Mercedes-Benz 35 PS

The first Mercedes at a glance

Emil Jellinek and the order of 1900

Emil Jellinek was a wealthy Austro-Hungarian businessman and diplomat on the Côte d'Azur who sold Daimler cars in France, Italy and Switzerland. He also raced them under the pseudonym "Monsieur Mercedes", taken from the nickname of his daughter Adriana Manuela Ramona, then about ten years old.

The turning point came on 30 March 1900. In the Nice–La Turbie hill climb a Daimler Phoenix entered by Jellinek crashed, and DMG's chief mechanic Wilhelm Bauer was killed. DMG withdrew from racing. Jellinek answered with a demand for a lower, longer, more powerful car, and on 2 April 1900 he ordered it in large numbers; English Wikipedia gives 36 cars. He also asked for a new name. The Daimler name was already licensed to Panhard in France, so the cars were to carry the name Mercedes. DMG first used the Mercedes trademark on 23 June 1902 and registered it on 26 September 1902. Jellinek himself took the surname Jellinek-Mercedes in June 1903.

Development and the first deliveries

Wilhelm Maybach led the design, and English Wikipedia also credits Paul Daimler. Maybach tested the first car on 22 November 1900, and Jellinek took delivery of the first one on 22 December 1900.

The start in competition was difficult. In January 1901 the cars appeared at Pau but lasted only a few laps. Two months later, at the Nice week of March 1901, the result was very different. Jellinek's team ran five cars, and driver Wilhelm Werner raised the average speed record for the Nice–La Turbie climb from 31.3 km/h (19.4 mph) to 51.4 km/h (31.9 mph); top speeds reached 86 km/h (53 mph). Paul Meyan, director of the Automobile Club de France, remarked that the Mercedes era had begun. Between March and August 1901 DMG added two smaller models on the same principles, the 12/16 PS and the 8/11 PS.

Engine: how the car made 26 kW

The four cylinders were cast in grey iron in pairs, with fixed heads, and sat on a horizontally split aluminium crankcase, the first of its kind at Daimler. The main bearings were made of magnalium, an aluminium alloy with 5% magnesium. With a bore of 116 mm and a stroke of 140 mm, the engine displaced 5,918 cc according to English Wikipedia; German Wikipedia gives 5,913 cc. It produced 26 kW (35 PS) at 950 rpm and 77 Nm at 400 rpm.

Several details broke with the engines of the 1890s:

• Inlet valves: opened by camshafts driven by gears from the flywheel side, not by cylinder suction as before.
• Ignition: a low-voltage magneto with make-and-break contacts, fitted at Jellinek's insistence in place of hot-tube ignition.
• Mixture: two carburettors, each feeding one pair of cylinders.
• Control: a lever on the steering wheel varied engine speed between about 300 and 1,000 rpm.
• Starting: a hand crank with a decompressor.

The engine weighed about 230 kg, roughly 90 kg less than its predecessor's unit according to German Wikipedia, or about 6.6 kg per horsepower.

Chassis, radiator and gearbox

The car stood on a frame of pressed steel with a U-shaped cross-section, lighter and stronger than the wooden and tube frames of the time. The engine was bolted directly to the frame and sat low over the front axle, which lowered the centre of gravity. Both axles were rigid, on semi-elliptic leaf springs, and the steering column was raked back.

Cooling came from Maybach's honeycomb radiator. It used 8,070 square tubes of 6 × 6 mm and needed only 9 litres of water, half the capacity of his earlier tube radiator, with a fan behind it for low speeds.

A single lever moving in a gate selected four forward speeds and reverse, and roller chains drove the rear wheels. The wooden artillery wheels had twelve spokes and pneumatic tyres, 910 mm tall at the front and 1,020 mm at the rear. Drum brakes of 30 cm on the rear wheels worked from a hand lever, and a pedal braked the chain-drive countershaft. The racing two-seater could take an extra rear body section, fitted in a few minutes, to carry four.

The 1901 Mercedes range

Performance in context

A weight of about 1,200 kg and 26 kW give about 21 kW per tonne. That sounds modest today, but on the roads of 1901 it meant 70–75 km/h for a road car. The racing version passed 85 km/h. Our power-to-weight calculator puts the figure next to any modern car.

The gap to the first cars of 1886 shows how quickly the motor car moved on. The Benz Patent-Motorwagen Nr. 1 had 0.5 kW and about 16 km/h; fifteen years later the Mercedes had 26 kW, roughly fifty times as much, and its racing version passed 85 km/h. Its engine alone, at about 230 kg, weighed almost as much as the whole Benz tricycle.

Legacy of the first Mercedes

The car started the Mercedes line of cars, and DMG's cars were sold as Mercedes until the merger with Benz & Cie., after which the brand became Mercedes-Benz in 1926. English Wikipedia describes the car as a major advance over modified stagecoaches and regards it as the first modern car. It began life as a racing car and was then adapted for the road, with two extra rear seats for family use. The full company story is in our history of Mercedes-Benz, and Maybach's later life and the brand that carries his name are covered in our Maybach history.

Photo gallery