9 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Mercedes-Benz

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9 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes-Benz has a fair claim to being the most technologically influential car company in history. Ever since Karl Benz introduced what's widely considered the first true automobile back in 1886, the company has been quietly responsible for a long list of "firsts" that most drivers today take for granted. Here are nine facts about Mercedes-Benz that don't get talked about nearly enough.

1. Gottlieb Daimler basically invented the motorcycle by accident

In 1885, Daimler built a single-cylinder vertical gasoline engine and, needing somewhere to test it, bolted it onto a wooden frame built around a bicycle. The result — nicknamed the Reitwagen, or "riding wagon" — is now widely recognized as the first true motorcycle, even though that was never really the point of the project.

2. The first Mercedes-Benz introduced the modern car to the world

Karl Benz patented his three-wheeled, gasoline-powered Motorwagen in 1886. It ran on a 954cc single-cylinder engine producing all of 0.9 horsepower — not much by today's standards, but enough for his wife, Bertha Benz, to take it on a 120-mile round trip across Germany without telling him. That drive is often credited as the first real road test of an automobile, and it did more to prove the car's practicality than any advertisement could have.

3. Mercedes-Benz built a hybrid car back in 1906

Long before "hybrid" was a marketing term, early automakers were experimenting with combining electric and gasoline power. Mercedes' entry into that space was the Mixte, which paired a gas engine up front with a dynamo that fed electric motors mounted at the rear axle. Despite the unusual setup, it could hit a genuinely impressive 75 mph.

4. Mercedes was ahead of the curve on brakes and suspension

By the summer of 1924, every Mercedes-Benz car came with four-wheel brakes as standard — a serious safety upgrade for the era. The company kept pushing in that direction, and by 1931, the Mercedes-Benz 170 introduced independent suspension at all four corners, years before that became common elsewhere in the industry.

5. The famous Silver Arrow color happened by accident

Most people assume Mercedes chose silver for its racing cars on purpose. It didn't — not at first. Before a 1934 race at the Nürburgring, the team's W25 race car was found to be a kilogram over the 750kg weight limit the night before the event. With no other easy way to shed weight, the crew stripped the white paint off the bodywork, exposing bare aluminum underneath. The car won the race, and the "Silver Arrow" look stuck around ever since.

6. Crumple zones were a Mercedes invention

While American automakers in the early 1950s largely believed that more metal meant more safety, Mercedes-Benz engineer Béla Barényi was taking the opposite approach. His research led to a patented design for structural "crash zones" — sections of the car's body engineered to deform and absorb impact energy in a crash, protecting the passenger cabin. Mercedes began applying the technology to production cars in 1959, and the concept is now standard across the entire industry.

7. AMG started life in a garage, not a factory

Today, AMG badges more than 50 vehicles across Mercedes' lineup, but the brand's roots are far humbler. It was founded in the late 1960s by two former Daimler-Benz motorsport engineers. Their heavily modified 300 SEL 6.8 — nicknamed the "Red Pig" — finished second overall at the 1971 24 Hours of Spa, and that result put AMG on the map. It stayed an independent tuning outfit for years before Mercedes officially brought it in-house and began selling AMG models through its own dealer network starting in 1990.

8. Anti-lock brakes were developed specifically for the S-Class

ABS lets a driver keep steering control during hard braking instead of skidding in a straight line, and it's credited with preventing countless accidents. Mercedes developed the technology alongside Bosch through the 1970s and introduced it on the S-Class in 1978, making it one of the first production cars in the world to offer the feature. It wasn't long before ABS became standard across the rest of the Mercedes lineup — and eventually, the industry.

9. Certified Pre-Owned Mercedes vehicles come with an unlimited-mileage warranty

New Mercedes models carry a premium price tag that reflects nearly a century of engineering and safety innovation — but the brand's Certified Pre-Owned (CPO) program is designed to make that same engineering more accessible. Every CPO Mercedes-Benz comes backed by an unlimited-mileage warranty for up to five years, along with several other perks only available through authorized Mercedes-Benz dealers.

Mercedes-AMG and the McLaren Partnership

AMG became a majority-owned division of Mercedes-Benz in 1998 and was folded into DaimlerChrysler the following year, officially becoming Mercedes-Benz AMG as of January 1, 1999.

Mercedes also had a notable run with McLaren. Between 2003 and 2009, the two companies jointly built a limited-run sports car, the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, an extension of a broader partnership that also saw Mercedes supply engines to the McLaren Formula One team. Production of the SLR wound down in 2009, and McLaren went on to develop its own car independently — the MP4-12C, launched in 2011.

As part of Daimler AG, the Mercedes-Benz Cars division also oversees production of the Smart and Maybach brands.

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