Public transport in the Klang Valley

The Star
Published: Sunday June 23, 2013 MYT 3:14:00 PM
Updated: Wednesday July 10, 2013 MYT 3:19:34 PM

Public transport in the Klang Valley: #MyJalan journey

By MICHELLE TAM, TASHNY SUKUMARAN and T.AVINESHWARAN

PETALING JAYA: You have likely read something about it or perhaps even had a lively debate about it - but how many Klang Valley residents actually rely solely on public transport on a daily basis?

On Friday, three intrepid The Star Online reporters set out to experience the efficiency of the city's public transport system for themselves.

The challenge put to them was simple - make the "morning commute" from their respective homes to the KLCC and arrive there by 9am. From then on, follow suggestions from Twitter posts with the #MyJalan hashtag and see where the tweets take them.

They were not allowed to use taxis, and could only take trains and buses to get to their respective destinations.

Here are their accounts of their respective #MyJalan journeys:

Moving with Michelle

THE Metro bus puttered to a stop next to the steep incline.

"Universiti LRT, here!" said the driver, eyes fixed on the road ahead to Kuala Lumpur.

Only, not quite.

Commuters alighted the vehicle quickly and made their way up the slight hill with practised ease. Vehicles whizzed by on either side - one stumble and you're roadkill.

I couldn't have asked for a more thrilling start to my experiment of the public transportation in the Klang Valley!

One had to manoeuvre carefully - a good sense of balance recommended - over the road divider before a walkway emerges.

Next was the wonky traffic light okaying pedestrian crossings, which according to a frequent commuter, "hasn't worked in recent memory". So we made a quick dash across the road to reach the LRT station.

Happily, the rest of my public transport journey was less eventful, save for a blue car that crashed into the bus on my way back to Menara Star in Petaling Jaya.

A trip to Zoo Negara from KLCC took under an hour, and if not for an unexpectedly lengthy journey on another Metro bus out of the area, one could even slot in another bus ride that will have you within walking distance of Solaris Dutamas before 4pm.

All the journeys cost much lesser than a cab ride, but took substantially more time and planning to complete.

The commuters I met were more resigned than unhappy with their everyday situation.

One Idah, noticing my discomfort from the heat and haze, offered some papaya pickles before bidding me a warm goodbye.

As a student and during my internships, I had to travel via the KTM, LRT and bus every day. Each trip generally took a minimum of two hours. Thankfully, a kind colleague would later let me carpool with her.

I still don't have my own set of wheels, but I now live much closer to work to avoid the hassle of using public transport when possible.

Travelling by public transport in the Klang Valley is affordable and largely efficient if you rely on the LRT but it can be time consuming and may pose a risk to your safety. - Michelle Tam

Tashny's travels

THERE'S nothing quite like the smell of yuppie in the morning - a heady mix of coffee in paper cups, perfume, and the exhaust fumes of the bus you're crammed into.

My public transport journey seemed to be the easiest - from Bangsar to KLCC and then to Taylor's Lakeside University in Subang. Little did I know, I'd end up waiting for God-knows-when-the-train-would-arrive.

#MyJalan began with the RapidKL T634 bus which goes from Bangsar LRT to Pusat Bandar Damansara and back, which I took it from outside Bangsar Shopping Complex.

Unfortunately, the driver didn't tell me that I had to catch it from the other side of the road, so I ended up making a long roundabout route circling Pusat Bandar Damansara, passing my starting point, before snaking my way to the LRT station.

The LRT ride to KLCC was uneventful, as was the LRT back to KL Sentral.

There, however, I encountered the fearsome KTM Komuter trains.

Although the train to Port Klang (I'd be alighting at Seri Setia) was only seven minutes late, it was stuffy and warm.

Somewhat embarrassingly, I fell asleep and missed my stop. I got out at Subang Jaya and had to take the train back one stop.

Alarmingly, there is excessive construction going on at the Subang Jaya KTM - the trains going to Port Klang and returning to Kuala Lumpur use the same track. Scary.

At Seri Setia, I waited for the bus to Taylor's Lakeside Campus for a good 30 minutes.

Unfortunately, it being lunchtime on a Friday, none showed up.

At my editor's behest, I hitch-hiked to the university campus, thanking my lucky stars that so many students were headed there. At the campus, I saw about five buses parked here and there. Depressing.

Thankfully, my editor then called me up with an urgent story I had to write, so I got into a cab back to the office.

This is something I definitely could not do every day - I smelled like a used sock and the heat and haze were awful! - Tashny Sukumaran

Avineshwaran gets around

FOR the first time since I started working in the Klang Valley, I had the experience - or should I say the privilege - of using the Klang Valley's public transportation system for the entire day.

After many suggestions, I decided to check out the services in Putrajaya - which tied in with my need to renew my road tax. The first destination was the JPJ headquarters in Complex D in Putrajaya.

After months of driving, relying on public transportation was a humbling experience.

Taking a train to Putrajaya was a breeze, and the ERL services were efficient.

The trains were on schedule and many civil servants use them to get to Putrajaya.

Once at Putrajaya, I had to take a bus to the JPJ headquarters, on the Putrajaya bus line.

I had my doubts at first, but I was impressed with the services, though I reached JPJ a little late.

The driver was courteous and even calmed me down when I was running late for my appointment at JPJ.

Ticket prices were cheap, too. For only 50 sen, I travelled from Putrajaya Sentral to Kompleks D, where the JPJ headquarters is located.

It turned out that I could not renew my road tax there. So, I had to rush back to Petaling Jaya to get it done.

I thought it would take hours, but thanks to the ERL and LRT Rapid KL, I reached the Petaling Jaya JPJ office on Jalan Sultan in less than an hour.

When it comes to timing and efficiency, train services in Klang Valley are pretty efficient. The only thing you need to bear is the rush hour crowd.

Once I completed my road tax renewal, I headed back to Menara Star - my first experience of taking a bus to Petaling Jaya.

The experience was simply terrible! I had a long wait at the Asia Jaya stop even though the bus to Eastin Hotel (which is adjacent to Menara Star) was parked there - with the driver nowhere in sight!

Once the driver arrived, I got into the bus but was in for a rude shock - he told me to get down from the bus and wait at the designated bus stop.

Had he told me in a courteous way, I could have accepted it, but he was rude!

My journey ended on a sour note, but the overall experience was pretty humbling.

There were the pros and cons, but if you were to ask me whether I would opt for public transport in the near future, my answer would probably be in the negative - driving is still the best fit for me! - T. Avineshwaran

ORIGINAL POST

Most Important Cars of All Time

There are automobiles of great beauty and great speed but only a few have been able to fundamentally change the way we live and dream

Model T Ford (1908-1927)
Helped put the world on wheels and create the American suburbs. When Henry Ford doubled his workers daily wage to $5.00 (in 1913), it meant the people who built the cars could also afford to buy them. A social revolution. Remarkably, some have called it a lemon.

Chrysler Airflow (1934-37)
Chrysler's early experiment in building an aerodynamic car that would more efficiently slip through the air was a commercial flop. But the company's use of wind tunnel testing was visionary and is now common practice.

Volkswagen Beetle (1938-2003)
It is hard to imagine that the loveable VW was first designed to be the populist vehicle of the volk of Hitler's Third Reich but the tough little Bug long outlived that ancestry to become the best selling single car model of all time.

The Ford 150 Pickup (1948-Present)
The pickup may not win any styling awards but the Ford F150 has been the best selling vehicle in the U.S. for years; the F Series makes Ford about half its sales in the States these days.

Chevrolet (1955)
In the 1940s Chevvies were something your grandma drove. But in 1955 the General Motors division launched an all new car — the costliest model was dubbed the Bel Air — that was a revelation. Not only did it offer the now legendary small block V8 engine — effectively still in production —its styling, particularly on its Ferrari-like grill, was so wonderful that it was copied for years.

Honda Civic (1972-present)
The first car out of Japan to prove that the country was going to be a serious player. Reliable and well finished, it also made economic sense to buy a Civic, which outperformed gas-guzzling American rivals during the oil crises of the 1970s.

Toyota Corolla (1966-present)
The best selling car of all time (across nine generations of models), the Corolla first came to the U.S. in 1968 and did much to overcome Japan's reputation for producing cars of poor quality. Through the years, they have proved sturdy, economical and efficient; they are, however, as boring as all hell.

British Motor Corporation Mini (1959-2000)
First car in the world to lie the engine across the vehicle rather than longitudinally. Revolutionary design proved that cars could get smaller —and still be hot. Its technical layout was copied by everybody and is still basically used in today's small cars. Ten feet long with 10 inch wheels, it handled like a dream.

Plymouth Voyager (1984-2000)
Renault claims that its Espace was the first minivan but it had hinged doors and every soccer mom in the U.S. knows that a proper minivan has sliding doors. And so the honor goes to the Plymouth Voyager, (later the Chrysler Voyager), with the gratitude of overworked parents worldwide as they ferry their kids from school to playdate to grandma's and back home again.

The Sport Utility Vehicle (1990s-present)
Be it a Jeep Cherokee or a Ford Explorer or supersized to a Humvee, the SUV, whose ancestors were military jeeps, soon became the voracious and luxurious symbol of middle-class and boomer excess in throughout the 1990s — and, by the turn of the century, a potent enemy of the green people once the global warming alarms started going off.

Toyota Prius (1997-present)
The pioneering hybrid electric/gas run consumer vehicle is no longer the most efficient car in the world, but it is the archetypal green-mobile and still the one with the greatest name recognition.

Tata's Nano (2008)
Launched in January 2008, India's "people's car", as it is already dubbed, is intended to put motoring within reach of Asia's masses. At $2,500 it's hard to see it how it won't sell, but even if it doesn't it will become the poster car for a new, stripped back style of engineering — glue instead of welds! — that could change the world.

History of the Electric Car

Green Motors
No one would mistake Chris Paine for a General Motors shill. In his 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?, the filmmaker laid out a damning case against GM for unplugging the EV1, the electric vehicle it manufactured in the 1990s and then discontinued in 2003, preferring instead to produce high-margin but gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs. "They were a technological leader, and they fumbled that leadership away," Paine says. Ask him about the U.S. carmaker now, though, and Paine sounds almost admiring. "Their new hybrids are making a difference, and their plug-in technology is a real advance," he says. "GM is making some really good moves now."

It's been some time since anyone accused GM of making a good move. The company surrendered its title as the world's top-selling carmaker to Toyota this year, in part because GM underestimated drivers' appetite for leaner, greener cars — a desire filled spectacularly by Toyota's Prius. GM is still weighed down by health-care costs and other legacy issues, but the Detroit giant is finally getting serious about hybrids. After dismissing them for years as a niche unworthy of attention, GM will release an average of one new hybrid model every three months for the next two years, beginning with the industry's first full-size hybrid SUVs late this year. "GM has really stepped up to be the standard bearer for the industry," says Philip Gott, director of automotive consulting for the research group Global Insight. "Toyota stole the limelight the first time with nice technology and a brilliant marketing strategy, but I think GM will take the ball back."

In a way, GM never really lost the ball; it just forgot how to play. For all its recent struggles in the marketplace, GM has always been a leader in pure research and development, spending $6.6 billion in the field in 2006. "They've dwarfed the rest of the industry in what they can put into it," says Dan Sperling, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California at Davis. In the late 1980s, GM produced concept cars like the Sunracer, a sleek solar vehicle that can still inspire wistful sighs in green geeks of a certain age. But too often the good stuff stalled between the lab and the showroom. "There is a myth out there that GM is a technological laggard, but that's not true," says John DeCicco, senior fellow for automotive strategies at the advocacy group Environmental Defense. "They just chose not to emphasize those kinds of products in their corporate strategy." Nevertheless, GM's cautious approach stranded its brands in the past while its competitors positioned themselves as smarter and greener.

Nowhere was that clearer than in GM's foot-dragging on hybrids, which use combination gas-electric engines to reduce fuel usage an average of 45%, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. "Hybrids are an interesting curiosity," said Robert Lutz, GM's vice chairman of product development, in early 2004. "But do they make sense at $1.50 a gallon? No, they do not." Lutz was right then, and even with gas prices closer to $3, midsize hybrids are expensive and may not save most drivers much money. But to consumers, the equation was simple: hybrids = environmentalism.

GM just didn't get it. "GM took a gamble that hybrids weren't going to be important," says Eric Noble, president of Car Labs, an auto consulting firm. "That turned out to be a very bad bet."

Even while its image became defined by Paleolithic SUVs, GM was quietly making green investments. The company began producing hybrid buses in 2004, using the technology to boost fuel economy on those big, inefficient vehicles where it would have a big, immediate impact. By the same logic, GM has put its first real hybrid engines not in a midsize sedan like the Toyota Prius but in its jumbo suvs, the GMC Yukon and the Chevrolet Tahoe. The 5,000-lb. (2,300 kg) vehicles will run on a new two-mode hybrid system developed by GM with Chrysler and BMW. The power train will use two electric motors — one to assist city driving, one for highways — giving it up to 40% better fuel rates than conventional models' for city driving. "It's a piece of art," says Mickey Bly, GM's director of engineering for hybrid vehicles. And with a towing capacity of 6,000 lbs. (2,700 kg), the fuel economy doesn't come at the expense of power.

GM hasn't won over all the skeptics. Sticking a hybrid engine in a jumbo SUV is "putting lipstick on a pig," says Ronald Hwang, vehicle policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, who argues that if GM is green serious, it should give up SUVs and build more efficient cars. But other activists welcome the effort. "I'm an equal-opportunity environmentalist, and I'll take carbon reductions where I can get them," says DeCicco. They agree, however, that GM passed up a chance to cement its green rep by failing to support efforts to tighten the federal corporate average-fuel-economy standards. Green darling Toyota has also opposed the proposed new rules, which call for a 35 mpg. (6.7 L/100 km) standard by 2020.

The best way for GM to answer its critics is with a green leap forward — and the company is working with every available technology. GM presented the Chevrolet Volt — a plug-in hybrid that can run on battery power, biodiesel or gasoline — as a 2007 concept car. The company will soon roll out Project Driveway, a consumer test of more than 100 hydrogen-fuel-cell cars, which convert hydrogen to energy and produce no harmful emissions. "No other company has such a broad array of green technology," says Tom Stephens, GM's vice president for global power train. "I intend to lead on this."

Chris Paine will be watching. His next film is titled Who Saved the Electric Car?, but there's one obstacle. "We have to find out if someone actually is saving it," he says. It might just be GM. What better hero than a reformed villain?

1903 Columbia Mark LX Electric Runabout
Before the electric car became the transport of tomorrow, it was the horseless carriage of yesteryear. At the turn of the 20th century, electric-powered cars were more popular than their noisy, smelly, gasoline-fired cousins, which had to be started using a hand crank that had a tendency to backfire. Among the best selling, and most basic, were the Columbia Runabouts, produced by the Hartford, Conn., alliance of Pope Manufacturing and the Electric Vehicle Company. Aside from the Deep Space Nine-style name, the Mark LX Electric Runabout could boast a top speed of 15 mph and a range of about 40 miles per charge — coincidentally the same distance Chevrolet's futuristic 2007 Volt can cover before requiring a refreshing plug-in.

1915 Detroit Electric
Girls dig electric cars. At least that was the marketing message back in 1915, when petrol-powered autos were beginning to decisively pull away from electric ones. Battery-powered vehicles retained popularity among female drivers in cities, who valued them for their reliability — they wouldn't blow up, as gas cars were known to do on occasion — and ease of use. Clara Ford, wife of Henry, whose Model T all but decimated the electric car, drove a 1914 Detroit Electric. (What her husband made of the fact that she wasn't driving a Ford is lost to history.) The Detroit models could run 80 miles on a single charge, with a top speed of about 20 mph. Pokey, but this was before the age of Danica Patrick.

1974 Vanguard-Sebring CitiCar
When people think of electric cars as glorified golf carts, the CitiCar may be what they have in mind. Brought out in the mid-1970s, during the height of the oil crisis, the CitiCar could top 30 mph and had a reliable range of 40 miles — in warm weather. The cars were priced to be competitive with the Volkswagen Beetle, and by 1975, Vanguard-Sebring was somehow the sixth largest automaker in the U.S. But the tiny, tinny CitiCar suffered due to safety concerns — it had all the crumple resistance of a beer can — and the model didn't outlast the 1970s, where it definitely belonged.

1996 Solectrica Sunrise
The Prius has shown us that futuristic cars should look like they're from the future — and no electric car's form better followed its function than the super-sleek Solectria Sunrise. But it wasn't just the space-age frame that made the Sunrise a hit. Founded by the young engineer Jack Worden in his Massachusetts basement, Solectria began by putting electric engines in the chassis of uninspiring gas-powered cars like the Geo Metro. But Worden wanted to build an electric vehicle from scratch, a design that became the much-loved Sunrise. Worden's baby had the rev of a sportscar and set a record for the longest drive on a single charge: 375 miles. And it looks like it should come armed with blaster cannons.

1997 GM EV1
The tragic hero of the electric car narrative, GM's EV1 seemingly had it all: finely tuned engineering, the best battery technology and backing from the biggest car company in the world. Produced by GM in response to California's 1990 zero-emissions vehicle mandate, the EV1 is widely considered to be the best electric vehicle to ever make it into production. But the car itself was wildly expensive to build and the battery only functioned well in warm weather, finally prompting GM to end the EV1 in 2003, bitterly disappointing its legions — ok, large circle — of fans. How great was the ardor of EV1 devotees? In 2006 the model resurfaced again as an untimely murder victim in the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? — not something you'll likely ever see with the Vanguard-Sebring CitiCar.

2001 Toyota RAV4 EV
If any car company could produce a workable electric vehicle, it should be Toyota, maker of the world's most ubiquitous hybrid car. And indeed, the RAV4 EV — an electric version of the Japanese company's popular light SUV — was a good try. It had a top speed of 78 mph and a range of up to 120 miles on a single charge. But charging the RAV4 EV wasn't as simple as plugging in your cell phone. Drivers had to purchase a separate wall-mounted, 6000-watt charging unit, which helped keep the car's cost above $40,000. In 2003 Toyota discontinued the RAV4 EV and began recalling the vehicles, but hundreds of drivers have held onto their cars, and have event taken to trading customization tips online.

2005 Commuter Cars Tango
You know what happens when Daffy Duck gets caught in the gigantic steel press and gets squashed flatter than a dime? The Commuter Cars Tango looks something like that. At 69 in. long and 29 in. wide, the Tango has anorexic proportions, with a jumbo-sized price tag of over $100,000, at least for now. But shape is function. The Tango is the perfect urban car — thinner than a motorcycle, it takes up one-quarter of a normal parking spot. It can hit 0-60 mph in 4 seconds, with a top speed of 150 mph, 10 times as fast as the old Columbia Mark LX Electric Runabout. And let's not forget the most salient fact: George Clooney, who helped promote the two-seater Tango when it was launched in 2005, is apparently a fan.

2006 Wrightspeed X1
Gas beat battery power decades ago in part because petrol-fueled cars could deliver significantly more zoom for the boom. But Ian Wright is changing that. The New Zealand native and Silicon Valley mainstay designed and built the modestly named Wrightspeed himself. It looks like a Formula 1 racecar and is faster than a Ferrari, but it runs on an electric battery. The impressive X1, which has yet to move into production, has a range of 100 miles per charge — a distance that it would cover at top speed in less than 40 minutes. You can burn rubber without burning the Earth.

2006 Tesla Roadster
There hasn't been a successful start-up car company in the U.S. since, oh, Ford. But more than a few entrepreneurs believe that with the auto industry on the brink of a technological revolution, now is the time for new players with radical ideas. Michael Marks founded Tesla with the plan of creating an electric car that doesn't sacrifice performance for fuel economy — and by all accounts, the red-hot Roadster succeeds. Not only does the Tesla accelerate from 0-60 in four seconds, its battery has a range of 245 miles, making it six times as efficient as the best sports car on the market. But if you want one, you better get in line just as quickly — there's already a waiting list, and the first production models won't be available until 2008.

2007 Chevrolet Volt
After killing the EV1, GM has a long way to go to earn back the trust of electric-car lovers. But the Volt just might do it. Introduced as a concept car in early 2007, the Volt is a next-generation hybrid, a plug-in. It can travel up to 40 miles on its electric motor — long enough for most daily commutes — and an additional gas engine can extend that range up to 640 miles, with fuel efficiency that's equivalent to 50 m.p.g. That extra engine can be configured to run on ethanol or biodiesel, further reducing carbon emissions. It's a dream car, but the best part about the Volt is that it's no dream — GM expects to begin production of the Volt, at less than $30,000, within a few years.

Mercedes Benz History

The History Behind The Mercedes-Benz Brand And The Three-Pointed Star

Gottlieb Daimler and Carl Benz

The Inventors: Gottlieb Daimler (left), 1834-1900, inventor and creator of the first high-speed engine in 1883, the riding-car in 1885 and the first motorised carriage in 1886. Carl Benz (right), 1844-1929, inventor and creator of the first complete automobile, the Benz Patent Motor Car in 1886.

The invention in the 1880s of the high-speed engine and the automobile enabled Gottlieb Daimler and Carl Benz – independently of one another – to lay the foundations for the motorization of road transport. With the help of financial backers and partners, they both invested their private developments in their own enterprises – in Mannheim, Benz founded the firm Benz & Cie. in October 1883, and Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG) was formed in November 1890.

In order to gain publicity and a certain distinction for their products, both companies sought a suitable trademark. To begin with, the inventors used their own names – “Benz” and “Daimler” – which vouched for the origin and quality of the engines and vehicles. The trademark of the Mannheim-based company Benz & Cie. remained unchanged, except that in 1909, the cog wheel symbol which had been used since 1903 was replaced with a laurel wreath surrounding the name Benz. But the turn of the century brought a completely new brand name for products from Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG) in Cannstatt: “Mercedes”. So what is the origin of this name?

Emil Jellinek becomes involved

Mercédès – a Spanish girl’s name meaning ‘grace’ – was the name of the daughter born in 1889 to the Austrian businessman, Emil Jellinek, who had homes in Baden near Vienna and Nice.
A progressive thinker with an interest in sport, Jellinek turned his enthusiasm to the dawning age of the automobile, an invention he knew would be of key importance for the future. As early as 1897, he made the journey to Cannstatt to visit the Daimler factory and ordered his first Daimler car – a belt-driven vehicle with a six-hp two-cylinder engine.

But the car, delivered in October 1897 and with a top speed of 24 km/h, was soon too slow for Jellinek. He demanded 40 km/h and ordered two more vehicles. Supplied in September 1898, the two Daimler Phoenix cars with their front–mounted eight-hp engines were the world’s first road vehicles with four-cylinder engines.

Emil Jellinek had good contacts with the worlds of international finance and the aristocracy and became increasingly active as a businessman. In 1898, he began to promote and sell Daimler automobiles, in particular, within the higher echelons of society. In 1899, DMG supplied Jellinek with ten vehicles; in 1900, he received as many as 29.

Jellinek demanded ever faster and more powerful vehicles from DMG. From 1899, he entered these in race meetings – first and foremost of which was the Nice Week – where he would race under his pseudonym Mercédès - the name of his daughter, ten years old at the time, and a name that was well known in motoring circles. In the early days, the name referred to the team and driver – not to an automotive brand.

At the beginning of April 1900, Jellinek made an agreement with DMG concerning sales of cars and engines and the decision was taken to use the Jellinek’s pseudonym as a product name. In addition, it was agreed that a new engine “bearing the name Daimler-Mercedes” was to be developed. Two weeks later, Jellinek ordered 36 of the vehicles at a total price of 550,000 marks – a sizeable order even by today’s standards: in 2005, this total would have been equivalent to 2.3 million euros. Just a few weeks later, he placed a new order for another 36 vehicles, all with eight-hp engines.

The first Mercedes and the new trade name

The first vehicle to be fitted with the new engine, a 35-hp racing car, was delivered to Jellinek by DMG on December 22, 1900. This first ‘Mercedes’, developed by Wilhelm Maybach, the chief engineer at DMG, caused quite a stir at the beginning of the new century. With its low center of gravity, pressed-steel frame, lightweight high-performance engine and honeycomb radiator, it featured numerous innovations and is regarded today as the first modern automobile.

The Nice Week in March 1901, during which the Mercedes vehicles were found to be unbeatable in virtually every discipline, attracted enormous publicity for Jellinek and the Mercedes. In March and August 1901, the 12/16-hp and 8/11-hp sister models appeared. Jellinek’s orders soon stretched the Daimler plant in Cannstatt to full production capacity.

On June 23, 1902, ‘Mercédès’ was lodged as the trade name and this was legally registered on September 26. From June 1903, Emil Jellinek obtained permission to call himself Jellinek-Mercedes, commenting that “this is probably the first time a father has taken his daughter’s name.”

The origin of the star

DMG now had a successful brand name, but still lacked a characteristic trademark. Then Paul and Adolf Daimler – the company founder’s two sons, and now senior executives at DMG – remembered that their father, who had died in March 1900 shortly before his 66th birthday, had once used a star as a symbol.

Gottlieb Daimler had been technical director of the Deutz gas engine factory from 1872 until 1881. At the beginning of his employment there, he had marked a star above his own house on a picture postcard of Cologne and Deutz, and had written to his wife that this star would one day shine over his own factory to symbolize prosperity.

The DMG board immediately accepted the proposal and in June 1909, both a three-pointed and a four-pointed star were registered as trademarks. Although both designs were legally protected, only the three-pointed star was used. From 1910 onward, a three-dimensional star adorned the radiator at the front of the car.

The three-pointed star was supposed to symbolize Daimler’s ambition of universal motorization – “on land, on water and in the air”. Over the years, various small additions were made. In 1916, the tips were surrounded by a circle, in which four small stars and the word Mercedes were integrated, or alternatively the names of the DMG plants at Untertürkheim or Berlin-Marienfelde.

In November 1921, DMG applied for legal protection of utility patents for new variations on their trademark and lodged with the patent office a three-dimensional three-pointed star enclosed in a circle – which included the design intended for use on the radiator grille. It became a registered trademark in August 1923.

A star guiding motorists everywhere

The period of inflation after the First World War meant a difficult time for sales – especially of luxury goods such as passenger cars – and had serious repercussions on the automotive industry. Only financially strong companies with well-established brands were able to survive – although even these were frequently forced into mergers and cooperative ventures. It was in this way that the former rivals, DMG and Benz & Cie., formed a syndicate in 1924 in order to standardize design and production, as well as purchasing, sales and advertising, and thereby remain competitive.

During this period, the two companies generally marketed their products jointly, although still under separate trademarks. Two years later, in June 1926, the two oldest motor manufacturers merged to form Daimler-Benz AG.

At this point a new trademark was designed, which brought together the main characteristics of both the existing emblems – the world-renowned three-pointed star belonging to Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft was surrounded with its trade name ‘Mercedes’ as well as that of the equally famous name ‘Benz’, whose laurel wreath entwined the two names together.

This trademark, which has changed little over the decades, still adorns Mercedes-Benz vehicles and has come to represent quality and safety on roads everywhere. And throughout the world the name ‘Mercedes-Benz’ is synonymous with tradition, innovation and the future of the automobile.

Wilhelm Maybach, 1846-1929, Companion of Gottlieb Daimler who built the first "Mercedes" in 1901; also known as the "King of Constructors"

Emil Jellinek, already known under the sobriquet 'Monsieur Mercedes' - a name he had borrowed from his daughter

'Mercedes' Jellinek , Emil Jellinek's ten-year-old daughter

The "Mercedes 35 hp", the first modern automobile, 1901.

On June 23, 1902, ‘Mercedes’ was lodged as the trade name and this was legally registered on September 26

Trademark: Three-pointed star of 1909 (upper left). Trademark of Benz & Cie. of 1909 (upper right). Three-pointed star in the circle of 1916 (middle left). The new trademark of the merger of DMG and Benz Cie. in 1926 (middle right). The actual three-pointed star (below).

The merger certificate of 1926 seals the merger between Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft, Untertürkheim, and Benz & Cie., Mannheim.

Trademarks: Mercedes (DMG), Mercedes-Benz (Daimler-Benz AG), Benz (Benz & Cie.).

The joint products bore the brand name "Mercedes-Benz". And the world famous trademark still valid today was derived from merging Daimler's three-pointed star inside a ring with the trade names "Mercedes" and "Benz" that are linked by the laurel wreath from the Benz logo.

Merger between Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft and Benz & Cie.: The merger poster of 1926, with the new brand Mercedes-Benz.

Emil Jellinek (1853 ~ 1918)

Emil Jellinek, known after 1903 as Emil Jellinek-Mercedes (6 April 1853 – 21 January 1918) was a wealthy European entrepreneur who sat on the board of Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft ('DMG') between 1900 and 1909. He specified an engine designed there by Wilhelm Maybach and Gottlieb Daimler for the first 'modern' car. Jellinek required naming the engine after his daughter,[1] Mercedes Jellinek. The Mercedes 35hp model later contributed to the brand name developed in 1926, Mercedes-Benz, when DMG and Benz & Cie. merged into what is now among the largest car brands in the world. Jellinek lived in Vienna, Austria but later moved to Nice on the French Riviera, where he was the General Consul to Austria-Hungary

Early life
Jellinek was born in Leipzig, Germany, the son of Dr Adolf Jellinek (sometimes known also as Aaron Jellinek). His father was a well-known Czech-Hungarian rabbi and intellectual in the Jewish collective around Leipzig and Vienna. Jellinek's mother Rosalie Bettelheim (born 1832 in Budapest, died 1892 in Baden bei Wien) was an active rebbitzen. He had two brothers, both of whom achieved fame: Max Hermann Jellinek as a linguist, and Georg Jellinek as an international law teacher. His sisters were Charlotte and Pauline.

The family moved, shortly after Jellinek's birth, to Vienna. He found paying attention to school work difficult and dropped out of several schools including Sonderhausen. His parents were displeased with his performance, while Jellinek began to indulge in practical jokes. In 1870, when he was 17, his parents found him a job as a clerk in a Moravian railway company, Rot-Koestelec North-Western. Jellinek lasted two years at this company before being sacked when the management discovered that he had been organising train races late at night.
The diplomat and businessman (1872 to 1893)

In 1872, when 19 years old, he moved to France. There, through his father's connections, Schmidl, the Austro-Hungarian Consul in Morocco, requested his services getting Jellinek diplomatic posts at Tangier and Tetouan successively. In Tetouan he met Rachel Goggmann Cenrobert an African born lady of French-Sepharadi descent.

In 1874 he was called up for military service in Vienna but was declared unfit. He resumed his diplomatic career as Austrian vice-consul at Oran, Algeria and also began trading Algerian grown tobacco to Europe in partnership with Rachel's father.

He also worked as an inspector for the French Aigle insurance company and traveled to Vienna briefly in 1881 at the age of 28 to open one of its branch offices. Returning to Oran, he finally married Rachel, and their first two sons Adolph and Fernand were born there.

Adrienne Manuela Ramona Jellinek called Mercedes

Two years later in 1884, Jellinek joined the insurance company full time and moved with the family to Baden bei Wien, Austria, where they lived in the house of a wine dealer named Hanni. In Baden in 1889 his first daughter, Adrienne Manuela Ramona Jellinek, was born on September 16, and called Mercédès, the name Mercédès meaning "gifts" or "favors" in Spanish. Rachel died 4 years after the birth of her daughter. Even so, Jellinek came to believe the name Mercedes brought good fortune and called all his properties after it. One of his sons wrote: “He was as superstious as the ancient Romans.”

Jellinek's insurance business and stock-market trading became very successful, and they started to spend the winters in Nice on the fashionable French Riviera, eventually moving there and establishing links with both international business people and the local aristocracy.

It was in Nice that Jellinek became enthralled by the automobile, studying any information that he could gather about it and purchasing successively: a De Dion-Bouton, a Léon-Bollée Voiturette, both tricycles, and a four-seat Benz motorized-coach.

Helped by his diplomatic career, he became the Austrian Consul General in Nice, Jellinek began selling automobiles, mainly French makes, to European aristocrats spending winter vacations in the region. Associated with the automobile business were Leon Desjoyeaux, from Nice, and C. L. “Charley” Lehmann, from Paris. He acquired a large mansion which he named Villa Mercedes to run the business from and by 1897 he was selling about 140 cars a year and started calling them Mercedes. The car business was by now more profitable than his insurance work.
Rachel died in 1893 and was buried in Nice. In 1899 he married again to Madelaine Henriette Engler (Anaise Jellinek), and had four more children Alain Didier, Guy, Rene and Andree (Maya).

The DMG (Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft), Daimler and Maybach (1896 to 1900)

Emil Jellinek driving his Phoenix car

Seeing an advertisement for a DMG car in the weekly magazine Fliegende Blätter, Jellinek now aged 43 travelled to Cannstatt, Stuttgart in 1896 to find out more about the company and 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.

The car was a Phoenix Double-Phaeton with 8 hp engine and capable of reaching 24  km/h (15  mph). Maybach had designed the DMG-Phoenix engine, which featured four cylinders for the first time in a car, in 1894 when staying at Stuttgart's former Hermann Hotel.

DMG seemed a reliable enterprise, so Jellinek decided to start selling its cars. In 1898 he wrote to DMG requesting six more cars and to become a DMG main agent and distributor. In 1899 he sold 10 cars and in 1900 29. As well as French car makers such as Peugeot and Panhard & Levassor and other makers licensed to sell Daimler engined vehicles in France, there was a shortage of cars and Jellinek benefitted by being able to beat other suppliers lengthy waiting times.

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", "Your car is a cocoon and I want the butterfly" or "Your engineers should be locked up in an insane asylum." This annoyed Daimler but Maybach took notice of many of his suggestions.

Every year in March, the French Riviera celebrated a speed-week, attracting many of the local high-society.
The events included:

• Nice-Castellane 90 km event (long distance race)
• Magagnosc event (touring race)
• Promenade des Anglais (sprint race)
• Nice-La Turbie (hill climb race)
• Monte Carlo (Concours d'elegance)

In 1899 Jellinek entered his cars in all of them. As the usage of pseudonyms was common, he 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.

Using the DMG-Phoenix, Jellinek easily won all the races, reaching 35 km/h (22 mph), but he was still not satisfied with the car.

The Mercedes 35hp (1900)

• Long wheelbase. Wide track.
• Pressed steel chassis.
• Low center of gravity (lower engine).
• 75 km/h (45 mph). 35 hp (950 rpm). 300 to 1000 rpm (driver controlled).
• Light high performance engine: 4 cylinders. Bore/stroke ratio: 116x140 mm. Displacement: 5918 cc. Cylinder heads part of the castings. Carburetor for each pair of cylinders. Controlled intake valves. Two camshafts.
• Low-voltage ignition magnetos.
• Aluminium crankcase (pioneer), horizontally divided.
• Honeycomb radiator.
• Wheel steering.

In 1899 DMG commissioned some engineers including Wilhelm Bauer, Wilhelm Werner and Hermann Braun, to investigate the possibility of using the Phoenix for sporting events as at that time car racing was the best way of generating publicity in Europe.

On March 30, 1900 Wilhelm Bauer decided spontaneously to enter the Nice-La Turbie hill climb but crashed fatally after hitting a rock on the first turn while avoiding spectators. This caused DMG to abandon racing.

Nonetheless, Jellinek came to an agreement with DMG on April 2, 1900 by promising the large sum of 550,000 Goldmark if Wilhelm Maybach would design a revolutionary sports car for him, to be called the Mercedes, of which 36 units had to be delivered before October 15. The deal also included an order for 36 standard DMG 8 hp cars. Jellinek also became a member of DMG 's Board of Management and obtained the exclusive dealership for the new Mercedes for France, Austria, Hungary, Belgium and United States of America. Jellinek had some legal problems over the use of the Daimler name in France with Panhard Levassor who owned the Daimler licences for France, and the use of the Mercedes name put an end to that problem.

Jellinek laid down a strict specification for the Mercedes stating "I don't want a car for today or tomorrow, it will be the car of the day after tomorrow". He itemized many new parameters to overcome the problems found in many of the ill-designed "horseless carriages" of the time which made them unsuitable for high speeds and at risk of overturning:

• Long wheelbase and wide track to provide stability.
• Engine to be better located on the car's chassis.
• Lower center of gravity.
• Electric ignition using the new Bosch system (in lieu of a gas heated glow tube)

The model would be officially called the Daimler-Mercedes which the DMG chairman accepted readily as it overcame the problem of the Daimler name in France being owned by Panhard & Levassor.

Over the next few months, Jellinek oversaw the development of the new car at first by daily telegrams and later by traveling to Stuttgart. He took delivery of the first one on December 22, 1900, at Nice's railway station - it had already been sold to the Baron Henry of Rothschild who had also raced cars in Nice.

In 1901, the car amazed the automobile world. Jellinek again won the Nice races, easily beating his opponents in all the capacity classes and reaching 60 km/h (37 mph). The director of the French Automobile Club, Paul Meyan, stated: "We have entered the Mercedes era", a sentiment echoed by newspapers worldwide.

The records set by the new Mercedes amazed the entire automobile world. DMG's sales shot up, filling its Stuttgart plant to full capacity and consolidating its future as a car making company. The number of employees steadily increased from 340 in 1900 to 2,200 in 1904. In 1902, on June 23, the company decided to use the Mercedes name as the trademark for its entire automobile production and officially registered it on September 26.

Life after the Mercedes success (1900 to 1914)

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. Mercédès.

Jellinek and his enthusiastic associates were distributing DMG-Mercedes models worldwide, six hundred were sold by 1909, making millions for DMG. He supplied cars to all 150 members of Nice's Automobile Club and also supported racing teams all over Europe. His life was absorbed by the business, spending much time away from home, and sending many telegrams.

As the 1900s continued, his passion for the Mercedes began to fade. He tired of the special requests being made by his highly demanding aristocratic customers. He also became disillusioned by DMG's technical department which he called "those donkeys" and built his own large repair facilities at Nice behind Villa Mercedes. Wilhelm Maybach, his favorite designer, left DMG in 1907. He also so angered DMG's chairman that in 1908 he permanently cancelled Jellinek's original contract.
His diplomatic career continued and he was Austro-Hungarian Consulate General in successively Nice (1907), Mexico and Monaco. In 1909 when in Monte Carlo, Jellinek finally severed his commercial activities to concentrate on his consular work but did purchase some casinos in the region.

First World War, his last years (1914 to 1918)

Just before war broke out in 1914 the Austrian government charged Jellinek for taxes on his French properties. The family then moved to Semmering. While being treated at a sanatorium in Kissingen by Dr. Von Dapper, he ceded the Baden mansion to his family, writing: "(The Baden Villa) disturbs me terribly, I cannot sleep and that is detrimental to my health!.".

When Austro-Hungary entered in war on July 28, 1914, Jellinek and his family stopped speaking French outside their property. Later that year, they moved to Meran (France) but there, he was accused of espionage for Germany, supposedly hiding saboteurs in his Mediterranean yachts. At the same time, the Austrians suspected his wife Anaise.

Fleeing in 1917, they finished up in Geneva, in neutral Switzerland, where Emil Jellinek was temporarily arrested again. He stayed there until his death on January 21, 1918, at the age of 64 . All his French properties were later forfeited. In 1982, his remains have rested near Rachel's tomb, in Nice's Catholic Cemetery.

A decade after his death in 1926, amid the German post-war crisis, DMG merged with Benz to become the Daimler-Benz company with their automobiles called Mercedes-Benz. Daimler-Benz purchased Chrysler in 1998 and became DaimlerChrysler until August 2007, when Chrysler was sold off to Cerberus Capital Management. The company is now known as Daimler AG.

Jellinek's properties

In the Mercedes ' global boom in 1900, Jellinek purchased several properties including:

• Mercedes exhibition room in the Champs-Élysées, Paris.
• Grand hotels: Royal and Scribe in Nice and the Astoria, in Paris.

His most important properties were:

• The Villa Mercedes in Nice. No. 57, Promenade des Anglais.
• The Villa Mercedes II in Nice. No. 54, Promenade des Anglais. Bought in 1902.
• Villa Jellinek-Mercedes, Wienerstrasse 39-45, in Baden (next to the original vineyard house). Purchasing it as a building plot in 1891, Jellinek built a large mansion, adding to it progressively from 1909 until it had 50 rooms, 8 bathrooms and 23 toilets. In 1945 the Russian Army destroyed all but the garage and two rooms. Afterwards, the land was divided and sold and is now occupied by a gas station and a smaller building built in 1900.
• Chauteau Robert. An immense house located between Toulon and Nice. Officially it was Jellinek's private residence, though he spent most of the time in the Villa Mercedes of Nice

Karl Benz (1844 ~ 1929)

Karl Benz

Born    November 25, 1844 Mühlburg (Karlsruhe)
Died    April 4, 1929 (aged 84) Ladenburg
Nationality    German
Education    University of Karlsruhe
Spouse    Bertha Ringer
Significant projects    founded Mercedes-Benz
Significant design    Benz Patent Motorwagen
Significant advance    gasoline-powered automobile

Karl Friedrich Benz, (November 25, 1844 – April 4, 1929) was a German engine designer and car engineer, generally regarded as the inventor of the gasoline-powered car, and together with Bertha Benz pioneering founder of the automobile manufacturer Mercedes-Benz. Other German contemporaries, Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach working as partners, also worked on similar types of inventions, without knowledge of the work of the other, but Benz patented his work first and, after that, patented all of the processes that made the internal combustion engine feasible for use in cars. In 1886 Benz was granted a patent for his first car.

Benz's first factory and early inventions (1871 to 1882)

In 1871, at the age of twenty-seven, Karl Benz joined August Ritter in launching a mechanical workshop in Mannheim, also dedicated to supplying construction materials: the Iron Foundry and Mechanical Workshop, later renamed, Factory for Machines for Sheet-metal Working.

The enterprise's first year was a complete disaster. Ritter turned out to be unreliable and local authorities confiscated the business. The difficulty was solved when Benz's fiancée, Bertha Ringer, bought out Ritter's share in the company using her dowry.

In July 20, 1872 Karl Benz and Bertha Ringer married, later having five children: Eugen (1873), Richard (1874), Clara (1877), Thilde (1882), and Ellen (1890).
Despite such business misfortunes, Karl Benz led in the development of new engines in the early factory he and his wife owned. To get more revenues, in 1878 he began to work on new patents. First, he concentrated all his efforts on creating a reliable gas two-stroke engine. Benz finished his two-stroke engine on December 31, 1878, New Year's Eve, and was granted a patent for it in 1879.

Karl Benz showed his real genius, however, through his successive inventions registered while designing what would become the production standard for his two-stroke engine. Benz soon patented the speed regulation system, the ignition using white power sparks with battery, the spark plug, the carburetor, the clutch, the gear shift, and the water radiator.

Benz's Gasmotoren-Fabrik Mannheim (1882 to 1883)

Problems arose again when the banks at Mannheim demanded that Bertha and Karl Benz's enterprise be incorporated due to the high production costs it maintained. The Benz's were forced to improvise an association with photographer Emil Bühler and his brother (a cheese merchant), in order to get additional bank support. The company became the joint-stock company Gasmotoren Fabrik Mannheim in 1882.

After all the necessary incorporation agreements, Benz was unhappy because he was left with merely five percent of the shares and a modest position as director. Worst of all, his ideas weren't considered when designing new products, so he withdrew from that corporation just one year later, in 1883.


Benz & Cie. and the Motorwagen

1885 Benz Patent Motorwagen

1885 Benz Patent Motorwagen

• Three wheels
• Tubular steel frame
• Rack and pinion steering, connected to a driver end tiller; wheel chained to front axle
• Electric ignition
• Differential rear end gears
• (mechanically operated inlet valves)
• Water-cooled internal combustion engine
• Gas or petrol four-stroke horizontally mounted engine
• Single cylinder, Bore 116 mm, Stroke 160 mm
• Patent model: 958 cc, 0.8 hp, 600 W, 16 km/h
• Commercialized model: 1600 cc, ¾ hp, 8 mph (13 km/h)

Benz's lifelong hobby brought him to a bicycle repair shop in Mannheim owned by Max Rose and Friedrich Wilhelm Eßlinger. In 1883, the three founded a new company producing industrial machines: Benz & Company Rheinische Gasmotoren-Fabrik, usually referred to as, Benz & Cie. Quickly growing to twenty-five employees, it soon began to produce static gas engines as well.

Early logo used on automobiles by Karl Benz

The success of the company gave Benz the opportunity to indulge in his old passion of designing a horseless carriage. Based on his experience with, and fondness for, bicycles, he used similar technology when he created an automobile. It featured wire wheels (unlike carriages' wooden ones) with a four-stroke engine of his own design between the rear wheels, with a very advanced coil ignition  and evaporative cooling rather than a radiator. Power was transmitted by means of two roller chains to the rear axle. Karl Benz finished his creation in 1885 and named it the Benz Patent Motorwagen.

It was the first automobile entirely designed as such to generate its own power, not simply a motorized stage coach or horse carriage, which is why Karl Benz was granted his patent and is regarded as its inventor.

The Motorwagen was patented on January 29, 1886 as DRP-37435: "automobile fueled by gas". The 1885 version was difficult to control, leading to a collision with a wall during a public demonstration. The first successful tests on public roads were carried out in the early summer of 1886. The next year Benz created the Motorwagen Model 2 which had several modifications, and in 1887, the definitive Model 3 with wooden wheels was introduced, showing at the Paris Expo the same year.

Official signpost of Bertha Benz Memorial Route, commemorating the world's first long distance journey with a Benz Patent-Motorwagen Number 3 in 1888

Benz began to sell the vehicle (advertising it as the Benz Patent Motorwagen) in the late summer of 1888, making it the first commercially available automobile in history. The second customer of the Motorwagen was a Parisian bicycle manufacturer  Emile Roger who had already been building Benz engines under license from Karl Benz for several years. Roger added the Benz automobiles (many built in France) to the line he carried in Paris and initially most were sold there.

Engine of the Benz Patent Motorwagen

Replica of the Benz Patent Motorwagen built in 1885

Early customers could only buy gasoline from pharmacies that sold small quantities as a cleaning product. The early-1888 version of the Motorwagen had no gears and could not climb hills unaided. This limitation was rectified after Bertha Benz made her famous trip driving one of the vehicles a great distance and suggested to her husband the addition of another gear.

An important part in the Benz story is this first long distance automobile trip, where entrepreneurial Bertha Benz, supposedly without the knowledge of her husband, on the morning of August 5, 1888, took this vehicle on a 106 km (65 mile) trip from Mannheim to Pforzheim to visit her mother, taking her sons Eugen and Richard with her. In addition to having to locate pharmacies on the way to fuel up, she repaired various technical and mechanical problems and invented brake lining. After some longer downhill slopes she ordered a shoemaker to nail leather on the brake blocks. Bertha Benz and sons finally arrived at nightfall, announcing the achievement to Karl by telegram. It had been her intention to demonstrate the feasibility of using the Benz Motorwagen for travel and to obtain publicity that would make people aware of it, in the manner now referred to as, live marketing. Today the event is celebrated every two years in Germany with an antique automobile rally. In 2008 Bertha Benz Memorial Route was officially approved as a route of industrial heritage of mankind, because it follows Bertha Benz's tracks of the world's first long-distance journey by automobile in 1888. Now everybody can follow the 194 km of signposted route from Mannheim via Heidelberg to Pforzheim (Black Forest) and back.

Benz's Model 3 made its wide-scale debut to the world in the 1889 World's Fair in Paris, and about twenty-five Motorwagens were built between 1886 and 1893.

Benz & Cie. expansion

The great demand for stationary, static internal combustion engines forced Karl Benz to enlarge the factory in Mannheim, and in 1886 a new building located on Waldhofstrasse (operating until 1908) was added. Benz & Cie. had grown in the interim from 50 employees in 1889 to 430 in 1899.

During the last years of the nineteenth century, Benz was the largest automobile company in the world with 572 units produced in 1899.

First bus in history: a Benz truck modified by Netphener company (1895)

Because of its size, in 1899, Benz & Cie. became a joint-stock company with the arrival of Friedrich von Fischer and Julius Ganß, who came aboard as members of the Board of Management. Ganß worked in the commercialization department, which is somewhat similar to marketing in contemporary corporations.

Benz "Velo" model presentation in London 1898

The new directors recommended that Benz should create a less expensive automobile suitable for mass production. In 1893, Karl Benz created the Victoria, a two-passenger automobile with a 3-hp engine, which could reach the top speed of 11 mph and had a pivotal front axle operated by a roller-chained tiller for steering. The model was successful with 85 units sold in 1893.

Karl Benz introduced the Velo in 1894, becoming the first production automobile

The Benz Velo also participated in the first automobile race, the 1894 Paris to Rouen Rally.

In 1895, Benz designed the first truck in history, with some of the units later modified by the first motor bus company: the Netphener, becoming the first motor buses in history.

Bertha Benz with her husband Karl Benz in a Benz Viktoria, model 1894

In 1896, Karl Benz was granted a patent for his design of the first flat engine. It had horizontally opposed pistons, a design in which the corresponding pistons reach top dead centre simultaneously, thus balancing each other with respect to momentum. Flat engines with four or fewer cylinders are most commonly called boxer engines, boxermotor in German, and also are known as horizontally opposed engines. This design is still used by Porsche, Subaru, and some high performance engines used in racing cars. In motorcycles, the most famous boxer engine is found in BMW motorcycles,though the boxer engine design was used in many other models, including Zundapp, Wooler, Douglas Dragonfly, Ratier, Universal, IMZ-Ural, Dnepr, Gnome et Rhône, Chang Jiang, Marusho, and the Honda Gold Wing.

Logo with laurels used on Benz & Cie automobiles after 1909

Although Gottlieb Daimler died in March 1900—and there is no evidence that Benz and Daimler knew each other nor that they knew about each other's early achievements—eventually, competition with Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG) in Stuttgart began to challenge the leadership of Benz & Cie. In October 1900 the main designer of DMG, Wilhelm Maybach, built the engine that would be used later, in the Mercedes-35hp of 1902. The engine was built to the specifications of Emil Jellinek under a contract for him to purchase thirty-six vehicles with the engine and for him to become a dealer of the special series. Jellinek stipulated the new engine be named Daimler-Mercedes (for his daughter). Maybach would quit DMG in 1907, but he designed the model and all of the important changes. After testing, the first was delivered to Jellinek on December 22, 1900. Jellinek continued to make suggestions for changes to the model and obtained good results racing the automobile in the next few years, encouraging DMG to engage in commercial production of automobiles, which they did in 1902.

Benz countered with Parsifil, introduced in 1903 with a vertical twin engine that achieved a top speed of 37 mph (60 km/h). Then, without consulting Benz, the other directors hired some French designers. France was a country with an extensive automobile industry based on Maybach's creations. Because of this action, after difficult discussions, Karl Benz announced his retirement from design management on January 24, 1903, although he remained as director on the Board of Management through its merger with DMG in 1926 and, remained on the board of the new Daimler-Benz corporation until his death in 1929.

Benz's sons Eugen and Richard left Benz & Cie. in 1903, but Richard returned to the company in 1904 as the designer of passenger vehicles.
That year, sales of Benz & Cie. reached 3,480 automobiles, and the company remained the leading manufacturer of automobiles.

Along with continuing as a director of Benz & Cie., Karl Benz soon would found another company—with his son, Eugen—closely held within the family, manufacturing automobiles under another brand and using a French spelling variant of Benz's first name for the first initial of the privately held company (see discussion in the next section).

Blitzen Benz

In 1909, the Blitzen Benz was built in Mannheim by Benz & Cie. The bird-beaked vehicle had a 21.5-liter (1312ci), 200 horsepower (150 kW) engine, and on November 9, 1909 in the hands of Victor Hémery of France,[6] the land speed racer at Brooklands, set a record of 226.91 km/h (141.94 mph), said to be "faster than any plane, train, or automobile" at the time, a record that was not exceeded for ten years by any other vehicle. It was transported to several countries, including the United States, to establish multiple records of this achievement.

1909 Blitzen Benz - built by Benz & Cie., which held the land speed record

Benz Söhne (1906 to 1923)

Karl Benz, Bertha Benz, and their son, Eugen, moved 10 km east of Mannheim to live in nearby Ladenburg, and solely with their own capital, founded the private company, C. Benz Sons (German: Benz Söhne) in 1906, producing automobiles and gas engines. The latter type was replaced by petrol engines because lack of demand.

Logo on family held business production vehicles

This company never issued stocks publicly, building its own line of automobiles independently from Benz & Cie., which was located in Mannheim. The Benz Sons automobiles were of good quality and became popular in London as taxis.
In 1912, Karl Benz liquidated all of his shares in Benz Sons and left this family-held company in Ladenburg to Eugen and Richard, but he remained as a director of Benz & Cie.

Karl and Bertha Benz c. 1914 (collection of Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH)

During a birthday celebration for him in his home town of Karlsruhe on November 25, 1914, the seventy year-old Karl Benz was awarded an honorary doctorate by his alma mater, the Karlsruhe University, thereby becoming—Dr. Ing. h. c. Karl Benz.

Almost from the very beginning of the production of automobiles, participation in sports car racing became a major method to gain publicity for manufacturers. At first, the production models were raced and the Benz Velo participated in the first automobile race: Paris to Rouen 1894. Later, investment in developing racecars for motorsports produced returns through sales generated by the association of the name of the automobile with the winners. Unique race vehicles were built at the time, as seen in the photograph here of the Benz, the first mid-engine and aerodynamically designed, Tropfenwagen, a "teardrop" body introduced at the 1923 European Grand Prix at Monza.

1923 Benz "Teardrop" aerodynamic racecar

In the last production year of the Benz Sons company, 1923, three hundred and fifty units were built. During the following year, 1924, Karl Benz built two additional 8/25 hp units of the automobile manufactured by this company, tailored for his personal use, which he never sold; they are still preserved.

Toward Daimler-Benz and the first Mercedes-Benz in 1926

The German economic crisis worsened. In 1923 Benz & Cie. produced only 1,382 units in Mannheim, and DMG made only 1,020 in Stuttgart. The average cost of an automobile was 25 million marks because of rapid inflation. Negotiations between the two companies resumed and in 1924 they signed an Agreement of Mutual Interest valid until the year 2000. Both enterprises standardized design, production, purchasing, sales, and advertising—marketing their automobile models jointly—although keeping their respective brands.

On June 28, 1926, Benz & Cie. and DMG finally merged as the Daimler-Benz company, baptizing all of its automobiles, Mercedes Benz, honoring the most important model of the DMG automobiles, the 1902 Mercedes-35hp, along with the Benz name. The name of that DMG model had been selected after ten-year-old Mercedes Jellinek, the daughter of Emil Jellinek who had set the specifications for the new model. Between 1900 and 1909 he was a member of DMG's board of management and long before the merger Jellinek had resigned.

Karl Benz was a member of the new Daimler Benz board of management for the remainder of his life. A new logo was created, consisting of a three pointed star (representing Daimler's motto: "engines for land, air, and water") surrounded by traditional laurels from the Benz logo, and the brand of all of its automobiles was labeled Mercedes Benz. Model names would follow the brand name in the same convention as today.

The next year, 1927, the number of units sold tripled to 7,918 and the diesel line was launched for truck production. In 1928 the Mercedes-Benz SSK was presented.

On April 4, 1929, Karl Benz died at home in Ladenburg at the age of eighty-four from a bronchial inflammation. Until her death on May 5, 1944, Bertha Benz continued to reside in their last home. Members of the family resided in the home for thirty more years. The Benz home now has been designated as historic and is used as a scientific meeting facility for a nonprofit foundation, the Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz Foundation, that honors both Bertha and Karl Benz for their roles in the history of automobiles.

Last home of Karl and Bertha Benz, now the location of the Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz Foundation in Ladenburg, in Baden-Württemberg

In popular culture

In 2011 a dramatized television movie about the life of Karl and Bertha Benz was made named Carl & Bertha which premiered on 11 May and was aired by Das Erste on 23 May. A trailer of the movie and a "making of" special were released on YouTube.