A good brand name has international appeal. 'Mercedes' is one of the most famous and most traditional: from 1900 onwards, it was used to brand the innovative passenger cars made by Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft, and, together with its outstanding vehicle and engine technology, it gave the company worldwide recognition and thus shaped personal mobility as a whole.

In 1926, the brand was extended to produce Mercedes-Benz – while its significance on all continents remained unchanged. For the oldest luxury car brand in the world, its name is both the basis and incentive to carry this outstanding tradition into the future.

Businessman and motorcar enthusiast Emil Jellinek was well aware of the importance of a brand name that was easy to remember. At the beginning of April 1900, he concluded an agreement with Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG) in Nice on the distribution of Daimler cars and engines.

The decision to develop a new engine, which was to bear the name Daimler-Mercedes, was a further ground-breaking step: it meant that the name that Jellinek had been using as a pseudonym for several years became the product name. On December 22, 1900, DMG delivered the first car equipped with the new engine to Nice, a 35 PS racing car.

The vehicle was not only the newest and most powerful model produced by DMG – it has since come to be recognised as the very first modern motorcar.

The Mercedes 35 PS was systematically designed for performance, weight savings and safety, its key features including a lightweight high-performance engine, a long wheelbase and a low centre of gravity. With these attributes and the honeycomb radiator organically integrated into the front, it gave the motorcar its own distinct form: the first Mercedes was no longer reminiscent of a carriage pulled along by a combustion engine instead of horses.

Rather, it was a new construction which had been systematically designed from scratch for the innovative new type of drive. Experts were immediately aware that this vehicle marked a profound change in the field of automotive engineering. Paul Meyan, the founding member and secretary-general of the motorcar Club de France (A.C.F.), is on record as having commented: “We have entered the Mercédès era.”