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.
It is quoted that Daimler never enjoyed driving! In March 1990 he died which left overall control of the company to Wilhelm Mayback. In November of that year they had produced a special car, the Mercedes which was lighter and smaller than the average car of the day and was able to reach top speeds of 55mph.
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This post was written by admin on December 15, 2009