Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz set up Mercedes Benz in the 1880’s. It is said that these two men in fact had never met each other! They worked independently of each other with Daimler looking 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 large order from Daimler and 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 built his first truck.

Posted under News