Gottlieb Daimler, founder of Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft.
Gottlieb Daimler was born on 17 March 1834 in Schorndorf. After training as a gunsmith and working in France, he attended the Polytechnic School in Stuttgart from 1857 to 1859. After completing various technical activities in France as well as England, he later started working as a draftsman in Geislingen in 1862. At the end of 1863 he was appointed workshop inspector at a machine tool factory in Reutlingen, where he met Wilhelm Maybach in 1865.
Throughout the 1930s, Mercedes-Benz produced the 770 model, a car that was notably popular throughout Germany’s Nazi period. Adolf Hitler was known to have driven in a model of this car during his time in power, with modified custom bulletproof windshields. Most of the currently surviving 770 models were sold at auctions to private buyers. One of the cars is currently on display at the War Museum in Ottawa, Ontario. The pontiff’s Popemobile has often been sourced from Mercedes-Benz.
From 1937 onward, Daimler Benz focused increasingly on military products such as the LG3000 lorry and the DB600 and the DB601 aero engines. To build the latter, in 1936 it built a factory hidden in the forest at Genshagen around 10 kilometres south of Berlin. By 1942 the company had mostly stopped producing cars, and was now devoted to war production. According to its statement, in 1944 almost half of its 63,610 employees were forced labourers, prisoners of war or concentration camp detainees. Another source quotes this figure at 46,000. The company later paid $12 million in reparations to the labourers’ families.
In 1958, the two companies began a partnership to sell their cars in the United States with Studebaker. A few American-based Daimler-Benz dealerships were converted into Mercedes-Benz dealerships when Daimler’s non-Mercedes-partnered company closed in 1966.
Over the decades, Mercedes-Benz has introduced many electronic and mechanical innovations and safety features that later became common.[19] Currently, Mercedes-Benz is one of the best-known and long-standing automotive brands in the world.
In November 2019, Daimler AG announced that Mercedes-Benz, up until that point a company marque, would be spun off into a separate wholly-owned subsidiary called Mercedes-Benz AG. The new subsidiary would manage the Mercedes-Benz car and van business. Mercedes-Benz-badged trucks and buses would be part of the Daimler Truck AG subsidiary.
For information relating to the three-pointed star symbol of the brand, see under the title Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft, including the merger into Daimler-Benz.
In May 2022, Mercedes-Benz announced that it has recently sold the most expensive car at the price of $142 million. The car is a very rare 1955 Mercedes-Benz SLR that has been kept in the German automakers collection and bought by a private owner. Mercedes in an announcement said, that the sale will be used to establish the Mercedes-Benz Fund.
In June 2022, Mercedes-Benz recalled almost one million older vehicles built between 2004 and 2015, due to potential problems with their braking system, caused by possible “advanced corrosion”.