Brief History About Mercedes
Mercedes Benz was founded in 1926 as Daimler-Benz in Germany by Karl Benz (Benz & Cie) and Gottlieb Daimler (Daimler Motor Company). Daimler is attributed for building the first 4 wheel motor driven carriage in 1886, while Benz is attributed for building the first 3 wheeled carriage in 1885. Also Daimler was already into racing their cars by 1894. Also to note is Daimler’s chief engineer was Wilhelm Maybach. The name Mercedes was taken from investor Emil Jellinek daughter’s name. Mercedes-Benz is now the luxury car division of Daimler AG.
Not only were Daimler and Mercedes both pioneers in the development of combustion vehicles from the very beginning, they were also pioneers of forced induction systems for the internal combustion engine.
Mercedes Benz have continued to be a very innovative automotive company and just a few of those innovations include, building the first car to have brakes on all four wheels, first diesel passenger car, first direct fuel injection, introduction of traction control, first 7 speed auto transmission and the first with numerous safety developments and devices.
Mercedes high performance division is called Mercedes-AMG and was established in 1999, although AMG was actually an independent engineering company founded in 1967 by former Mercedes engineers Hans Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher. Aufrecht’s hometown was Großaspach, so the AMG name was made up of (Aufrecht Melcher Großaspach). AMG was a very successful company at modifying both Mercedes road and track cars, so in the early 90’s, Mercedes bought 51% of its shares and then by 2005 took full ownership. AMG have and do supply other automotive makes, such as Pagani and Aston Martin.
190E 2.3 & 2.5 Cosworth, EVO & AMG 1985-1993
(Also See Brabus)
