Mercedes-Benz
Mercedes-Benz automobiles, one of the world’s luxury brands, are the legacy of two innovators in the motor car industry at the beginning of the 20th century. But neither was named “Mercedes.”
Gottlieb Daimler and Carl Benz were born only a few miles and ten years apart in mid-19th century Germany, but pursued parallel careers and did not work together until late in their lives. Both Daimler and Benz formed their own car companies in the 1880s and produced lines of automobiles under their own names until economic necessity dictated the merger of their companies in 1926 into Daimler-Benz.
While Daimler was still an independent corporation in 1898, an Austrian financier named Emil Jellinek approached the company requesting increasingly powerful cars for use in his hobby of auto racing, particularly in the French Tour de Nice race. In entering the race with his Daimler car, Jellinek used the pseudonym “Mercedes,” the name of his 10-year old daughter.
Jellinek worked with Daimler for several years distributing their cars and collaborating on designs, and eventually his race pseudonym “Mercedes” was adopted by Daimler as the model name of a race car in 1900. Conventional “Mercedes” cars followed, and the Mercedes brand became so famous all over Europe that when Daimler and Benz finally merged the resulting primary brand was “Mercedes-Benz,” with “Daimler-Benz” relegated to secondary use.
Meanwhile, Emil Jellinek, aware of the commercial significance of his pseudonym, asked and got permission from Daimler to legally call himself “Jellinek-Mercedes,” noting that “This is probably the first time that a father has taken his daughter’s name.”
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