Mercedes-Benz

The name joins two men who never met: Karl Benz, who patented the Benz Patent-Motorwagen in 1886 and is generally credited with the first practical automobile, and Gottlieb Daimler, whose separate engine company licensed the name “Mercedes” from a customer’s daughter in 1902.^[1] Daimler and Benz’s companies merged in 1926, under economic pressure common to the German motor industry of the period, to form Daimler-Benz and the combined Mercedes-Benz marque. The three-pointed star predates the merger: it was a Daimler mark, said to represent motorisation on land, sea and air, and the laurel wreath around it was Benz’s. Mercedes-Benz has spent the century since as one of the industry’s default reference points for engineering conservatism: real innovations (the crumple zone, ABS, the airbag) delivered without much appetite for changing what a Mercedes saloon is expected to look or feel like.