Beschreibung:

We have Emil Jellinek to thank for the existence of the ‘Mercedes’ marque. Jellinek, a wealthy Leipzig-born merchant, was an admirer of the cars of Gottlieb Daimler, and commissioned the pioneering manufacturer to construct a new car that had to light, fast and beautiful, backing his proposal by paying up front for 36 cars at a total cost of 550,000 gold marks. Designed by Daimler’s collaborator Wilhelm Maybach, this 5.9-litre, 35hp model marked the watershed between the era of the ‘horseless carriage’ and that of the modern motorcar. Advanced features included a pressed-steel chassis, aluminum cylinder block, ‘honeycomb radiator, atomising carburetor and gate-change gearbox. Starkly finished in purest white, Maybach’s creation debuted at the Nice Speed Week on March 25th 1901. The car was owned by Baron Henri de Rothschild and driven by Wilhelm Werner but had been entered by Jellinek under the pseudonym ‘Mercedes’, his daughter’s name. (At this time Panhard-Levassor owned the sales rights to Daimler cars in France, hence the need for subterfuge!). Werner drove the car to victory at Nice at an average speed of 32mph and two days later achieved a maximum speed of 53.5mph along the Promenade des Anglais, unparalleled performances that emphatically outclassed the opposition. “We have entered the Mercedes era,” stated Paul Meyan, General Secretary of the Automobile Club de France, an astute observation that was confirmed by the number of manufacturers on both sides of the Atlantic that copied the design. Indeed, so successful was the Mercedes, that Daimler adopted the name for its passenger cars in 1902. An entire range of cars of varying capacities and power outputs followed - most notably the Mercedes Simplex - all based on that revolutionary original. Following the departure of Wilhelm Maybach from Mercedes in 1907, the company, along with several others, withdrew from active participation in motor sport, but by 1908/9 were producing an excellent range of poppet valve, shaft driven touring cars. These were the work of Paul Daimler, Maybach’s successor, who had returned to the company from Austro-Daimler. Privateers still campaigned Mercedes products in sport, and in the fashionable endurance events of the time achieved major successes. Not the least of these was the magnificent 1-2-3 victory of three Mercedes 16/50hp cars in the grueling 2,000 mile Tsar Nicholas St Petersburg-Moscow St Petersburg Trial of 1910. This Mercedes 40hp was first owned by Colonel John Jacob Astor IV, a member of the prominent Astor family that had arrived in the USA from Germany in 1784. John Jacob Astor I founded a successful fur trading company in New York City, and by the end of the 19th Century the Astors had become America’s wealthiest family. A businessman, inventor and writer, John Jacob Astor IV served as a lieutenant colonel in the Spanish-American War, while his business interests were mainly in real estate, which included the original Waldorf-Astoria hotel. Society was scandalized by his divorce in 1909 and subsequent marriage, aged 47, to a much younger woman, the 18-year old Madeleine Talmadge Force, prompting the couple to honeymoon out of the country. They were returning home on board the RMS Titanic when that ill-fated vessel struck an iceberg and sank on April 15th 1912. The pregnant Madeleine survived, but John Jacob Astor IV was among the more than 1,500 victims of the disaster.