49 Fun Facts About Mercedes-Benz

The Mercedes name comes from the daughter of which Austrian businessman, who ordered the 1901 Mercedes 35 hp?

Emil Jellinek, an Austrian dealer and racer based in Nice, entered races under his daughter's name, and 'Mercedes' was registered as a trademark in 1902.

How old was Mercédès Jellinek when her father agreed in 1900 to name cars after her?

10: Mercédès was born on 16 September 1889, and the agreement with DMG to sell Jellinek's cars under her name was signed on 2 April 1900.

Which three-wheeled 1886 vehicle is widely regarded as the first automobile powered by an internal combustion engine?

The Benz Patent-Motorwagen was Karl Benz's three-wheeler, financed in part by his wife Bertha's dowry.

In what year did the companies of Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler merge to form Daimler-Benz?

1926: Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft and Benz & Cie. merged on 28 June 1926 to form Daimler-Benz AG, and the first cars badged Mercedes-Benz appeared that same year.

In which German city is Mercedes-Benz headquartered?

Stuttgart: the headquarters in the Untertürkheim district sit beside the Mercedes-Benz Museum and the Untertürkheim engine and powertrain plant.

Which slogan, quoting Gottlieb Daimler, did Mercedes-Benz adopt in 2010?

'The Best or Nothing' is the Mercedes line; 'Vorsprung durch Technik' belongs to Audi and 'The Ultimate Driving Machine' to BMW.

Gottlieb Daimler's sons Paul and Adolf suggested the three-pointed star to symbolise engines for land, water and what?

Air completed the trio; DMG formally adopted the star in June 1909, nine years after Daimler's death in March 1900.

Roughly how far was Bertha Benz's 1888 one-way drive from Mannheim to Pforzheim, following wagon tracks with her two sons?

106 km (66 miles), with her sons Richard and Eugen, aged 13 and 15, and without telling her husband.

Where did Bertha Benz buy fuel on her 1888 drive, effectively creating the world's first filling station?

A city pharmacy: the car had no real fuel tank, so she bought the petroleum solvent ligroin at the Stadt-Apotheke (town pharmacy) in Wiesloch, celebrated since as the first filling station.

What did Bertha Benz use to clear a blocked fuel line during her 1888 drive from Mannheim to Pforzheim?

A hat pin cleared the line, and her garter served as insulation; a cobbler fitted leather to the failing brakes, inventing brake linings.

Wilhelm Maybach co-founded DMG, maker of the Mercedes 35 hp, with Daimler in which year?

1890: Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft was founded in Cannstatt on 28 November 1890 to build small, high-speed engines, with Maybach as its chief designer.

The 300 SL sports car of 1954 is famous for what unusual feature?

Gullwing doors: the tubular space frame ran high along the sills, making conventional doors impossible, so the doors hinged at the roof and opened upward like wings.

The 300 SL was unusually launched at which motor show in February 1954?

New York: it debuted at the International Motor Sports Show there in February 1954, an unusual choice that reflected the American market the road car had been built for.

How many 300 SL coupés were built between 1954 and 1957?

1,400 coupés were built from 1954 to 1957, 29 of them with aluminium bodies, before the roadster version took over from 1957 to 1963.

What record price did a 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR coupé fetch in 2022?

€135 million: one of the two 300 SLR coupés was sold by RM Sotheby's at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in May 2022, the highest price then paid for any car, to fund a scholarship programme.

Where was the first Mercedes-Benz factory outside Germany built, in 1951?

Argentina: Mercedes-Benz Argentina was founded in 1951, and its plant at San Martín near Buenos Aires began building trucks and buses in 1952, the company's first production outside Germany.

What was the first vehicle built at Mercedes-Benz's Alabama plant near Tuscaloosa in February 1997?

An ML320 SUV rolled off the line in February 1997; the plant at Vance, near Tuscaloosa, was purpose-built for the M-Class and later added the GLE, GLS and electric EQ SUVs.

The 'S' in S-Class stands for which German word?

Sonderklasse, 'special class': the W116 of 1972 was the first line officially to carry the S-Class name, though the label had been used informally on earlier top models.

In December 1980, which S-Class generation became the first production car with a driver-side airbag?

The W126 also brought seat-belt pretensioners.

Which safety system did Mercedes-Benz offer on the W116 S-Class in 1978, among the first cars to have it?

ESP followed in 1995 and PRE-SAFE in 2002.

Which royal figure suggested the vehicle that became the G-Class?

Development began in 1972 with Steyr-Daimler-Puch in Graz, Austria; civilians could buy one from 1979.

In which Austrian city did G-Class production begin in 1979?

Graz: Steyr-Daimler-Puch, later Magna Steyr, began building the Geländewagen, or off-road vehicle, there in 1979.

In 1980 the Vatican took delivery of a G-Wagen with a clear thermoplastic top to serve as what?

The Popemobile: a white 230 G with a transparent roof carried John Paul II on his November 1980 visit to Germany, and Mercedes-Benz supplied papal vehicles many times afterwards.

What do the letters AMG stand for?

Hans Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher founded it in 1967; Großaspach was Aufrecht's birthplace.

Mercedes-AMG has its headquarters in which small German town?

Affalterbach, near Stuttgart: AMG moved there in 1976, and its engines are assembled by hand under a 'one man, one engine' philosophy.

What was the affectionate nickname of the AMG 300 SEL 6.3 V8 saloon that raced at the 1971 Spa 24 Hours?

The Red Sow (Rote Sau): the AMG-built 300 SEL, bored out to 6.8 litres, finished second overall and won its class at Spa in 1971, putting AMG on the map.

What name was given to the dominant Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union Grand Prix cars of 1934-39?

Silver Arrows (Silberpfeile): legend says white paint was scraped off a Mercedes W25 before the 1934 Eifelrennen to save weight, exposing bare aluminium, and the name stuck to both teams' cars.

Per Alfred Neubauer's story, how much did the W25 weigh on the scales at the 1934 Eifelrennen?

751 kg: in Neubauer's telling the car was one kilogram over the 750 kg limit, so the white paint was sanded off overnight. The tale surfaced only in his 1958 memoir and historians doubt it.

Which driver won the 1954 and 1955 Formula One drivers' championships for the Mercedes-Benz works team?

Juan Manuel Fangio took both titles driving the W196, the second with Stirling Moss as team-mate; Mercedes withdrew from all motorsport at the end of 1955 after the Le Mans disaster.

Mercedes returned to F1 as a works team in 2010 by buying into which outfit?

Brawn GP, the 2009 double champion, was bought by Daimler and Aabar in November 2009 and became Mercedes GP, hiring Nico Rosberg and a returning Michael Schumacher.

How many consecutive Formula One constructors' championships did Mercedes win from 2014 onward?

Eight in a row, from 2014 to 2021, before Red Bull ended the run in 2022; the drivers' title went to Lewis Hamilton or Nico Rosberg every year from 2014 to 2020.

The Mercedes Formula One team is based in which English town?

Brackley, Northamptonshire, home of the team since its BAR days; its engines come from nearby Brixworth, at the plant formerly known as Ilmor.

Lewis Hamilton joined Mercedes for the 2013 season from which team?

McLaren let him go in a move announced on 28 September 2012 that looked risky at the time.

The name Unimog is an abbreviation of which German phrase?

Universal-Motor-Gerät, 'universal motorised device': it was designed in 1945-46 as a self-propelled agricultural machine that could also run on roads, with power take-offs for implements.

Daimler-Benz took over Unimog production in 1951 at which plant?

Gaggenau: Daimler-Benz moved Unimog production from Boehringer in Göppingen to its Gaggenau plant in 1951, where it stayed until the move to the Wörth truck plant in 2002.

In 1998 Daimler-Benz merged with which American carmaker?

Chrysler: the 1998 'merger of equals' created DaimlerChrysler, but the marriage lasted less than a decade; in 2007 Daimler sold 80.1% of Chrysler to Cerberus Capital Management.

On 1 February 2022, Daimler AG changed its registered name to what?

Mercedes-Benz Group AG: the rename took effect on 1 February 2022, a few months after the heavy-truck business was spun off as the separately listed Daimler Truck AG in December 2021.

Which Chinese businessman became the company's largest shareholder with a 9.69% stake in 2018?

Li Shufu, founder of Geely, which also owns Volvo Cars, disclosed a 9.69% stake in Daimler in February 2018, making him its largest single shareholder at the time.

Who became chairman of Daimler AG, later renamed Mercedes-Benz Group, on 22 May 2019?

Ola Källenius, a Swede, succeeded Dieter Zetsche on 22 May 2019 as the first non-German to run the company, after heading Mercedes-Benz Cars' research and development.

The 2009 S400 BlueHYBRID was the first production hybrid car in the world to use what?

A lithium-ion battery: the S400 BlueHYBRID of 2009 paired a 3.5-litre V6 with a compact lithium-ion pack, the first in a series-production hybrid, where rivals used nickel-metal hydride.

Which US carmaker partnered with Mercedes-Benz in 1958 to sell its cars in America?

Studebaker: the 1957 agreement with Studebaker-Packard gave Mercedes-Benz a US dealer network from 1958, until Mercedes-Benz of North America took over distribution in 1965.

In which year did Karl Benz build the world's first motor bus, in Mannheim?

1895: Benz & Cie. of Mannheim delivered the first motor bus, an eight-seater, to the Netphener Omnibus-Gesellschaft in March 1895; Daimler's bus brands were grouped under EvoBus from 1995.

Which Mercedes-Benz model, built from 1963 to 1981, was known as the 'Grosser Mercedes'?

The 600 (W100), built from 1963 to 1981, revived the 'Grosser Mercedes' title of the 1930s 770; its 6.3-litre V8 and hydraulic systems made it the choice of heads of state.

Gottlieb Daimler was born in 1834 in which town?

Schorndorf, east of Stuttgart, where the baker's son was born on 17 March 1834; he met Wilhelm Maybach at the Bruderhaus engineering works in Reutlingen in 1865.

Which US importer suggested at a 1953 directors' meeting that Mercedes build a road-going sports car for America?

The result was the 300 SL, launched at the New York show in 1954 and initially distributed only by Hoffman.

Which Mercedes head engineer designed the tubular chrome-molybdenum space frame of the 1950s 300 SL sports car?

Rudolf Uhlenhaut's thin tubes, assembled into triangles, gave high rigidity at low mass, but the high sills forced the famous gullwing doors.

How many 300 SL roadsters had been built when production ended in February 1963?

It was the last Mercedes-Benz car built on a separate frame; a hardtop option proved popular despite costing 1,500 Deutschmarks.

Which 1936 Mercedes-Benz was the world's first series-production diesel passenger car?

The 260 D, unveiled at the 1936 Berlin motor show with a 2.5-litre four-cylinder diesel, was the first series-production diesel passenger car and proved popular as a taxi.

Which Mercedes-Benz model launched in 1982 was nicknamed the 'Baby Benz'?

The 190 (W201), launched in December 1982 as the company's first compact saloon, was nicknamed the 'Baby Benz'; the C-Class replaced it in 1993.