9781422279595

C hap t e r O ne

BIRTH AND REBIRTH

M ercedes–Benz motorcars, in today’s culture, represent luxury, security, and techno- logical refinement. The secure place this icon holds in our collective history, however, reflects a corporate history that has been threatened with extinction more than once. To begin with, two separate companies had to agree to a merger. Both entities were namesakes. From the doors of a Mannheim workshop in 1885 emerged a three-wheeled contraption powered by an internal combustion engine. In its seat was Carl Benz, an engine designer, who had assembled a crew of bicycle mechanics and other innovators to create the de- vice. It won a patent from the German government on January 29, 1886, and the Patent-Motorwagen is recognized today as being the first automobile. Meanwhile, in the town of Cannstatt, 60 miles (96km) away, Gottlieb Daimler had himself received a patent for an internal combustion engine, which a colleague, Wilhelm Maybach, was using for a four-wheeled self-propelled carriage known as the Daimler Motorenwagen. Within five years, both Benz and Daimler were involved in the production of motorcars, a product at the time that not many were clamoring for. Unfazed, Benz diversified his line to include the Viktoria and Velo models, and then, in 1898, the Ideal. Elegant in their own way, these early Benz models essentially were simple motorized buggies, or, in the vernacular of the time, voitures .

Early Benz motorcars, such as this 1900 model, were really no more than motorized bug- gies, known at the time as “voitures.”

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