact be usable for only the single race.

McLaren

In 1993 Mercedes made its return to Formula One as an engine supplier to the debut F1 team Sauber, with a V10 engine manufactured by Ilmor. In 1995, the normally aspirated Mercedes-Ilmor F1-V10 moved to Mclaren replacing Peugeot. Mercedes bought the Ilmor company in 1996 and they have continued to desgin and build engines for Mclaren. In the opening race of the 1997 Formula One season David Coulthard produced victory for Team McLaren Mercedes, and ushered in a new era of success. It was a landmark result in racing, McLaren’s first victory for three seasons and the first win for Mercedes-Benz since Juan Manuel Fangio’s success at the 1955 Italian Grand Prix. Mclaren and Mercedes went on by winning one constructors' championship in 1998 and two drivers' championships in 1998 and 1999. However, recent years have seen a significant decline in Mercedes' F1 success, as they have won just four races over the last three years, while suffering numerous engine failures and retirements. Season 2006 though, seems to indicate a return to the F1 front for the English-German outfit and their "Silberpfeilen".

2005 season

McLaren Mercedes hoped to improve on a poor 2004 season, which saw McLaren-Mercedes finish a distant fifth in the championship, a staggering 193 points behind world champion Ferrari. 2005 has indeed witnessed a dramatic gulf in performance between McLaren and Ferrari, though in McLaren's favour. However McLaren has not been able to fully capitalise on this opportunity due to the strength of Renault. Renault dominated the early races but by mid-season commentators have named the McLaren McLaren MP4-20 as the fastest car. Nonetheless McLaren have suffered from the poor performance of their Mercedes engine, for example engine failures at two consecutive races saw Kimi Räikkönen penalised 10 places from his qualifying place which handicapped his races.

More recently, the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren has become available for purchase, the 2005 model coming out with a base price of $452,750.00. The new model will have a top speed of 207 MPH and a 0-60 time of 3.8 seconds.