mercedes benz history

The Mercedes-Benz Museum as it was, 1962. Photo copyright Mercedes-Benz Classic and used with permission.

Text by Charley Seavey
Photos by Charley Seavey unless otherwise noted

This article would not have been written without the cooperation, and no small amount of work, on the part of Christian Biederstaedt, Archivist at Mercedes-Benz Classic. He provided all the technical information about the engines, and identified some of the cars that I could not.

Long ago, two young Army guys with three days off loaded up a car with cameras and set forth from Rothwesten, in what was then West Germany, and headed down the Autobahn to visit the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart.

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Stirling Moss at Monaco, 1955 with the Mercedes-Benz W196. With Fangio, the Mercedes team would win every Grand Prix that year aside from Monaco, where they retired with mechanical problems. Photo from author’s collection.

Chinese Grand Prix by Pete Vack

Photos courtesy and copyright Ferrari Media, unless otherwise noted

Mercedes-Benz won their first F1 race since 1955. That in itself is surprising, but the most significant aspect of their victory was the long struggle to achieve a true Mercedes-Benz win. The difficulties in succeeding in F1 today (already noted with great loss of dollars by Toyota, Jaguar, Honda, Porsche and others), demolished the tradition of German engineering supremacy, a shock and awe technique which once caused fear and loathing in its competitors.
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