Master Auto Tech "Simply Excellent Personal Service"
(360) 733-3043
The Mercedes Benz Story
 |
Mércédés Adriana Manuela Ramona Jellinek was the daughter of Austrian automobile entrepreneur Emil Jellinek. Born on September 16, 1889, she was baptized as Maria de las Mércédés Jellinek, but was called Mercedes derived from the Spanish Christian name meaning mercy. Emil Jellinek her father, came to believe the name brought good fortune and called all his properties after it. One of his sons wrote: "He was as superstitious as the ancient Romans." It was in Nice that Jellinek became enthralled by the automobile and purchased a four-seat Benz motorized-coach. |
Seeing an advertisement for a DMG car Jellinek now aged 43 traveled to Stuttgart in 1896 to find out more about the company, its factory and the designers Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach. He placed an order for one of the Daimler cars which was delivered in October of that year. Helped by his diplomatic career, as the Austrian Consul General in Nice, Jellinek began selling automobiles, mainly French makes, to European aristocrats spending winter vacations in the region.
He acquired a large mansion which he named Villa Mercedes to run the business from. By 1897 he was selling about 140 cars a year and started calling them Mercedes. DMG seemed a reliable enterprise, so Jellinek decided to start selling its cars.
Jellinek kept contacting DMG's designers with his ideas, some good but often with harangues such as: "Your manure wagon has just broken down on schedule", or "Your engineers should be locked up in an insane asylum." This annoyed Daimler but Maybach took notice of many of his suggestions. Jellinek came to an agreement with DMG on April 2, 1900 by promising 550,000 Goldmark if Wilhelm Maybach would design a revolutionary sports car for him, to be called the Mercedes. In 1901, the car amazed the automobile world. easily winning the Nice races and reaching 60 km/h. As the usage of pseudonyms was common, Jellinek called his race-team Mercedes and this was visibly written on the cars' chassis. Monsieur Mercedes became his personal alias and he became well known by it in the region. |  |
Some of the other racing-team pseudonyms were: Dr. Pascal, Axt, Escargot and Walrus. As well as shaving off his side-whiskers, the overjoyed Emil Jellinek, in Vienna in June 1903 at the age of 50, changed his name to Jellinek-Mercedes, commenting: "This is probably the first time that a father has taken his daughter's name". From then on, he signed himself E.J. Mércédés.
|
