“Timeless – 60 Years of the Mercedes-Benz SL” shows this sports car family for the first time and gathers no gaps, including the racing car 300 SL (W 194), the legendary winning car of the Carrera Panamericana in 1952, the 190 SL (W 121 ) of U.S. astronaut David R. Scott in 1958, the 1963 230 SL (W 113) Liege-Sofia-Liege rally car driven by Eugen Böhringer, the 2001 Formula 1 season Safety Car SL 55 AMG (R 230) and also the newest SL (R 231).

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Pictures: MB Passion

The impressive racing successes of the “gullwing” became the basis for the worldwide fascination for the SL model series from Mercedes-Benz which has continued undiminished to the present day. The trade fair presentation is organised in coordination with Mercedes-Benz France.

“At the Rétromobile in Paris we are showing three original vehicles from our collection, cars that achieved success at Le Mans” says Michael Bock, head of Mercedes-Benz Classic and manager of Mercedes-Benz Museum GmbH. “The race is one of the most gruelling in the world. Winning the race was a great distinction.” Next to an original 1952 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL (W 194 series), the brand is showing a 1931model SSK and a Sauber-Mercedes C9 from 1989 at its 400-square metre fair stand in Hall 3.

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Famous vehicles at the Rétromobile
300 SL – that was the designation of the competition vehicle with which in 1952 Mercedes-Benz returned to international motor sports for the first time since WW II. The development of the 300 SL can be traced back to the year 1950: the engineers pushed forward the development of the new racing car, some of whose components came from the Mercedes-Benz 300 representative saloon, the so-called “Adenauer Mercedes”. In June 1951 the Board decided to renew participation in racing sports, starting in 1952, and commissioned the construction of the 300 SL. The letters in its designation stand for “Super Light”.

In 1952 the Hermann Lang/Fritz Rieß team won the 20th edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans in their Mercedes-Benz 300 SL (W 194 series), ahead of Theo Helfrich and Helmut Niedermayr. The entire 1952 racing season was exceptionally successful for Mercedes-Benz. The other racing results reaped by the 300 SL that year: second and fourth places in the Mille Miglia rally, a triple victory at the Bern Sports Car Grand Prix, a fourfold triumph at the Great Jubilee prize at Nürburgring and a double victory in the third Carrera Panamericana in Mexico. Thus, the brand made its comeback to motor sports – and through the publicity effect generated, to the international markets – with a mighty fanfare.

The 300 SL (W 194 series) on show at the Rétromobile 2012 is an original vehicle with chassis number 06. In all, 10 racing vehicles were made. The first 300 SL, the premiere car from 1952, no longer exists; it remained in company ownership and was eventually scrapped. The second car still exists and was painstakingly restored at the Mercedes-Benz Classic Center in Fellbach in 2011. It is the oldest extant SL and, together with two other W 194s, belongs to the Mercedes-Benz Classic collection.

Racing sports as a driving force of innovation
The other Mercedes-Benz vehicles on exhibition at the Rétromobile 2012 underscore the innovation capacity of the brand as well as its competitive zest: the silver-coloured 1989 Sauber-Mercedes C9 was specially developed for the Group C series. Because, after more than 30 years’ abstinence from racing, Mercedes-Benz officially resumed its position at the starting line in 1988. Under the carbon-aramide-fibre reinforced synthetic bodywork, throbbed the heart of the featherweight 870 kilo Sauber-Mercedes C9: a water-cooled V8 engine delivering 720 bhp (520 kW). The 24-hour race that took place at Le Mans on 10-11 June 1989 was won by Mercedes drivers Jochen Mass/Manuel Reuter/Stanley Dickens and Mauro Baldi/Kenny Acheson/Gianfranco Brancatelli with a double victory – 37 years after the first– and until then, only – victory on that legendary racetrack.

The Mercedes-Benz SSK also on show at the Rétromobile 2012 is considered the summit of a six-cylinder series which debuted in the 1920s, in the times of the DMG (Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft or Daimler Engine Company). For many years the S, SS, SSK models and the lightweight variant SSKL dominated international racing – often with Rudolf Caracciola at the wheel. On 13 and 14 June 1931 the duo Boris Iwanowski/Henri Stoffel drove the fastest lap at Le Mans, 7 : 03 minutes (139.2 km/h), going on to reach the second place in the overall result of the 24-hour race.

Source: Daimler AG

The original SL was presented to the stunned press on 12 March 1952 on the motorway between Stuttgart and Heilbronn – a surprise coup absolutely in line with the later great sports successes of the W 194.Because the 1952 racing season was exceptionally successful for Mercedes-Benz. These were the results reaped by the 300 SL that year: second and fourth places at the Mille Miglia, a triple victory at the Bern Sports Car Grand Prix, a double win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, a fourfold triumph at the Great Jubilee Prize at Nürburgring and a double victory in the 3rd Carrera Panamericana in Mexico. The brand returned to motor sports – and through the publicity effect, to the international markets – with a great fanfare.

In the Second World War post-era at the beginning of the 1950s, characterised by the reconstruction in Germany, this was a decisively important signal, for great parts of the country still lay in ruins. The production plants and office buildings of the then Daimler-Benz AG were not all fully rebuilt yet, either. However, the incipient “economic miracle”, as the economic revival was to be called, could already be felt. And the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL fitted in perfectly: rising, one could say, like a phoenix from its ashes, it led the way for the brand to return to its erstwhile splendour.

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The very looks of the vehicle helped here, for with its slender, elegant matt silver-coloured bodywork and its large Mercedes star in the radiator grille, it embodied high speed even while standing perfectly still. And then there were its gullwing doors, in the case of the very first W 194 series, very short indeed, resembling entry hatches more than actual doors: they lent the racing car a very characteristic aspect – and were instrumental in creating the SL myth. The vehicle with chassis number 2 had these short gullwing doors, making it the oldest SL, and at the same time the only one in existence anywhere in the world today with this particular feature.

Restoration of the 300 SL with chassis number 2
The first 300 SL, the premiere vehicle from 1952, no longer exists; it was property of the factory and was eventually scrapped. However, the second car built, with chassis number 194 010 00002/52 still exists and has remained in the property of the firm ever since it was built in 1951/52. The “/2” embossed on diverse parts bears witness to their genuine nature. This oldest SL in existence was painstakingly restored for the “60 years of the SL” anniversary to be celebrated in 2012. To do this, the Mercedes-Benz Classic Center in Fellbach examined every single part of the entirely disassembled vehicle and wherever necessary reconditioned the component in line with the highest standards of authenticity and quality. The work was based on one clear principle: to preserve substance and patina in every way; at the same time, as far as possible the vehicle was to look as it did in 1952: thus, the second 300 SL (W 194) ever built shines again in new splendour – while displaying the traces of a long and exciting vehicle life with pride.

In the course of the restoration work, first of all, the space frame, the actual backbone of the vehicle, was measured using the most advanced methods. The result: the dimensional deviations were well within the acceptable tolerance range, even after 60 years. This is where the advantages of Number 2’s individual history become evident. Because although the vehicle was used in racing events in 1952, it was never used as a racing car, only as a training and replacement vehicle, for instance in the Bern Sports Car Grand Prix. And this SL was never involved in an accident, either, which also contributed to its overall very good condition today.

A vehicle with character
The W 194 with chassis number “2” is one of two vehicles built that share a special history: number 1 and number 2 were built by hand in Rudolf Uhlenhaut’s Stuttgart-Untertürkheim racing workshop. The following eight vehicles, which were used mainly in the racing events of the year 1952, were manufactured more rationally in the Sindelfingen factory, for instance using pressed parts for the chassis – without using large-series production methods, though.

In those days it was usual to build racing cars more or less as individual items, because each one was designed directly with its specific task in mind. And during the car’s assembly, too, the basic design was modified again and again in order to seek the very best results. This made a unique specimen of each W 194 in a sense – the first two having a much stronger aura of handcrafted one-of-a-kind specimens.
This special character of Number 2 is visible in many of its components: for instance the welding seams show clearly that they were made by hand. Or for example the exhaust system, the fuel tank, the windscreen washer fluid reservoir and the seat frames are all recognisably individually crafted.

Its lightweight design was a great asset for the W 194. This can be seen in its aluminium-magnesium-sheet metal body, which in this vehicle is very thin. It is also evident in the diverse components that are made lighter by means of perforations, for example the front axle, even the handbrake lever. Every gram is skimped on –and that’s why the expensive material magnesium is used, for instance, on the transmission bell, and the rear axle- and steering gear housings. Other components are consistently made from aluminium, for example the fuel tank, the washer fluid reservoir and the main brake cylinder. And the effort is worthwhile: the ready-to-drive W 194 had an unladen weight of just 1060 kilograms.

The sum total of the effort and sums invested show the W 194 to have been a costly project, i.e. a project with prestige character indeed: the company was prepared to invest at that time in order to regain prestige on the international level through the positive publicity effect of the racing successes. And the plan bears fruit, exactly as expected.

Restoring the bodywork
The restoration of the original bodywork was particularly complex and demanding. It was made from very thin aluminium-magnesium sheet metal and was thus by its very nature delicate. In addition, time has left its marks on it in many places, including the marks of earlier partial restoration efforts. In some places the bodywork was very deformed. The experts now went to work with the objective of returning the vehicle to its original aspect of being all “of one piece”. The experts’ work towards the original restored bodywork took around five months, from May to September 2011. The overall character was preserved. Irregularities on the body surface as well as a left-hand-right-hand asymmetry were retained – the original bodywork was hand-made: this is a part of the vehicle history and this is how it is shown again now.

The engine
The W 194’s engine was derived from the power plant of the Mercedes-Benz 300 (W 186) luxury Saloon. For this reason, the engine block of this SL has the number “186” embossed on it, while the modified cylinder head, on the other hand, bears the number “194”: for its use as a racing car, the engineers boosted the engine’s output to around 170 bhp (125 kW), employing among other things three Solex sports carburettors and a sports camshaft. The sports engine was equipped with dry-sump lubrication and installed in a position canted 50 degrees towards the left so as to be able to fit under the very flat bonnet.

Within the framework of the restoration work, the original engine was completely overhauled. On a modern-day test rig it demonstrated its endurance – it ran for around 10 hours, confirming as it did, the original output specifications. The reconditioning of the two electric fuel pumps, for which today no replacement parts exist, was complex. However, the specialists from Mercedes-Benz Classic were also able to recreate these true to the originals.

The engine also shows the character of Number 2: for example the air filter housing is visibly made-to-measure by hand – and between the housing and the closed bonnet there is not even enough space for a person’s hand.

The assembly
The chassis of the W 194 was completed in the course of several months at the Mercedes-Benz Classic Center. Every single component was painstakingly cleaned and examined and, if necessary, reconditioned. The mechanics thus often advanced two steps, only to have to go back one – at times an arduous business. But one that in the end was successful, so that the 1952 racing car was recreated piece by piece anew.
One exceedingly fortunate circumstance was that the vehicle was virtually complete. The large Mercedes star on the radiator, for instance, can be seen to be handmade, as evidenced by the small irregularities it displays. It was polished and reattached, as was the original “300 SL” lettering. The original rear licence plate “W59-4029” still exists, too, while the front number plate was faithfully reproduced. The wooden steering wheel, the gearshift knob, the instruments, the switches: all present and correct. The front axle was reconditioned. It was entirely nickel-plated – a method in use in those days to enable potentially safety-relevant hairline cracks to be easily detected on the racetrack. The rear axle showed, in particular through the state of its mechanical components, that Number 2 had not been subjected to excessive strain, since all the gear wheels were in virtually new condition. The original Alfin brake drums were tested, trimmed and reinstalled; the original riveted wheel rims were clad in Dunlop D8 tyres.

The interior of the W 194 breathes the air of those days. The seat covers, made from the characteristic blue tartan pattern, are new, while the roof lining and the rest of the cover fabric had been preserved in their entirety; they were cleaned and replaced, now gracing the vehicle again. And the aluminium seats under the fabric were also able to be used without excessive work having to be carried out on them. This way the entire interior was recreated – and yet shows the venerable traces of time.

A very special bravura piece was re-creating the body paintwork. The original nitro-lacquer was called “silver bronze”. Today it is no longer available and due to the environmental regulations in force, may no longer be used. Thus, the paint supplier of 1952 now undertook exhaustive research based on contemporary photographic and film material in order to recreate a paint colour as close as possible to the original, producing a precise formula for a water-based paint. With this matt silver paint the W 194 now shines once again as it once did many years ago.

Number 2 was given new window panes. A plexiglas pane is used for the windscreen. The side windows with their air flaps and the rear window are also made from Plexiglas and were provided by the same supplier who made the plastic glazing for this 300 SL in 1952.

Restoration work on the oldest SL in existence took a total of around nine months. But the effort was worth the while: the car is now radiant in all its erstwhile beauty. When the engine of the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL with its original licence plate “W59-4029” is started and the vehicle gets swiftly under way, one can well believe that it is able to reach a top speed of 230 km/h – and take its place among the most successful racing cars of the 1950s.

Mercedes-Benz 300 SL (W 194 series)
Year built: 1952
Number of units: 10
Engine: six-cylinder in-line engine, overhead camshaft, three Solex double carburettors, dry-sump lubrication
Displacement: 2.995 cc
Output: 170 bhp (125 kW) at 5200 rpm
Kerb weight: approx. 1060 kg
Top speed: 230 km/h

Source: Daimler AG

SL – only very few abbreviations have the power to call forth such passion in automotive enthusiasts as the SL model series from Mercedes-Benz. SL stands for six decades of sportiness and aesthetic appeal. What began in 1952 with the 300 SL racing car (W 194 series) and grew into a legend in the years that followed, is to be continued into the future with the market introduction of the new SL (R 231) in the spring of 2012. It sets a further highlight in the fascinating history of all the SLs.

The special exhibition “Timeless — 60 years of the Mercedes-Benz SL” gives this special Mercedes-Benz model series an adequate stage in its anniversary year: in Room Collection 5 visitors will be able to see interesting items, information and anecdotes – apart from the vehicles on show. From the 300 SL (W 194), legendary winner of the 1952 Carrera Panamericana, to US astronaut David R. Scott’s 1959 190 SL (W 121), and the 2001 Formula 1 safety car, the SL 55 AMG (R 230): visitors can look forward to a seamless presentation of the entire SL family. An extensive accompanying programme with special guided tours and event is also being prepared.

The Mercedes-Benz Museum is open every day from Tuesday to Sunday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Registration, reservations and current information: Monday to Sunday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m by phone: 0711/17 30 000, e-mail classic@daimler.com or online www.mercedes-benz-classic.com/museum

Source: Mercedes-Benz Museum

“Over the year, Mercedes-Benz Classic was able to demonstrate the fascination of the Mercedes-Benz brand on a world-wide basis. We were able to move both people and vehicles,” commented Michael Bock, Head of Mercedes-Benz Classic and Managing Director of the Mercedes-Benz Museum GmbH. “Vehicles from our own collection alone played a part in 1,400 events – almost twice as many as would be normal in a year without such an anniversary. A truly extraordinary achievement and a great result for the year.”

Just a few key data to show just how much was achieved in 2011: the three-wheeler patented by Carl Benz in 1886, for example, and which is considered to be the world’s first automobile, made 160 appearances at events all over the world. What is more, in spring 2011 the patent for the first vehicle to be powered by an internal combustion engine was made a UNESCO World Heritage Document. The company’s own collection of vehicles includes several replicas of this first Patent Motor Car.

The first long-distance journey with an automobile, undertaken in 1888 by Bertha Benz from Mannheim to Pforzheim in an improved version of the Patent Motor Car, was re-enacted over a distance of some 180 kilometres in the summer of 2011 by Germany’s South-West Broadcasting (“Südwestfunk”) radio station SWR 1, with support from Mercedes-Benz Classic. This was automotive history brought to life, and was extremely well received, both by people encountered along the way and as a response to the daily broadcast reports. The original route was in fact extended for the rerun as far as Stuttgart and the Mercedes-Benz Museum.

A review of the year reveals some impressive figures: in 2011, more than 1,400 vehicles were made available for appearances at nearly 470 events around the world. Altogether, the collection these days comprises more than 900 vehicles that represent the long history of Mercedes-Benz – passenger cars, commercial vehicles and racing cars. In fact the collection would be quite justified in describing itself as one gigantic museum on wheels. In 2011 alone 35 new vehicles joined the collection. One of these was the final car to leave the production line of the R 230-series SL: the last vehicle to be built went straight into the collection, ahead of the launch of the new SL in January 2012.

Mercedes-Benz Classic also took part with selected vehicles in numerous events in the international classic car calendar. These included, for example, participation in the Mille Miglia with a total of 18 vehicles; at the Goodwood Revival in honour of racing driver Juan Manuel Fangio, who would have been 100 years old in 2011; and in the “London to Brighton” veteran car run. A new participant in this year’s activities was a Mercedes-Benz 220 SE, which has been rebuilt by the Mercedes-Benz Classic engineers as a track vehicle for historical motor racing events and competed during the 2011 season in various events promoted by the historic racing vehicle series “Fahrergemeinschaft Historischer Rennsport e. V.” (FHR).

The Mercedes-Benz Classic Archive is considered one of the most extensive corporate archives in the whole of Europe, and probably the most comprehensive in the automotive industry. The figures make the scope of the archives very clear: if all the material in the archives were to be lined up a row, it would cover a distance of 15 kilometres. Adding to this are more than 3 million photos and 2,500 film media. The Mercedes-Benz Classic Archive and Collection themselves celebrated a round anniversary in 2011, having been officially established 75 years ago, in December 1936.

About 701,000 visitors from more than 175 countries visited the Mercedes-Benz Museum during 2011. 4000 guided tours in ten languages were given. This was due not only to the anniversary celebrations marking “125 years of the automobile”, but also to the attractive programme of events that has become a regular feature of the museum’s activities. Since it opened five years ago, in May 2006, the new museum has welcomed 4.2 million visitors through its doors – around a third of them from outside Germany. The majority of visitors come from Germany, followed by China, the US, France and Switzerland.

Mercedes-Benz maintains various heritage sites as reminders of the inventors of the automobile. As just one example, in 2011 over 20,000 visitors from countries all over the world came to visit the birthplace of Gottlieb Daimler in Schorndorf, while well over 10,000 also visited his former workshop, the so-called “greenhouse”, in Cannstatt.

The Mercedes-Benz Classic Center is the main centre of expertise for all the technical aspects of classic vehicles dating back through the history of Mercedes-Benz. Again and again the Center sets new standards for the quality and authenticity of restoration work undertaken. Over the course of the year, for example, a Mercedes-Benz 300 SL that had been restored there to its original condition was sold to a customer – a superb example of a top-class collectors’ piece of this model. The determination to maintain authenticity is supported by an excellent replacement parts service for the brand: the warehouse inventory currently comprises some 35,000 active line items, and any part can be delivered to a customer in Germany within 24 hours. In 2011, replacement parts provision for the 124 model series was transferred to the Classic Center, adding a further 12,000 items to the inventory. Total revenues for the year from the sale of replacement parts for classic and “young classic” vehicles amounted to 126 million euros.

As always, Mercedes-Benz Classic continues to work closely with officially recognised brand clubs, which provide an important link between the classic vehicle scene and Daimler AG. The latest figures reveal that altogether the clubs currently have around 80,000 members, in all corners of the world, and held more than 200 events of their own in 2011. The German clubs alone saw almost 1,400 new members joining. Some of the clubs had anniversaries of their own to celebrate, in Germany for instance the Mercedes-Benz SL Club Pagoda (30 years), the Mercedes-Benz Veteran Car Club of Germany (30 years), the Mercedes-Benz Model Car Club (25 years), and the Mercedes-Benz R 129 SL Club (10 years). But Mercedes-Benz Classic also held its own events: in the spring of 2011 a group under the heading “Mercedes-Benz & Friends” travelled to the Côte d’Azur, where they were able to retrace the early history of the brand. August then saw some 2,000 vehicles and 1,800 club members from more than 30 countries, along with 200,000 visitors, gather at the former Tempelhof airport in Berlin to mark the anniversary of “125 years of the automobile” in what was the biggest celebration of the Mercedes-Benz brand ever to have taken place.

The division’s activities in the area of new media have also proved extremely successful. Over 21,000 fans follow what the world’s oldest automotive brand is up to on Facebook. The new Mercedes-Benz Classic app for iPhone and iPad has also already been downloaded more than 200,000 times. The app provides a state-of-the-art way to find out more about the heritage and the legend of Mercedes-Benz.

Source: Daimler AG

“Another successful year is drawing to a close. Since the opening in May 2006, over 4.2 million people have visited the Mercedes-Benz Museum,” says Michael Bock, head of Mercedes-Benz Classic. “125 years after its invention, the automobile retains its special fascination to this day – the figures speak for themselves. We are particularly pleased about the high proportion of international visitors. Once again this year, almost a third of our guests came from abroad. This international appeal is attributable both to the anniversary year of the automobile and to our extensive programme in 2011.”

People from all over the world flock to see the first ever automobile
The visitors from a total of 175 countries reflect the international character of the Mercedes-Benz Museum. In 2010 visitors came from 158 countries. The share of international guests has risen by almost half in recent years, to 27 percent. The majority of guests came from Germany, followed by China, USA, France and Switzerland. There has been a sharp increase in the number of Chinese guests since 2009, resulting in a steady climb for China from fourth to second place in the visitor rankings.

How did the visitors become aware of the Mercedes-Benz Museum? While almost 40 percent relied on recommendations from friends and acquaintances, 7 percent of visitors stated that they had been prompted to visit the museum by the increased media coverage in the anniversary year. Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have given rise to a two-fold increase in awareness of the museum as a leisure destination.

Many of the guests visited the Mercedes-Benz Museum for the first time in the year marking the 125th anniversary of the invention of the automobile. The top rankings from regular visitor surveys in 2011 confirm the guests’ satisfaction, with over 90 percent of all visitors stating that their expectations had been surpassed and 98 percent confirming that they would recommend the Mercedes-Benz Museum. Two thirds of all visitors spent more than three hours at the automobile exhibition covering 16,000 square metres.

Group visitors and children’s programmes on the increase
Almost 4,000 guided tours in 2011 marked a new record for the Mercedes-Benz Museum. The classic Automobile guided tour, carried out in a total of ten languages, remains the leading attraction. Exclusive after-hours tours in the evening, guided tours of the Untertürkheim and Bad Cannstatt engine factories and the special guided tour of the ‘Art & Stars & Cars’ exhibition also proved very popular.

The Mercedes-Benz Museum has also become a yet more attractive destination for groups: over 5,000 groups comprising a total of over 100,000 persons visited the exhibition – more than ever before. In addition, over 1900 school classes took advantage of the educational programme in the GeniusCampus area for children and young people. Another programme offered by the GeniusCampus enjoyed particular popularity, with almost 1000 children visiting over 80 children’s birthday parties held at the Mercedes-Benz Museum. The new programme “Motor mechanics for adults” also became firmly established, with over 100 workshops offering almost 850 participants an opportunity to lean more about present-day engine technology.

Outstanding exhibitions and events in 2011
For the inventor of the automobile, the anniversary marking 125 years of the automobile played a major role this year, as the Mercedes-Benz Museum is the only venue in the world where visitors can take in the entire history of the automobile – from Benz’s patented motor car dating from 1886 to futuristic vehicle studies.
The year kicked off with the opening of the new exhibition room Legend 6, ‘New start – the Road to Emission-free Mobility’, which has since won various awards. The new exhibition room grants visitors an insight into the future and outlines the drive technologies of tomorrow. The future has already arrived for visitors arriving at the Mercedes-Benz Museum by e-vehicle, with six electric charging stations offering free electric power to replenish the vehicles’ batteries during visits to the museum.

The special exhibition ‘Art & Stars & Cars’ shows the museum in a similarly pioneering and innovative vein. This first art exhibition at the Mercedes-Benz Museum was conceived in collaboration with the Daimler Art Collection. A highlight of the exceptional exhibition comprising over 120 works was Andy Warhol’s legendary Cars series, which was produced 25 years ago on the occasion of the car’s centenary. The Mercedes-Benz Museum also celebrated its fifth birthday in the middle of the anniversary year, on 22 May 2011. This proved one of the busiest days of the year, drawing over 5000 guests. The museum’s summer season revolved around firm favourites such as the jazzopen stuttgart, the Mercedes-Benz Lounge and the Open Air Cinema programme – this year featuring the drive-in cinema event for the first time, which sold out in next to no time. Families with children were able to take part in Universal Children’s Day at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in September, while the collectors’ fair in November offered brand aficionados another opportunity to pick up some gems. This year, the Mercedes-Benz Museum once again offered events tailored to visitors with special needs – most recently on the Day of People with Disability in December.

2012 – spotlight on the Mercedes-Benz SL
“It will be a challenge to top 2011,” observes Michael Bock. “But we have ambitious plans for 2012 and some great exhibitions in store. For the Mercedes-Benz brand, the first half of the year will centre on the new SL. At Mercedes-Benz Classic and at the museum we will be highlighting the 60-year history of the legendary SL series with special events and a major exhibition. All the models in one room – that will be a spectacle not to be missed. I am also looking forward to the 2012 Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film. As a partner to the festival, we will be presenting a special award – again focusing on the topic of 60 years of the SL. The special exhibition ‘Timeless – 60 years of the Mercedes-Benz SL’ will begin on 24 January 2012 and run until 2 September 2012.

Source: Daimler AG

It was an eventful era that ushered in groundbreaking technical developments for the evolution of the automobile. In this period the automobile became an important mode of transport and powerful item of sports equipment, new plants were set up, and in 1926 the Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft from Stuttgart merged with Benz & Cie. from Mannheim to create Daimler-Benz AG, thus giving rise to the Mercedes-Benz brand. But these decades also bore witness to the First World War and the Great Depression, along with the massive blaze that engulfed the Daimler plant in Cannstatt.

This era must actually have left behind a wealth of documentary records. And yet anyone looking in the mid-1930s for a central location where documents would cast light on the former Daimler-Benz in this period would be sadly disappointed. Clearly nobody was really aware of the historical potential of documents from daily operations. Since Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler changed individual mobility forever with their Patent Motor Car and motorised cab in 1886, many documents had simply been lost – a fact Max Rauck quickly realised while completing the preparatory research for setting up the archive. In September 1935 the engineer reported to the Board of Management that there was “only very little historical material [...] in our company”. Meanwhile, the company’s employees still failed to appreciate the importance of the archive: in response to a circular dated March 1935, the engineer received “only a handful of historical material”.

In the company there was a realisation early on that innovation arose particularly against the background of tradition. In 1899, Daimler not only showcased the latest models at the Paris Automobile Salon but also the motorised cab from 1886 – visitors of the day viewed the 13-year-old vehicle as a bizarre classic vehicle, with the new automobiles worlds apart from the comparatively simple technology in their forerunner.
A key milestone in this analysis of the product history through exhibits comes in the shape of the museum work, which began back in the days of DMG in Untertürkheim. But only with the inauguration in 1936 of the first Mercedes-Benz Museum open to the public does the museum become an integral part of the public perception of the brand and company.

A new culture of document management
The gaps in the material for the fledgling archive collection essentially related to documents. For instance, the Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft decided in November 1924 to destroy almost without exception the contents of its archives that covered the period from the company’s foundation through to January 1919. The decision may have been taken for entirely practical reasons: in May 1924, DMG founded a community of interests with Benz & Cie., which was an important step along the way to the merger in 1926. Against the backdrop of this new cooperation, DMG at the time no longer believed their old archive material from the period before the First World War important enough to transfer to a new, joint archive.

Nonetheless, two copy books belonging to Gottlieb Daimler and Max Duttenhofer were retained, along with vehicle records, order books and engine books. Rauck also turned up historical letters as well as newspapers and magazines. A copy book was an accounts book – required under law at the time in Germany – that was used to enter business correspondence. Other periodicals existed in the plant library – in total these printed sources went back to the year 1898. The collection of photographs (“some in albums, some collected loosely, unfortunately with no details of the type of the object or the year of construction”) and catalogues as well as operating instructions (“unfortunately not complete”) nonetheless also formed a sound base.

By contrast, the material found at Benz & Cie was extremely sparse: “I didn’t manage to find any historical material whatsoever on the company Benz”, Rauck reported back to the Board of Management, “even though apparently all the historical documentation is supposed to have been transferred to Untertürkheim when the companies merged in 1926.” Where the material ended up is uncertain. In any case no historical documents whatsoever were left at the Mannheim plant – despite the budding archivist asking on several occasions.
The search for documentation of the company’s own history therefore proved a challenge. One exception came in the shape of the patents filed by Daimler-Benz AG and its predecessor organisations: “The Patent Department has kept all the old patents”, Rauck reported in his letter to the Board of Management in 1935. The oldest patents filed by Daimler and Benz, virtually the birth certificates of the automobile, currently form part of the archive, while the Patent Department still looks after collecting all the other historical patent documents. And further successes were also reported in 1935: Rauck described the photo archive taken over from Berlin-Marienfelde as “very interesting and complete”, and he got back from Berlin a file believed to have been lost that included old newspaper reports about Benz & Cie.

In summer 2011, UNESCO underscored just how visionary preserving the patents from the early days of the company’s history actually was: Carl Benz’s patent document from 1886 for a “vehicle with gas-engine drive” together with a bundle of other documents on the invention of the automobile were added to the World Document Heritage on 15 July. This accolade is not just testimony to the unique importance of these documents, but also to Daimler’s ongoing archival work.

The go-ahead for the archive
The Daimler-Benz AG Board of Management decided shortly after receiving the report to turn the project of a corporate archive into reality. As such, Daimler-Benz AG was following the lead taken by large German corporations such as Krupp and Siemens. The historical archive of Friedrich Krupp AG was regarded in its day as the most important industrial archive in Germany, having been founded in 1905. The Siemens archive followed in 1907. These models would be the benchmark used in Stuttgart in the future: “Anyone wanting to look seriously at the history of the automobile and engines will need our historical archive”, was the conclusion of a report drawn up shortly after the archive was founded, which compared the archives maintained by Krupp and Siemens with the new Daimler-Benz archive.

The issuance of administrative order number 1145 dated 9 December 1936 is regarded as the official foundation date of the Daimler archive. Yet the planning and preliminary work started earlier, with Rauck’s research dating back to early 1935. And on 16 September 1935, Rauck was commissioned to start systematically documenting the existing material, at the instance of Board member Wilhelm Kissel.

A space “in which all historical material (photos, written works, printed papers, etc.) should be preserved” – the idea was to open up the archive in the winter of 1935/36. As early as 1935, senior management stressed that the history of the entire Group including all its locations should be documented centrally: “This measure is naturally not only limited to the Untertürkheim plant, but extends to the other Group plants.”

A start was made on setting up the archive by searching for existing historical material on the one hand and setting up an infrastructure to hand over important documentation from current daily business on the other. This second aspect also lay at the heart of administrative order no. 1145 dated 9 December 1936, which is regarded as the official foundation date of the corporate archive. The order, which was made public by means of notices and circulars to the departmental heads, read:

“We have commissioned Mr Max Rauck Dipl.-Ing. to collect and sort through our historical written and pictorial material in order to set up and manage a historical archive, and hereby order that all our company’s locations assist Mr Rauck in carrying out the said task and, in particular, point out at their own initiative any existing material in their working area and provide him with appropriate access. Mr Rauck is entitled to add any pictorial and written works, provided these no longer have any current practical value, to the archive he is about to set up.”

The importance of the archive for Daimler AG is also manifest in the current “Group policy on the corporate archive”. Similar to the administrative order from 1936, the policy sets out at Board of Management level for all companies and employees of the Daimler Group worldwide that the corporate archive as Daimler AG’s memory fulfils all tasks of archive management and has a guideline function for Group-wide uniform standards when taking over, evaluating, opening up and preserving archive material. The policy expressly emphasises that the tasks of the archive extend equally to digital and analogue documents and information, thus ensuring proper archiving for the present and future.

In 1937, the archive presented its organisational plan in which the importance of collaboration between individual locations was once again highlighted: it was “urgently required to make all plants within the Group aware of the extraordinary value of the historical central archive and to ask them to preserve all material of historical value and to transfer the material to the historical central archive when requested to do so”.

Organisationally the archive unit was assigned to the Exhibitions department, which was also responsible for representing the company at motor shows as well as for designing exhibition spaces at sales and service outlets, and dealers. The tasks of the associated unit, the “Historical Area”, were set out in an internal report dated 20 October 1937 and included “setting up and continuing the archive, collecting and supporting hist[orical] objects and documents belonging to the Group, preparing lit[erary] work in this connection, museum issues, managing the historical material”.

Assess and preserve
The archive’s organisational plan from the same year proved visionary: the aim was to collect a wide range of documents, with a minimum time lag between origination of the documents and collection. In this way, the collected material on a certain vehicle model, for instance, was kept constantly up-to-date by continually adding new documents instead of waiting for all the relevant documents to be compiled after the end of the production period.

Here, the archive had already laid the foundations for the subsequently established practice of managing the collections on the basis of relevance and affinity: according to the key topic addressed in the individual files. The documents that were constantly being added to the archive were therefore assigned to the material according to topic. The corporate archive deviates from this principle primarily in the case of complete archived material, such as material sourced from individuals. One prime example is the Béla Barényi collection: the pioneer of modern vehicle safety donated his private archive to the corporate archive in 1990. This archive alone contains some 200 folders on the history of passive and active safety in the passenger car.

There was, however, still a long way to go from those first few years after its foundation before the well-oiled machine of the modern-day archive was in place. In 1937 a great deal of work was done on honing the structure used to organise the archive. Wilhelm Kissel, who was appointed the Chairman of the Daimler-Benz AG Board of Management in October 1937, himself set out his requirements for the archive structure. Talking to Max Rauck, Kissel emphasised the need for “a structure based on years”, within which the documentation on each individual year should be structured according to various topics: annual reports, leading personalities, photographs, written material, brochures, sport and exhibitions. By December 1937, more than 600 collected volumes and printed matter had been added to the archive under this model.
From the outset, the staff in the corporate archive rose to the classic challenge of their profession: they had to identify with vision what was ready for and worthy of inclusion in the archive. The benchmark is not solely how important documents are at present – the archivists also constantly have to try to judge what the documentation might mean from the perspective of future generations.

Collecting material without any selection process was not an option – if only due to space constraints. In the winter of 1937 the Archive reported to Wilhelm Kissel, who had now been appointed Chairman of the Board of Management, that “the space available [...][had been] entirely filled and it [would be] [...] highly desirable and necessary for additional rooms to be made available for the historical central archive in order to process and house the material that continues to be generated”.

As such, the contents and size of the archive grew, housed at the time in the so-called canteen building on the plant site in Untertürkheim. The storage facilities were also changed: in addition to the wooden cupboards used in the first few years, in 1939 an order was placed with August Blödner, Spezialfabrik für Stahlmöbel und Eisenbau (a company specialising in steel furniture and ironwork) based in Gotha for “double-walled, two-door fireproof cupboards”. As early as August 1935, Kissel had suggested this type of storage for irreplaceable documentary material. However, there was still not enough space to evaluate and archive all the collated material at a central location. Hence, the Archive proposed erecting a new building, with modern equipment throughout, including air conditioning, carbon dioxide extinguishing system and metallic archiving system.

Moved to the hen house
Yet a totally different fate would befall the archived materials in the Second World War. Instead of being relocated to a new building, they were moved from the Untertürkheim plant. On 8 April 1941 a note stated that, among other things, the most important documents from the founding years had been stored in a bank safe.

During the war a large part of the archive was moved to Kühbach (Aichach-Friedberg district) in Bavaria. Under the code name “hen house”, Daimler-Benz AG stored “various records, books, copies of drawings” as well as a variety of equipment in the cellar of the brewery on the Baron von Beck estate. Following the end of the war, the US Third Army, in whose area of responsibility the archive was being stored, was hesitant to allow the material to be taken away. The company initially rented external archive premises in Esslingen while the Untertürkheim plant was being reconstructed and civilian series production was being slowly ramped up. It was only in 1948 that the archive returned to the Untertürkheim site.

The period of the German economic miracle is not only an era of change and productivity for automobile production but also for the archive: in 1954 it became an independent department, reporting directly to the Board of Management department “Central Management”. This period also gave rise to numerous important publications on the history of Daimler-Benz AG’s products and the company itself, as well as on the history of the automobile and technology in general.

Archive and museum under a single roof
1957 saw the archive and museum being combined, bringing together the product and document collections, and generating numerous synergies in the process. This structure has been retained to the present day. The merger was reflected particularly in the inauguration of the Mercedes-Benz Museum on the plant site, with the new building being completed in 1960 and inaugurated in 1961: the archive was housed in the same building. When the new Mercedes-Benz Museum was opened off the plant site at Mercedes-Benz World in 2006, the archive moved into the building directly opposite the plant gates located on the Cannstatt side.
The archive’s organisational structure also changed over the years. The current system was set up in 1973: at the time, the decision was taken to “extend the document base to the non-technical area”, to split up the hitherto “mainly technically oriented” historical archive into the technical archive and corporate archive. The archives still retain the same structure even today: apart from the corporate archive and the product archive, there is the media archive, archive library and the vehicle collection.

Economic and social history
The corporate archive preserves documents and artefacts relating to individuals and the company’s history. These include sources on the company founders, the complete company history and the development of the plants, as well as the Board members with reports on Board of Management and Supervisory Board meetings. Documents detailing sales of in-house products and on investments form part of the corporate archive along with press kits and a art collection including rare posters, original graphics and designs for advertising motifs as well as the advertising collection including advertisements dating back to 1885. The racing archive documents the motorsport involvement of Daimler and the predecessor companies from the first race in 1894, through the Silver Arrows era in the 1930s and 1950s to the present-day competitors. And the archived material also includes documents on the social history as well as artefacts ranging from coins, medals and trophies through to promotional items.

Technical expertise in its historical context
The product archive documents the history of passenger cars and commercial vehicles since the invention of the automobile by Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler. The archived materials include brochures, price lists, owner’s manuals, workshop and parts literature along with technical reports and design drawings. The original vehicle records, order books and engine books, which document the as-delivered condition of virtually all passenger cars ever built by the Daimler, Mercedes and Mercedes-Benz brands provide a treasure trove of information. Added to which are vehicle data cards for over 10 million passenger cars from the period 1945 to 1985.

These documents also constitute important sources for Mercedes-Benz Classic that allow the manufacturer to produce expert reports: based on this historical information and a technical diagnosis, the experts from Mercedes-Benz Classic can verify and document the originality of valuable Mercedes-Benz vehicles.

Open to new media
The media archive includes some three million photographs from the early years of automotive construction to the present day. This includes almost 300,000 historical black-and-white negatives, almost a third of which are large-format glass negatives. The media archive also features some 4000 films along with the audio collection comprising original interviews with contemporary witnesses and other contributions to oral history.
The media are accessible in an extensive database, which facilitates rapid search and distribution. The corporate archive also embraced the digital future early on: the data in the archives has been processed electronically since the early 1990s. In 2000, the M@RS database (Multimedia, Archive and Research System) also went live on the internet. M@RS is not an island solution limited to the archives but was always designed from the outset as a cross-departmental solution that could be deployed throughout the Group to provide all types of media and documents.

Meanwhile M@RS is being used in the Group by more than 20 other clients, with data constantly being added; for the archives this integrated solution has the major advantage of providing up-to-date data such as product and marketing information early on to ensure long-term availability.

This willingness to embrace new media is nothing new: back in April 1938, Max Rauck noted: “We have to set up a sound archive. [... W[e] already have various wax discs, f[or] e[xample] “Dr Nibel talks about the racing car” etc. You could also find stories from old Daimler and Benz veterans on wax discs.” In the same year, Rauck also suggested they should also archive historical film material. As such, the archive was consistently geared to a variety of media from the moment it was founded.

Literature on vehicle technology and the automotive industry
The archive library is a large reference library that specialises in automotive technology and the automotive industry. In addition to the numerous works on the Mercedes-Benz brand as well as on Daimler AG and its predecessor companies, there are also extensive archives on general automotive and technology history. The almost complete edition of the “Allgemeine Automobil-Zeitung”, a car magazine first published in 1900, is a remarkable rarity on the international library scene. The library also holds other publications from the early days of the automobile. In total, the library contains some 10,000 books, and 220 magazines, of which 90 are current titles. The library’s collections also include numerous books published by the Archive itself. This publication work on brand-specific topics as well as on basic issues relating to automobile history boasts a long tradition in the archive.

History on wheels
The Mercedes-Benz Classic vehicle collection forms the basis for all automotive activities linked to the unique tradition of Mercedes-Benz.

A company-owned vehicle collection has been documented in the archives since 1921. The collection consists of more than 900 vehicles, some 160 of which are on display as exhibits in the Mercedes-Benz Museum. Other vehicles are on show at exhibitions and motor shows, or used at new vehicle presentations, at classic car events and rallies. A binding collection concept governs the way in which the vehicle collection is expanded and managed. In this way, the brand’s groundbreaking products are collected according to set criteria and preserved for posterity – according to precisely the same discerning requirements that the historical archive has fulfilled since 1936.

Source: Daimler AG

While racing cars and sports cars had stood out as the top-performing thoroughbreds in previous years, it was now the turn of near-production passenger cars to put their strength and stamina to the test. In the late 1950s and early 1960s it was predominantly the 300 SL sports car and 220 SE and 300 SE six-cylinder saloons that were setting the pace on the world’s roads and gravel tracks.

One of the leading partnerships during this period was that of Walter Schock and Rolf Moll. Racing for the Stuttgart Motor Sports Club, the duo received extensive support from Mercedes-Benz in the form of vehicles and service. Walter Schock took part in the Monte Carlo Rally in a Mercedes-Benz 220 ‘Pontoon’ on 15 January 1956, finishing on 23 January just 1.1 seconds behind the winner. One month later, the Stuttgart duo won the Sestrière Rally in Italy in a Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing coupé. Up in the mountains, the Silver Arrow simply left the rest of the field standing. Schock reflected on the outstanding performance of the coupé in winter rally conditions, saying: “Very fine snow chains on all four wheels allowed us to reach uphill speeds of up to 180 km/h.” Further triumphs followed, with a victory at the Acropolis Rally (26-29 April 1956) and class victories at the Wiesbaden Rally (21–24 June 1956) and Adriatica Rally (26-30 September 1956). In addition, Schock won in his class at the Eifel race and took second place at the Nürburgring Grand Prix. These results helped him to secure the 1956 European Touring Car crown and the German GT championship for up to 1300cc.

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Having replaced Alfred Neubauer as Mercedes-Benz Motorsport Director, Karl Kling also occasionally took a turn at the wheel as a member of the works team. With Rainer Günzler as his co-driver, he secured an extraordinary victory at the 14,000-kilometre Mediterranée – Le Cap Rally from the Mediterranean to South Africa in 1959. The Stuttgart team were driving a diesel-powered Mercedes-Benz 190 D whose reliability secured the event for them. In 1961, Kling was back behind the wheel of a saloon in Africa, driving a Mercedes-Benz 220 SE ‘Fintail’ to victory in the Algiers – Lagos – Algiers rally, once again with Rainer Günzler as co-driver. Kling was also the race manager when Mercedes-Benz factory teams competed in selected major races.

Schock and Moll took the European rally championship title in their 220 SE in 1960 too, crossing the finish line in first place at the legendary Monte Carlo Rally. This first overall German victory at Monte Carlo was actually a triple success for Mercedes-Benz, with the driver teams Eugen Böhringer/Hermann Socher and Eberhard Mahle/Roland Ott taking second and third place. Following this triumph in 1960, the sports press demanded that Mercedes-Benz come back to the racing circuits of the world and compete on a continuous basis with its factory cars. But sports manager Kling made the Mercedes position clear: “This success will encourage us to make further substantial efforts in rallies. But Mercedes has no intention of returning to motor racing.”

In the 1960s, Mercedes-Benz teams took part in the Argentine Road Grand Prix on several occasions. On 26 October 1961, for instance, Walter Schock competed in this very special rally against 207 other drivers. Awaiting the field was a relentless race covering 4600 kilometres and a difference in altitude of more than 3000 metres. This torturous test of endurance ended on 5 November with a double victory for
Mercedes-Benz. Walter Schock and Rolf Moll came home first, followed by Hans Herrmann and Rainer Günzler. “That was perhaps the most difficult race I have ever competed in,” said rally champion Schock upon his return from South America. Together with team manager Karl Kling, Juan Manuel Fangio personally accompanied the Mercedes-backed teams. As this competition was very important for the American market, Mercedes-Benz continued to participate in the years that followed: female drivers Ewy Rosqvist and Ursula Wirth notched up a sensational victory in 1962 and Eugen Böhringer won the rally twice in 1963 and 1964, followed home on both occasions by two other Mercedes-Benz vehicles.

Böhringer, who had been driving Mercedes-Benz cars in rallies since 1957, took the European rally champion title in the 1962 season in a Mercedes-Benz 220 SE. With co-drivers Peter Lang and Hermann Eger, Böhringer gained points during the season at races which included the Monte Carlo Rally (2nd place), Tulip Rally (7th), Acropolis Rally (winner), Midnight Sun Rally (5th), Poland Rally (winner), Liège – Sofia – Liège Rally (winner) and German Rally (2nd).

One of the highlights that year was the victory in the legendary Liège – Sofia – Liège road race in a Mercedes-Benz 220 SE. The following year the Stuttgart driver was once again victorious at this marathon race, which took drivers right across Europe but now to Bulgaria instead of Rome, this time in a Mercedes-Benz 230 SL ‘Pagoda’. He was the first driver ever to win this punishing rally in two successive years.

Mercedes-Benz was also enjoying success in North America at this time, and in 1957 it created the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLS specifically for the American sportscar championship. The vehicle was based on the 300 SL production roadster, but the fact that its weight had been reduced to just 900 kg and its output boosted from 215 bhp (158 kW) to 235 bhp (173 kW) made it a highly competitive car. The SLS gave American Paul O’Shea his third consecutive title, following two victories with a 300 SL Gullwing coupé in 1955 and 1956.

The powerful eight-cylinder 300 SEL 6.3 saloon raced as a works vehicle only once – when it won the six-hour touring car race in Macao in 1969 with Erich Waxenberger at the wheel. The oil crisis in the early 1970s put an end to any further race outings for the saloon. Automotive historian Karl Eric Ludvigsen underlined the importance of this break in the motorsport traditions of the Stuttgart-based brand: “The oil crisis was the first externally prompted break in a long-established Daimler-Benz tradition, which had run continuously from the turn of the century, apart from the war years and a short hiatus in 1955. Year after year, there had always been one or more Benz, Mercedes or Mercedes-Benz vehicles competing with direct or indirect works support in at least one major race.”

Even now, however, the Mercedes-Benz racing tradition was continued by private drivers. Their vehicles were increasingly being prepared for competition by AMG, a company established in 1967 by former Daimler-Benz employees Hans-Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher in Burgstall near Stuttgart. One of their standout products in the early years was the refined version of the Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL with a 6.8-litre engine, which secured a class victory and finished second overall at the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps in 1971. With works support from Mercedes-Benz, a number of private drivers achieved great success during that time in rallies and touring car racing.

The vehicles and drivers of this era, including big names like Eugen Böhringer, Dieter Glemser, Hans Herrmann, Eberhard Mahle and Ewy Rosqvist, still delight racing fans today. And this fascination has also been the driving force behind Mercedes-Benz Classic’s increasing involvement as a partner in the FHR race series for GT and touring cars.

Source: Daimler AG

Its participation in this race reflects the commitment of Mercedes-Benz Classic to upholding the traditions of the brand, which itself has a remarkable history in motor racing, and encouraging private drivers to take part in historical motorsport events. Mercedes-Benz Classic is a partner of the FHR race series. The ‘Fintail’ will be driven by British journalist Andrew Frankel and former touring car driver Klaus Ludwig. The vehicle has been built by the Mercedes-Benz Classic Center in accordance with the regulations laid down in Appendix K of the international sports regulations of the FIA (Féderation Internationale de l’Automobile).

Founded in 1983, the FHR has been promoting historical motor racing for almost 30 years and has made a significant contribution to boosting the popularity of the current race series with historical competition cars. The FHR, which has been under the auspices of ADAC Nordrhein since 2000, currently has around 600 active members.

Events taking place during the 2011 season include the ‘FHR HTGT for the Dunlop Trophy’ held as a series of sprint races for pre-1971 GT and touring cars, and the ‘Dunlop FHR Long Distance Cup’, a series of long-distance races for pre-1971 GT vehicles and touring cars built before 1976. In addition, there will be two series for formula vehicles.

Through its involvement in this fascinating sport, Mercedes-Benz is not only demonstrating its commitment to the active historical motorsport scene, but is also paying tribute to an exciting chapter in its own history. When the era of Mercedes victories in Formula One World Championships and racing cars ended in 1955, Mercedes-Benz enjoyed great success for a number of years in international long-distance races and rallies. This period was characterised in particular in the early 1960s by the ‘‘Fintail’ saloons with six-cylinder engines (220 SE and 300 SE models), which also served as a model for the new Mercedes-Benz 220 SE.

Typically, there was not much difference technically between competition cars and production models in the 1960s. The usual modifications included reinforcement of chassis elements and body components, a bigger fuel tank and adjustment of the engine characteristics to suit the specific purpose.

The principle of designing a powerful competition car that is closely based on stock technology is one that Mercedes-Benz Classic followed closely when building the 220 SE for the FHR Long Distance Cup. The modifications made to the production vehicle by the specialists at the Classic Center included equipping the interior with a safety cage with a safety quick-release lock for side impact protection elements such as cross door bars and protective side moulding (Fix Opening and Closure Security System, or FO-CS for short). In addition, the tail fin has been fitted with a fire extinguishing system and a 100-litre FT3 safety tank. In future, the car will also boast 5.5 x 15 wheels fitted with 6 x 15 tyres. Naturally, the W 111 also features the same classic light grey paint finish (shade DB 140) as used on vehicles between 1961 and 1964.

Mercedes-Benz 220 SE vehicle data
Engine: six-cylinder (in-line)
Bore x stroke: 80 x 72.8 mm
Cubic capacity: 2195 cc
Output: 120 bhp (88 kW) at 4800 rpm
Maximum torque: 19.3 mkg (189 Nm) at 3900 rpm
Front axle: double wishbone, coil springs, anti-roll bar, telescopic shock absorbers
Power transmission: via propshaft on rear axle
Rear axle: single-joint swing axle with compensating spring, coil springs, telescopic shock absorbers
Brakes: hydraulic braking system with brake booster
Front brakes: disk brakes, diameter: 253 mm
Rear brakes: Duplex drum brakes with turbo-cooled Alfin drums, diameter:
230 mm
Transmission: 4-speed manual transmission with floor shift
Clutch: single-plate dry clutch
Top speed: approx. 170 km/h

Source: Daimler AG

“I’m absolutely delighted about the success for Mercedes-Benz,” says Michael Bock, Head of Mercedes-Benz Classic and Managing Director of Mercedes-Benz Museum GmbH. “It is a perfect way to round off the anniversary year marking 125 years of the automobile.”

The ‘Classic of the Year’ is awarded in five categories – and in three of them, the title goes to Stuttgart. In the saloon category, the Mercedes-Benz 300 (model series W 186) from 1951, popularly known as the ‘Adenauer’, tops the poll with 7,164 votes. The ‘convertibles and roadsters’ category is won by the Mercedes-Benz model series R 107 – the SL of the 1970s and 1980s (8,374 votes). Dominating the ‘off-road vehicles and MPVs’ category with 9,934 votes is the Unimog, first manufactured in 1951. The models that were nominated for the ‘Classic of the Year’ all celebrate a milestone anniversary in 2011.

The Mercedes-Benz CLS saw the greatest success: it not only won the ‘Classic of the Future’ title in the saloon category, but, with 12,350 votes, also received more support from the readers than any other model in the poll.

The main prize for the ‘Goldenes Klassik Lenkrad’ is donated by Daimler AG – a Mercedes-Benz 190 E (model series W 201) built in 1989. A prize draw was held to decide the winner from the participants of the poll. This nautical blue metallic car, part of the Mercedes-Benz Young Classics collection, is in excellent condition and has only 18,200 kilometres on the clock.

This is the second time that Auto Bild Klassik has held the competition. It invited readers to vote on the ‘Classic of the Year’, ‘Classic of the Future’, ‘Find of the Year’, ‘Restoration of the Year’ and ‘Person of the Year’. A total of 13 awards were presented, and 27,023 readers of the magazine and its online edition took part. All the results can be found at www.autobild.de/klassik-lenkrad.

Source: Daimler AG

Tommy Kendall, 4 Time Trans-Am Champion and Mike Kunz, Manager, Mercedes-Benz Classic Center, give a guided tour of the vehicles that have been a part of the 125 vehicles of Mercedes-Benz 125 year history.

Source: MBUSA

Juan Manuel Fangio was the driver who best embodied the racing outfit’s strength after the Second World War. The Goodwood Revival 2011, near Chichester/West Sussex, in September will be reliving this heyday as it marks the centenary of Fangio’s birth.

The prestigious British festival, held over three days every autumn (16 to 18 September 2011), recreates an epoch that stretched from the 1940s to the 1960s. It offers an exclusive, atmospheric setting for Mercedes-Benz Classic’s tribute to Juan Manuel Fangio (born 24 June 1911, died 17 July 1995), who would have turned 100 this year.

The highlights of the Revival will include demonstration laps by famous racing drivers in the Mercedes-Benz vehicles with which Fangio wrote motor sport history in the 1954 and 1955 seasons. Besides notching up major success in various sports car races, the Argentine became Formula 1 world champion in both those years.

Mercedes-Benz Classic has put together an illustrious field of drivers and vehicles for the event. Among the drivers taking to the classic track, where races were held between 1948 and 1966, will be Juan Manuel Fangio II. The nephew of the legendary world champion will be driving the Mercedes-Benz W 196 R, a Formula 1 racing car with a streamlined body from 1954.

Sir Stirling Moss and Hans Herrmann, team mates of Fangio during the Silver Arrows’ post-war era, will also be remembering the five-time Formula 1 champion, two times on Mercedes-Benz. At the Revival, Moss will take the wheel of a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR (W 196 S) racing car from 1955. It was in this vehicle that Fangio won the Eifelrennen and the Swedish Grand Prix in 1955 as well as achieving second place in the Mille Miglia (without a co-driver) and in the Tourist Trophy and Targa Florio (both with Karl Kling). Stirling Moss won the 1955 Mille Miglia together with co-driver Denis Jenkinson also in a W 196 S, in a minimum time unbeaten until today.

Herrmann will be driving a 1954 Mercedes-Benz W 196 R with open wheels. In 1954 and 1955, Fangio raced to nine victories in both versions of the W 196 R (including the Grand Prix of Buenos Aires with a three-litre engine), came second twice and took one third place, enabling him to win the world championship in both years.
The Goodwood Revival is the ideal occasion for Mercedes-Benz Classic to commemorate the charismatic driver Fangio. Charles Gordon-Lennox, Earl of March and Kinrara, has been hosting the Goodwood Revival since 1998 – as ‘A time capsule of the golden era of motor racing’. According to British racing legend Sir Stirling Moss: ‘The Revival is an event which is unique in the world.’

The Revival naturally centres on the races, such as the celebrity races featuring well-known racing drivers from various classes of motor sport who will be driving various two- and four-wheeled vehicles. This category is made up of the St Mary’s Trophy, the Royal Automobile Club TT Celebration and the Barry Sheene Memorial Trophy. The sports car races consist of the Whitsun Trophy, the Fordwater Trophy, the Madgwick Cup, the Freddie March Memorial Trophy and the Sussex Trophy. Classic single seaters will line up for the Goodwood Trophy, the Earl of March Trophy, the Chichester Cup, the Richmond Trophy and the Glover Trophy.

An extensive, wide-ranging programme of accompanying events enables visitors to imagine themselves in the 1940s to 1960s. These include classic car auctions and exhibitions, an air show, a supermarket selling products harking back to decades long gone plus a traditional fairground. Race participants and most of the visitors to the Revival dress in period clothing, contributing to the extraordinary atmosphere of the weekend.

Goodwood Revival 2011: Driver Portrayals
Juan Manuel Fangio
born: 24 June 1911
died: 17 July 1995
Juan Manuel Fangio was the most important Mercedes-Benz racing driver in 1954 and 1955. Born in 1911 in Balcarce, the Argentinian’s initial experience of long-distance racing was in his home country and it was not until 1951 that he first sat at the wheel of a Mercedes-Benz grand prix racing car. Yet his success was not confined to Formula 1 (world champion in 1951 and from 1954 to 1957 in succession), for Fangio also helped Mercedes-Benz to win the 1955 World Sportscar Championship, in which, driving a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR, he finished second in the 1955 Mille Miglia behind his team colleague Stirling Moss. The exceptional thing about it was that Fangio drove the 1000 miles without a co-driver. Having ended his racing career, he became president of Mercedes-Benz Argentina S.A. He died in 1995 in Buenos Aires.

Juan Manuel Fangio II
born: 19 September 1956
Juan Manuel Fangio II bears a famous name. The nephew of five- time Formula 1 world champion Juan Manuel Fangio, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday in 2011, he inherited his uncle’s passion for motor sports. Fangio II grew up in close contact with several world-famous motor sports legends. Unlike his uncle, Fangio II spent the majority of his active racing career in North America. His successes included two wins in the 12 Hours of Sebring and victory in the IMSA GT Championship in 1992 and 1993, in the course of which he also set the record of 19 individual victories and won two manufacturers’ titles. In addition, Fangio raced in Formula 3000, the CART Championship and the American Le Mans Series. Juan Manuel Fangio II, whose career as a professional racing driver spanned the years from 1985 to 1997, lives in Balcarce (Argentina), the birthplace of his uncle. In 2011, he drove the Mille Miglia for Mercedes-Benz Classic, in team with Mika Häkkinen and in a type 300 SLR (W 196 S) in which his uncle in 1955 came on second place in that road race.

Hans Herrmann
born: 23 February 1928 in Stuttgart
After his motor sport debut, Mercedes-Benz racing manager Alfred Neubauer brought 25-year-old Hans Herrmann to the works team of Daimler-Benz AG at the start of the 1954 season. Herrmann finished in third place in the Swiss Grand Prix on 22 August 1954. Driving three W 196 Streamline racing cars, the Mercedes drivers finished the Avus race in Berlin on 19 September 1954 with a triple victory in the order Karl Kling, Juan Manuel Fangio, Hans Herrmann. During the 1955 racing season, Herrmann started a total of eight sports car races and ten Formula 1 races. In the Monaco Grand Prix he sat in for Kling and suffered serious injuries in an accident. Despite a full recovery he did not race for Mercedes-Benz again because the company withdrew from motor sport in October 1955. This marked the end of Herrmann’s engagement for Mercedes-Benz. In the following years he returned to racing car and sports car competitions. After racing in Formula 2 and Formula 1 he retired from racing in 1970 with a victory in the 24-hour race of Le Mans driving a Porsche. Herrmann continues to start for Mercedes-Benz in events with historical character to the present day.

Sir Stirling Moss
born: 17 September 1929 in London/England
His racing colleagues liked to refer to Sir Stirling Moss as an exceptional talent. Motor racing seems to have been something he was born with because motor cars accompanied him from his early childhood days through his parents, motor sport enthusiasts and themselves actively engaged in motor sport. At age 19 he won his first race, a few years later he was already racing in Formula 1. In 1955, he joined the Mercedes-Benz team and competed in all important events. Driving a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR (W 196 S) he won the Mille Miglia in May 1955 in a fabulous record time of 10 hours, 7 minutes and 48 seconds, a record no one was ever able to break. He also won the Targa Florio driving the 300 SLR. In July he won the British Grand Prix in Aintree/England, just edging out Juan Manuel Fangio. It was his first Formula 1 victory and it was to remain his only one driving a Silver Arrow because Mercedes-Benz withdrew from motor sport at the end of the season. His string of successes continued in subsequent years, several times missing the world championship title by a hair’s breadth. A severe accident forced him to retire from racing in 1962. He still, however, has a connection with Mercedes-Benz because he repeatedly participates for the brand in classic events. Stirling Moss’s name at the same time stands for a move of the racing industry toward more professionalism: he was the first driver to have his own manager as far back as the early 1950s.

The vehicles from Mercedes-Benz at the Goodwood Revival 2011
Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR (W 196 S), 1955
Mercedes-Benz won the sports car world championship with the 300 SLR in 1955. This sports car is essentially a Formula 1 W 196 racing car provided with a two-seater racing car body – but with a three-litre eight-cylinder in-line engine in light alloy instead of the 2.5-litre Formula 1 engine with steel cylinders. Rated at 300 hp (221 kW), the 300 SLR outperformed its rivals, scooping double victories in the Mille Miglia, the Eifel Race, the Swedish Grand Prix and the Targa Florio. In winning the Mille Miglia, Stirling Moss and co-driver Denis Jenkinson clocked up an average speed of 157.65 km/h (97.96 mph) – a feat that remains unsurpassed to this day. A useful aid in this race was the ‘prayer book’ – a new type of itinerary with crucial notes which Jenkinson drew up to guide driver Moss around the course. Juan Manuel Fangio, competing without a co-driver, came in second. In Sweden and in the 24-hour Le Mans race, the 300 SLRs caused a surprise with the so-called air brake – a panel measuring 0.7 square metres in size which the driver could open up over the rear axle to boost the braking effect. In Le Mans, Mercedes-Benz withdrew the 300 SLR following an accident suffered by Belgian driver Pierre Levegh through no fault of his own while he was in the leading position.

Mercedes-Benz W 196 R, 1954/1955
The Mer­ce­des-Benz W 196 R Formula 1 racing car built for the 1954 season met all the requirements of the new Grand Prix formula defined by the CSI (Commission Spor­tive Inter­na­ti­o­na­le): displacement 750 cc with or 2500 cc without compressor, any fuel composition, racing distance 300 kilometres but at least three hours. The streamlined version was the first to be produced, as the opening race in Reims permitted very high speeds. A variant with free-standing wheels was subsequently produced. For its second season in 1955, this classic grand prix car was also available with shorter wheelbases: in addition to the 2350 millimetre long car from 1954, there were also variants with a wheelbase of 2150 and 2210 millimetres. The shortest variant was ideal for the narrow, winding circuit through Monaco. The space frame was light and robust, the chassis with torsion bar suspension and a new single-joint swing axle at the rear plus giant turbo-cooled duplex disc brakes which were initially fitted in an inside central position was as accomplished as it was unconventional. The car was powered by an eight-cylinder in-line engine (2496 cc) with direct injection and desmodromic (positive-controlled, without valve springs) valves (1954: 256 hp/188 kW at 8260 rpm, 1955: 290 hp/213 kW at 8500 rpm). The engine unit was mounted in the latticework frame at an incline of 53 degrees to the right, in order to lower the centre of gravity and to reduce the size of the frontal area. The top speed was over 300 km/h (186.42 mph).

Source: Daimler AG

from 9 to 11 September 2011, drivers and fans will be joining together to celebrate a festival of historical motor racing, which is now in its fourth year in this format.The event will commemorate high points in the motorsport history of Mercedes-Benz: for example, when Rudolf Caracciola won the first Eifelrennen on 19 June 1927 in the category for sports cars with five-litre-plus engines, driving a Mercedes-Benz S-Type – a supercharged touring sports car. Or the birth of the Silver Arrows legend in 1934, when the Mercedes-Benz racing cars appeared at the Eifelrennen not in the usual white livery, but with their shiny aluminium bodywork exposed.

In 2008, the Eifelrennen was relaunched as a premium event for vintage vehicles. It is the perfect stage for showcasing some of the racing cars and sports cars in the Mercedes-Benz Classic stable. In 2011, the choice of classic vehicles has been guided largely by the triumphs of Juan Manuel Fangio at the Nürburgring.

The occasion for this special theme is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Fangio – Argentine-born and once the number one driver for Mercedes-Benz: at the Nürburgring, Fangio won the 1954 European Grand Prix in an open-wheel W 196 R racing car and also the 1955 Eifelrennen in a 300 SLR sports car. Besides that W 196 R with open-wheels one race transporter will be representing at this year’s Eifelrennen. Former Mercedes-Benz drivers Roland Asch, Dieter Glemser and Jochen Mass have also been lined up to appear as brand ambassadors.

Brand ambassadors Mercedes-Benz Classic at the 2011 Eifelrennen
Roland Asch
Born in Ammerbuch-Altingen, Germany, on 12 October 1950
A qualified car mechanic with his own successful car dealership in Ammerbuch near Tübingen, Asch has a passion not only for motorsport, but for the technology that makes motorsport possible in the first place. But he is no die-hard driver. Motorsport has always remained a hobby for him, albeit a time-consuming one.
Roland Asch began his career in slalom racing and hillclimbs (1976-1982), securing the title of German Hillclimbing Champion in 1981 before achieving further success as the overall winner of three Porsche 944 Turbo Cups (1987/88/89) and one Carrera Cup (1989), and as runner-up after moving to the German Touring Car Championship.

After starring in the German Racing Championship, he made his debut in the 1985 German Touring Car Championship. This was followed by engagements for the MS-Mercedes team in 1989, for the Snobeck-Mercedes team in 1990, for Zakspeed-Mercedes in 1991 and 1992, and for AMG-Mercedes in 1993. In 1992 (Eifelrennen, Hockenheim) and 1993 (Diepholz and twice at the Avus race in Berlin), he recorded five victories and a string of high-placed finishes. And in 1988 (Mercedes 190 E 2.3-16 for the BMK motorsport team) and 1993 (Mercedes 190 E 2.5-16 Evo II Class 1), he finished as runner-up with Mercedes-Benz in the German Touring Car Championship.

Since 1995 – after moving to the Super Touring Car Cup – he has driven for a wide range of other racing teams.

Dieter Glemser
Born in Kirchheim/Teck on 28 June 1938
Dieter Glemser’s career in the fast lane began with the Schorndorf Hill Climb race in 1960. Many classic racing triumphs followed in various mountain and circuit races on the Nürburgring.

Glemser began racing for Daimler-Benz AG in 1963, winning overall in a Mercedes 220 SE at the Poland Rally and taking second place in both the Germany Rally (including a class victory) and the Argentine Grand Prix. In the following year, too, Glemser participated in the triple victory of the teams Böhringer/Kaiser, Glemser/Braungart and Rosqvist/Falk at the Argentine Grand Prix.

Glemser celebrated victory once again in 1971 with a European Champion title with Ford in the touring car championships and a win at the 24-hour Spa-Francorchamps event, and also held the title of German Motor Sport Champion in 1973 and 1974. However, following a severe accident caused by tyre damage at the Macau Touring Car Race, Southeast China, in November 1974, he decided to end his active motorsport career.

For ten years from 1990, Dieter Glemser was a member of the Mercedes-Benz Motorsport team, and as department manager was responsible for organisation. From 2001 to 2008, he worked on a freelance basis for Mercedes-AMG and Daimler AG for sport and driver safety training and at classic events. He continues to drive at Mercedes-Benz classic events to this day.

Jochen Mass
Born in Dorfen near Wolfratshausen/Munich on 30 September 1946
Jochen Mass, originally a trained seaman, began his richly varied motorsport career in 1968 racing touring cars for Alfa-Romeo and as a works team driver for Ford between 1970 and 1975. During this time, he won the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps (1972). At the same time, he drove in Formula 2 (1973) and in 105 Formula 1 Grands Prix (1973/74 for Surtees; 1975-1977 for McLaren; 1978 for ATS; 1979/80 for Arrows; 1982 for March). With the 1985 German Sportscar Championship title and a stint as works driver at Porsche until 1987 under his belt, he was recruited for the Sauber-Mercedes team, also as a works driver.

He drove in Group C for this team until 1991. In the new Silver Arrow, the Sauber-Mercedes C 9, Jochen Mass won the 24 Hours of Le Mans together with Manuel Reuter and Stanley Dickens and finished runner-up in the 1989 World Championship. Three years later, Mass became involved in team management for the German Touring Car Championship.

Jochen Mass still represents Mercedes-Benz at historical racing events and at vintage super sports car events. Whether it’s a 40-horsepower Simplex from 1902 or a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR from 1955 – Jochen Mass knows them all and drives them all.

Vehicles of Mercedes-Benz Classic at the 2011 Eifelrennen
Mercedes-Benz W 196 R (version with open wheels), 1955
In 1954, the Silver Arrows returned as Mercedes-Benz entered the Formula 1 fray with the W 196. The first race for this new 2.5-litre racing car, the French Grand Prix in July 1954, ended with a double victory for Juan Manuel Fangio and Karl Kling. The eye-catching ‘Streamliner’ proved to be the right choice for the high-speed track in Reims.

In most races in the 1954 and 1955 seasons, however, a classic open-wheel monoposto was used, which was better suited for race circuits with lots of bends. Three other victories were secured in the W 196 R in 1954; in the following season it was five; and in both years Fangio became the world champion.

Vehicle
Year of construction: 1955
Cylinder: R8
Engine size: 2496 cc
Performance: 290 hp (213 kW)
Maximum speed: approx. 300 km/h

Mercedes-Benz high-speed transporter, 1955
In 1955, Mercedes-Benz’s racing division created a high-speed transporter which incorporated the direct-injection, six-cylinder in-line engine of the 300 SL super sports car. Its job was to speedily transport broken-down racing cars to the workshop for repair, to bring in replacement cars as quickly as possible, and to transport others to test tracks with a minimum of fuss.

The 192 hp (141 kW) three-litre engine was fitted into the extended frame of a Mercedes-Benz 300 S luxury sports car. It could move the cab-over-engine truck, which weighed in at 2,100 kilograms, at an impressive 165 km/h. The range of the ‘express’ was around 600 kilometres, with fuel consumption of 25 litres per 100 kilometres – thanks to a 150-litre tank.

On the instruction of Rudolf Uhlenhaut, then head of passenger car development at Daimler-Benz AG, this one-off model was scrapped in December 1967. The Mercedes-Benz Classic Center spent several years building a replica of the transporter with its steel and aluminium body. This new edition of the express race transporter was finished in April 2001.

Vehicle
Year of construction: 1955
Cylinder: R6
Engine size: 2998 cc
Performance: 192 hp (141 kW)
Maximum speed: 170 km/h

Source: Daimler AG

In the anniversary year celebrating “125 years of the automobile”, Mercedes-Benz, as a primary sponsor, will be entering two vehicles in the event on 5 and 6 November 2011: a 1902 two-seater Mercedes-Simplex racing car, and a 1904 four-seater Mercedes-Simplex touring car.

“It’s an honour for Mercedes-Benz to support the event in this year of the anniversary of the automobile”, says Michael Bock, head of Mercedes-Benz Classic and director of the Mercedes-Benz Museum. “We invented the automobile, and the ‘London to Brighton Veteran Car Run’ is the oldest classic car event worldwide. That represents the basis for an ideal collaboration.”

The “London to Brighton Veteran Car Run”, held in the anniversary year of the automobile, will be symbolically opened by Jutta Benz, the great-granddaughter of Carl Benz, inventor of the automobile. She will be driving a replica of the 1886 Benz Patent-Motorwagen. This is the 63rd year since 1948 that Mercedes-Benz will have attended the Veteran Car Run, which is an annual highlight of the Mercedes-Benz Classic calendar.

The two participating Mercedes-Simplex cars are outstanding vehicles considering the automotive technology of their time. Following the invention of the automobile in 1886, the Mercedes-Simplex model, introduced in 1901 by the former Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft, is regarded by today’s experts as the first modern automobile. For the first time, it showed important features which can still be found in passenger cars today, such as the low centre of gravity, the honeycomb radiator and an inclined steering column.

The Mercedes-Benz vehicles will once again be piloted by celebrity drivers this year: one will be driven by Nigel Mansell, 1992 British Formula 1 World Champion. Doug Nye, well-known British motor journalist, and Bernd Ostman, editor-in-chief of the professional journal “Auto Motor und Sport”, will be driving the second vehicle.

Remembering the emancipation of the automobile
The London to Brighton Veteran Car Run is held exclusively for vehicles built before 1904. The annual event marks the “Emancipation Run” of 14 November 1896. That event was organised by Harry J. Lawson in celebration of a then new law in Britain that raised the maximum permitted speed for automobiles with an internal combustion engine, from a walking pace of 6.4 km/h (4 miles per hour) to 22.4 km/h (16 miles per hour). The new law also abolished the requirement that vehicles be preceded by a man walking ahead of the vehicle, for the safety of other road users, as previously required by the 1865 “Locomotive Act”, also known as the “Red Flag Act”. The first event was started by the symbolic tearing up of a red flag, since, up until 1878, the man walking ahead of the vehicle had to also carry a red flag as a warning.

The first official commemorative repeat of the London to Brighton Run took place in 1927, and since then it has been organised annually, with the exception of the years 1940 to 1947. The 77th event will take place this year. This makes the Run the oldest existing motoring event in the world, and, at the same time, the largest gathering of veteran cars from the early days of automotive history. In addition to four-wheeled cars with internal combustion engines, three-wheelers and also steam cars and electric cars will also take part. The British Royal Automobile Club has been organising the Run since 1930.

In the 2011 Run, 550 vehicles from 20 countries are expected to take part. They will set out on 6 November 2011, on the approximately 96-kilometre (60-mile) course, which mainly follows the A23 road. The oldest vehicle is expected to be a Benz Victoria from 1894. As many as 500,000 spectators are expected to line the route. The start is at Apsley Gate, at London’s Hyde Park, where the first vehicles will depart at the official sunrise time of 7.02 a.m. From there, the cars will head to a checkpoint at Market Square, Crawley, before the event comes to an official end in Preston Park, a suburb of the seaside resort of Brighton. The unofficial, but actual finish is subsequently also celebrated by the public on the grand promenade, Madeira Drive. Only cars that arrive in Brighton by sunset will be counted.

Around 100 vehicles will take part in an eve-of-event concours d’elegance, on London’s Regent Street, on Saturday, 5 November 2011. Each car will be individually introduced, and spectators will have an opportunity for closer inspection. Before that event, on 4 November 2011, Bonhams on New Bond Street will host an auction of vehicles and automobilia from the early days.

Mercedes-Simplex: the modern automobile
The two Mercedes-Benz Classic cars which are to take part are from the company’s own collection. Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft produced a range of automobiles bearing the Simplex designation at Stuttgart-Untertürkheim, from 1901 to 1905, all of which had two things in common: they were designed by Wilhelm Maybach, and they were superior to all other cars at the time. The Simplex represented the pivotal transition from motorised carriage to purpose-built car.

The most striking technical features of the Mercedes-Simplex were its four-cylinder, front-mounted engine with cylinders cast in pairs, the U-section pressed steel frame, a low centre of gravity, honeycomb radiator and inclined steering column. These features are what provided the typical car-like appearance that distinguished it from contemporary carriage-type automobiles. Next to the 38/40 PS Mercedes-Simplex, the 28/32 PS was the more compact automobile.

Technical data for the 38/40 PS Mercedes-Simplex racing car
Year of construction: 1902
Cylinders: 4 (in-line) Displacement: 6558 ccm
Output: 40 hp (29 kW) at 1050 rpm
Maximum speed: approx. 75 km/h
Vehicle weight: 1250 kg

Technical data for the 28/32 PS Mercedes-Simplex touring car
Year of construction: 1904
Cylinders: 4 (in-line)
Displacement: 5315 ccm
Output: 32 hp (24 kW) at 1200 rpm
Maximum speed: approx. 60 km/h
Vehicle weight: 1250 kg

Technical data for the Benz Patent-Motorwagen Model I
Year of construction: 1886
Cylinders: Single-cylinder four-stroke engine with buzzer ignition
Displacement: 954 ccm
Output: 0.75 hp (0.55 kW) at 400 rpm
Fuel consumption: approx. 10 litres per 100 km
Maximum speed: 16 km/h
Vehicle weight: 265 kg

Nigel Mansell
Born on 8 August 1953 in Upton-on-Severn, Worcestershire, England.
The rise of Mansell’s sporting career proceeded in a straight line from karting 1968–75, the Formula Ford 1976–77 and the British Formula 3 Championship 1978–80, all the way to his Formula 1 début in 1980 in a Lotus Ford.

A long series with successful races in Formula 1 followed, crowned by three second-place titles and finally, in 1992, the World Champion title. After a brief interlude in the IndyCar Series (he won the Champion title on his first attempt in 1993), he returned to Formula 1 in 1994, and won the Grand Prix in Australia.

In 1995, he started twice in the Formula 1 for Team McLaren-Mercedes, but left the team before the end of the season.

Source: Daimler AG

“This is a very comprehensive reference work,” says Michael Bock, Head of Mercedes-Benz Classic and Managing Director of the Mercedes-Benz Museum. “Günter Engelen spent seven years researching his book and was able to draw on seven decades of knowledge and experience in covering the important role played by competition vehicles in over almost 125 years of automotive history.”
The book features the entire range of racing and sports cars built by Mercedes-Benz and its predecessor brands and used in motorsport from 1894 onwards. The author describes cars from every era, beginning with the very early years, and depicts in impressive detail the company’s approaches to racing car development and competitive success. The book features not only the most celebrated vehicles but also pays special attention to those mentioned only fleetingly in previously published works, such as the rally and off-road sports cars of the 1920s and 30s.

The eras following the Second World War are also given comprehensive treatment, beginning with the brand’s return to motorsport in 1952 and the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL racing sport coupé. The author gives a detailed account of the background and development of the early post-war Silver Arrows from the 1954 and 1955 seasons. He also provides an interesting and rare insight into the rally vehicles used before 1980. We are brought into the modern era with chapters covering DTM vehicles, the record-breaking drives of the C 111, Group C and GT motor racing, before our attention is turned to an analysis of the Silver Arrows from the most recent history of Formula One and finally the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 race car. The book concludes with a list of brief biographies of the main personalities and developers.

As a comprehensive and fact-filled compendium covering the entire spectrum of Mercedes-Benz racing cars and sports cars, this new reference work is unique. The author approaches each vehicle with expert knowledge and clarity, using a combination of precise texts, many previously unpublished photographs and detailed tables of technical data.

Born in 1938, Günter Engelen has been working as a journalist specialising in automotive history since 1985, and in particular in the vehicle history and development of Mercedes-Benz passenger cars and commercial vehicles. As a contributor to many specialist periodicals he has had numerous articles published. He is also the author of several other books on the Mercedes-Benz brand, which have attracted a wide readership for the wealth of information and narrative history they convey.

Source: Daimler AG

The Concours climaxes a weekend with a great many items on the agenda, including a drive and an auction, all dedicated to the most elegant, most outstanding automobiles. Mercedes-Benz Classic will be represented by several vehicles. The American subsidiary Mercedes-Benz USA additionally is presenting a special exhibition on the topic “125 years inventor of the automobile” in a separate pavilion.

The Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in California, USA, is since 1950 the most distinguished showcase for automotive elegance internationally – unparalleled the enthusiasm and passion of collectors from all over the world who strive to be successful here with their cars. Since the event was initiated, automobiles of the Mercedes-Benz brand have had a regular spot on the lawn in front of the lodge. In addition to more than 120 class victories and special prizes, vehicles from Mercedes-Benz have won the “Best of Show” award several times.

This year, during the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance a number of outstanding vehicles will be presented to the international audience. The Mercedes racing car designed by Wilhelm Maybach in 1906 was one of the most advanced vehicles of its day and features forward-looking details: for instance its six-cylinder engine has overhead camshafts, overhead valves and a dual high-voltage spark plug ignition. Because of its frame design the vehicle has a very low centre of gravity.

The 200 hp Benz of 1909 was given the byname “Blitzen Benz” – Lightning Benz – because of its outstanding performance. Among other things it was the first petrol-powered automobile in the world to post speeds over 200 km/h. The vehicle shown in Pebble Beach is a faithful reproduction using an authentic engine.

Of the supercharged six-cylinder sports cars of the Mercedes-Benz S series, the SSK (W 06 series) is the most exclusive and fascinating model. The model designation stands for “Super-Sport-Kurz” (super-sport-short) and besides emphasising the car’s special sportiness also indicates its shortened wheelbase. The SSK dominated the international motorsport scene in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Special exhibition “125 years inventor of the automobile”
In addition, Mercedes-Benz USA is organising an exhibition in its pavilion at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance to mark the “125 years inventor of the automobile” anniversary. A replica of the Benz Patent Motor Car of 1886 will be on display there, a so-called American Mercedes (1905), a Silver Arrow W 154 Grand Prix racing car (1939), a Mercedes-Benz 300 SL “Gullwing” (W 198, 1954), a Mercedes-Benz 220 SE (W 180, 1958) and a Mercedes-Benz 600 (W 100, 1969). The “Aesthetics 125!” sculpture created by Mercedes-Benz Design opens a window on the future of the brand. Concept car versions of the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Roadster and the next generation of the A-Class represent the more immediate future. And the F-Cell Roadster shows how Carl Benz perhaps would have built his Patent Motor Car today – with an environment-friendly electric drive using a fuel cell.

Source: Daimler AG

Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR (W 196 S), 1955 (mobile)
Mercedes-Benz won the sports car world championship with the 300 SLR in 1955. This sports car is essentially a Formula 1 W 196 racing car provided with a two-seater racing car body – but with a three-litre eight-cylinder in-line engine in light alloy instead of the 2.5-litre Formula 1 engine with steel cylinders. Rated at 300 hp (221 kW), the 300 SLR outperformed its rivals, scooping double victories in the Mille Miglia, the Eifel Race, the Swedish Grand Prix and the Targa Florio. In winning the Mille Miglia, Stirling Moss and co-driver Denis Jenkinson clocked up an average speed of 157.65 km/h – a feat that remains unsurpassed to this day. A useful aid in this race was the “prayer book” – a new type of itinerary with crucial notes which Jenkinson drew up to guide driver Moss around the course. Juan Manuel Fangio, competing without a co-driver, came in second. In Sweden and in the 24-hour Le Mans race the 300 SLRs caused a surprise with the so-called air brake – a panel measuring 0.7 square metres in size which the driver could open up over the rear axle to boost the braking effect. In Le Mans, Mercedes-Benz withdrew the 300 SLR following an accident suffered by Belgian driver Pierre Levegh through no fault of his own while he was in the leading position.

Mercedes-Benz racing transporter, 1955
It was not only the legendary Silver Arrows that caused a stir in the early 1950s. Mercedes-Benz also made its mark away from the actual race track with the “world’s fastest racing transporter”. Race manager Alfred Neubauer was inspired to develop this special-purpose vehicle by the racing car transporter based on a large Mercedes touring car which was built in 1924. The racing transporter was required to be fast – very fast, together with its load, in the form of a Grand Prix racing car or an SLR racing sports car.

The X-type tubular frame forming the basis of the vehicle originated from the 300 S model, while the powerful engine came from the 300 SL. The racing transporter’s designers also used parts from the 180 model. The end result was a technically unique vehicle sporting a correspondingly distinctive appearance, with a wheelbase of 3050 mm and a top speed of 160 to 170 km/h, according to payload.

The high-speed transporter was ready for service in 1955. The racing department deployed the vehicle first and foremost for special tasks – when a car needed to be transported to the race track quickly after final tuning or adjustments, or returned to the factory swiftly after a race in order to gain more time for repairs. The racing transporter became something of a sensation on Europe’s roads, attracting great popularity as it darted from race track to race track.

With the original vehicle no longer surviving, it was decided in 1993 to rebuild the one-off vehicle. Following seven years of meticulous work by the experts, the racing transporter was unveiled in all its former glory once again in 2001. It is on show at the Mercedes-Benz Museum with a 300 SLR (W 196 S) on its load surface.

Mercedes-Benz W 196 R, 1954/1955 (on racing transporter)
The Mer­ce­des-Benz W 196 R Formula 1 racing car built for the 1954 season met all the requirements of the new Grand Prix formula defined by the CSI (Commission Spor­tive Inter­na­ti­o­na­le): displacement 750 cc with or 2500 cc without compressor, any fuel composition, racing distance 300 kilometres but at least three hours. The streamlined version was the first to be produced, as the opening race in Reims permitted very high speeds. A variant with free-standing wheels was subsequently produced. For its second season in 1955, this classic grand prix car was also available with shorter wheelbases: in addition to the 2350 millimetre long car from 1954, there were also variants with a wheelbase of 2150 and 2210 millimetres. The shortest variant was ideal for the narrow, winding circuit through Monaco. The space frame was light and robust, the chassis with torsion bar suspension and a new single-joint swing axle at the rear plus giant turbo-cooled duplex disc brakes which were initially fitted in an inside central position was as accomplished as it was unconventional. The car was powered by an eight-cylinder in-line engine (2496 cc) with direct injection and desmodromic (positive-controlled, without valve springs) valves (1954: 256 hp/188 kW at 8260 rpm, 1955: 290 hp/213 kW at 8500 rpm). The engine unit was mounted in the latticework frame at an incline of 53 degrees to the right, in order to lower the centre of gravity and to reduce the size of the frontal area. The top speed was over 300 km/h.

Benz’s patented motor car, 1886
Carl Benz filed a patent application for his “gas engine-powered vehicle” on 29 January 1886. Patent no.DRP 37.435 has since come to be regarded as the automobile’s ‘birth certificate’. The world’s first automobile was an original construction incorporating engine and chassis as an organic entity. Benz designed it as a three-wheel vehicle, as he was dubious about the drawbar steering which was customary on horse-drawn coaches. Carl Benz’s crucial contribution was the determination with which he realised his vision of a “carriage without horses”: he had the idea of a motor car, designed it, built it, had it patented, tested it, marketed it, put it into production and pursued its further development, thus rendering his invention usable. Benz’s patented motor car rang in a new era of individual mobility.

Mercedes-Benz SSK (model series W 06), 1928
The SSK (model series W 06) is the most exclusive and fascinating of the six-cylinder supercharged sports cars belonging to the Mercedes-Benz S-Series. The model designation is an abbreviated form of ‘super-sports-short’ in German, alluding to both the car’s special sportiness and its shortened wheelbase. In the summer of 1928, works racing driver Rudolf Caracciola won the Gabelbach, the Schauinsland and the Mont Ventoux races in the brand-new SSK at the first attempt. In 1930 and 1931 he won the European Hillclimbing Championship at the wheel of the SSK. The lighter and yet more powerful version from 1931, which was also known as the SSKL (German abbreviation for ‘super-sports-short-light’) also scored some spectacular victories, one of the most outstanding being in the legendary 1000-mile “Mille Miglia” race: driving the SSKL, Rudolf Caracciola was the first non-Italian to win the gruelling road race from Brescia to Rome and back in April 1931.

Mercedes-Benz 500 K Special Roadster (model series W 29), 1934
Mercedes-Benz’s eight-cylinder supercharged cars were positioned in the international luxury class in the 1930s. The “Model 500 with compressor”, or 500 K (model series W 29) appeared in 1934 in eight different body variants: as a streamlined saloon described as a “Motorway Courier Car”, as a 4-door saloon which sold as a “Sedan”, as a cabriolet in three variants, as a 2-door open touring car and as a Roadster. The ultimate variant was the particularly elegant and luxurious Special Roadster, only 29 of which were ever built. The 500 K and its successor, the 540 K, acquired legendary status not only on account of their superlative power and performance, but also by virtue of their beguilingly attractive and high-quality bodies. With its tailor-made form and elegant flowing lines, the Sindelfingen-built body rose to benchmark status in the 1930s.

Mercedes-Benz 300 SL (model series W 198), 1954
The 300 SL “Gullwing” was unveiled in February 1954 at the International Motor Sport Show in New York. The high-performance sports car was based on the legendary racing sports car of the 1952 season. Engine, transmission and axles are mounted on a light, torsionally rigid space frame. As on the motor racing version, there is no room for conventional doors, and the gull-wing doors duly became the distinguishing feature of the 300 SL (model series W 198). The gull-wing model was an innovation flagship in other respects, too: it was the first standard production passenger car to be powered by a four-stroke engine with petrol injection. This boosted not only efficiency, but engine power, too. 215 hp (158 kW), 20 percent more than on the motor racing version fitted with carburettors, enabled a top speed of up to 250 km/h. This made the 300 SL the fastest production car of its day and the dream sports car of the 1950s.

Mercedes-Benz 180 “Pontoon” (model series W 120/121), 1955
The model 180 (W 120) from the Mercedes-Benz upper mid-range car programme set cutting-edge standards in terms of engineering and style when it was premiered in the autumn of 1953. A totally new development, this saloon was the first passenger car from the brand to feature a self-supporting body. The new model’s exterior design also reflected this structural design principle, the model 180 making its mark with its modern “pontoon” shape featuring a rectangular plan view and fully integrated wings. This body design entailed new advantages, including exemplary safety, reduced drag and a spacious interior – strengths which remain defining characteristics of the Mercedes-Benz E-Class to this day. Following the successful introduction of the petrol-engined model, Mercedes-Benz was quick to launch the 180 D diesel variant at the beginning of 1954. The more powerful model 190 was adopted into the programme as the third variant in 1956, with the 190 D making its appearance in 1958 (both model series W 121).

Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL 6.9 (model series W 116), 1980
The luxury segment series with which Mercedes-Benz had been setting automobile standards for decades acquired a name of its own in 1972. The new S-Class (model series W 116) boasted a comprehensive safety concept, along the same lines as the 350 SL sports car which had been presented in 1971. This concept included a tank installed above the rear axle to afford protection in the event of a collision, a four-spoke safety steering wheel, soiling-resistant side windows, large headlamps, striking indicator lamps and dirt-repellent ribbed tail lights. In 1975 the powerful and particularly comfortable 450 SEL 6.9 appeared as the new top-of-the-range model, featuring a large-displacement, high-output V8 engine (286 hp/210 kW) and hyropneumatic suspension. In 1978 the S-Class was the first production vehicle worldwide to be available with the ABS anti-lock brake system, ensuring that steering control was retained even during emergency braking. A global sensation at the time, thanks to Mercedes-Benz’s pioneering work ABS is now a standard feature of present-day automobiles.

Mercedes-Benz B-Class F-CELL (model series T 245), 2010
In 2020, the Mercedes-Benz B-Class F-CELL demonstrated that local emission-free mobility is already possible in day-to-day motoring. This vehicle produced in a small series is equipped with a fuel cell system of the very latest generation which converts hydrogen into electrical energy. A full tank of the gas compressed at 700 bar offers a range of around 400 kilometres. This range, good cold-start capability, short filling times at the hydrogen filling station and the impressive performance of the 100 kW (136 hp) electric motor offering 290 Newton metres of torque make the Mercedes-Benz B-Class F-CELL fully suitable for everyday use. The vehicle also offers exemplary safety and fuel consumption, the latter corresponding to only 3.3 litres of diesel per 100 kilometres. Customers in Germany and the USA began taking delivery of these environmentally friendly vehicles in 2010, initially on full service rental terms.

Mercedes-Benz sculpture “Aesthetics 125”, 2011
Dynamically flowing lines and bold, dynamic contours: the sculpture “Aesthetics 125” embodies the Mercedes-Benz design philosophy in abstract form. It was unveiled to the public at the ceremony held by Daimler AG on 29 January 2011 to mark the 125th birthday of the automobile. This work of art created by Mercedes-Benz designers incorporates elements of the brand’s signature design idiom from the exterior and the interior and projects them into the future. As such, “Aesthetics 125” stands for the maxim “Mercedes-Benz design is art” – similarly to the previously presented sculptures “Aesthetics No. 1” and “Aesthetics No. 2”. On a technical level, the imposing sculpture is firmly rooted in the present-day world of leading-edge automotive development at Mercedes-Benz, having been produced by means of “rapid prototyping”. This technology is employed by designers and development engineers to create three-dimensional models directly from digital designs produced on computers.

Source: Daimler AF

“Mercedes-Benz Classic is marking what was a defining moment in the both the history of engineering and the broader social context. An invention that continues to influence the world to this day – as demonstrated at the Schloss Dyck Classic Days 2011”, notes Michael Bock, head of Mercedes-Benz Classic and Mercedes-Benz Museum GmbH.“I am particularly delighted that Jutta Benz, great-granddaughter of Bertha and Carl Benz will be attending the event in this anniversary year.” The event will take place in Jüchen in the Rhine district of Neuss on 6 and 7 August 2011.

Mercedes-Benz Classic will be celebrating the invention of the automobile at this event with an exhibition of automotive milestones from the company’s own collection. Another focus of the event is Juan Manuel Fangio, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday this year.

Born in Balcarce (Argentina) on 24 June 1911, racing driver and record world champion Juan Manuel Fangio shaped the era of the Mercedes-Benz Silver Arrows in 1954 and 1955. He won the Formula 1 world championship on both years, and was also successful in sports car racing.

Mercedes-Benz Classic will be reviving this era at Schloss Dyck with a presentation of Fangio’s two legendary Silver Arrows: the W 196 Grand Prix racing car, which will be exhibited on the famous Mercedes-Benz racing transporter that is also known as the “Blue Wonder”, and the 300 SLR racing sports car (model series W 196 S) with the starting number 658, which will also be doing the rounds on the circuit at Schloss Dyck.

Fangio contested the 1955 Mille Miglia in this vehicle. In contrast to most other drivers, he completed the race without a co-pilot, nevertheless taking second place behind his team-mate, Stirling Moss. The ‘658’ derives from his starting time of 6.58 a.m.

Mercedes-Benz Classic has also invited racing drivers Hans Herrmann and Jochen Mass to this top-class weekend devoted to automobile culture. The two will take turns driving this historic car at the Schloss Dyck Classic Days.

As part of the “125! years of the automobile” exhibition, Mercedes-Benz Classic will be showing milestones of automobile history at the Schlosspark which illustrate the brand’s unflagging innovative drive since 1886. The centrepiece will be Benz’s patented motor car from 1886 – the world’s first automobile. Also on show will be an SSK supercharged touring sports car, a Mercedes-Benz 500 K luxury roadster, a Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Coupé with its characteristic gull-wing doors, a pontoon-style saloon from the era of the ‘economic miracle’ and the stunning Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL 6.9. Finally, the cutting-edge B-Class F-CELL, recently returned from its circumnavigation of the globe on the “F-CELL World Drive” in June 2011, provides an insight into the future of automotive engineering and technology as a state-of-the-art automobile running on zero emissions.

Mercedes-Benz Rhine-Ruhr will be providing an exclusive chauffeur service for the Classic Days from the branches in Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Krefeld, Mönchengladbach and Neuss, enabling classic car enthusiasts to arrive at one of the world’s leading classic car events in consummate style. To underscore the character of the Classic Days as a family occasion, Mercedes-Benz Rhine-Ruhr director Jürgen Herrmann has been keen to assist the Schloss Dyck foundation in organising the event by providing an additional shuttle service. “Organising such a festival calls for mobility. We are happy to help the foundation by providing eight Mercedes-Benz vehicles from our branch,” he says.

Launched in 2006, the Schloss Dyck Classic Days provide a perfect setting in which to present the fascinating history of Mercedes-Benz and its predecessor companies. The brand clubs will once again help to boost the event’s special appeal, presenting more than 200 vehicles at the Classic Days Schloss Dyck. The actual level of interest among the clubs was even greater – the number of inquiries in 2011 once again exceeded the capacity of the historical site surrounding the moated castle.

The Classic Days Schloss Dyck came into being in 2006 to commemorate racing driver Wolfgang Alexander Reichsgraf Berghe von Trips, who suffered a fatal accident in Monza in 1961. Von Trips contested sports car races in cars from Mercedes-Benz, while in Formula 1 he raced for Ferrari and Porsche. The “Count Trips Sculpture” by Pierre Habets also commemorates the legendary driver and is awarded to the overall winner of the Schloss Dyck Classic Days.

The Classic Days, which draw enthusiasts and collectors from all over Europe to the Rhineland with their exclusive vehicles, boasts a rich and varied agenda. The “Racing Legends” offer circuit races for historical competition vehicles built up to 1961. Motorcycles and car/trailer combinations dating from 1940 and earlier also race against the clock. These circuits combine with the demonstration trips on the almost three kilometre-long circuit around the moated castle and the 1/4-mile sprint competition over 402.36 metres to produce a kaleidoscope focusing on the highlights of classic motor racing which truly brings this special variant of automotive engineering to life.

The action kicks off with racing and sports cars in the categories “Classic” (1910 to 1925), “Historic” (1926 to 1949) and “Modern” (1950 to 1961). There will also be special races under the banner “125 years of the automobile” for large-displacement, sporty vehicles from the beginnings of motorsport spanning the period from 1905 to 1920, for monoposti used in Formula racing which date from the years between 1930 and 1961 and “Great British Marques” for vehicles from Riley, Lagonda, Bentley, Alvis, Invicta and Sunbeam built between 1925 and 1950.

The second dazzling highlight of the festival will once again be the “Concours d’Elegance at Schloss Dyck – “Jewels in the Park”. This presentation of vehicles has received a category A rating as a top event from FIVA once again – on a par with the Villa d’Este and Pebble Beach. The presentation in front of the moated castle and at other unusual locations around the grounds of this site dating back to the 11th century is expected to draw a crowd of more than 40,000.

Various special exhibitions and themed presentations will round off the programme of events at the Schloss Dyck Classic Days. One such special item on the agenda will be the presentation of classic vehicles at the Miscanthus Field – named after the decorative Chinese reed grass which grows there – which will be transformed for two days into a vast open-air museum presenting the history of the automobile, with many hundreds of vehicles on show.

Source: Daimler AG

And they are facets that add up to pure automotive fascination, drawing thousands of visitors to the Festival of Speed year after year. Mercedes-Benz Classic is a regular at the Festival of Speed and will also be participating at this year’s event, which is scheduled to be held from 1–3 July 2011 under the theme “Racing Revolutions – Quantum leaps that shaped motor sport”

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Source: Mercedes-Benz Museum

those are the strengths of the Mercedes-Benz brand. And they are facets that add up to pure automotive fascination, drawing thousands of visitors to the Festival of Speed year after year. Mercedes-Benz Classic is a regular at the Festival of Speed and will also be participating at this year’s event, which is scheduled to be held from 1–3 July 2011 under the theme “Racing Revolutions – Quantum leaps that shaped motor sport”.

Its line-up of landmark racing cars is set to negotiate the 1.86-kilometre-long hillclimb circuit. And in 2011 Mercedes-Benz Classic will also be presenting the exhibition “125! years inventor of the automobile” which celebrates milestones of the brand’s history, right back to its origins with Carl Benz’s Patent Motor Car from 1886.

Motorsport revolutions
The concerted will to innovate embraced by Mercedes-Benz and the predecessor brands is thus reflected on the racetrack as well as in the exhibition. After all, Mercedes-Benz “Racing Revolutions” are the brand’s racing cars with a string of victories to their name. And these successes were not just down to the drivers’ skill but essentially also fruit of the engineers’ tireless determination to come up with new solutions for the racing cars. Such developments have consistently been those “quantum leaps that shaped motor sport”, as echoed in the 2011 festival theme.

This year Goodwood will be host to legendary racing cars that are all set to tackle the hillclimb circuit. The line-up includes the W 165 Silver Arrow designed specifically for the Tripoli Grand Prix in 1939, the 300 SL (W 194) racing sports car from 1952 (claimed victory in the Le Mans 24 Hours) and the 190 2.5 16V EVO II touring car used in the DTM from 1990. The current Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3, which will line up on the starting grid in the FIA GT3 Championship, will represent contemporary high-performance cars.

In keeping with the Festival’s tradition, high-profile racing drivers such as Sir John Surtees, Paul Stewart, Klaus Ludwig and Bernd Schneider will take the cars around the hillclimb circuit.

The “125! years inventor of the automobile” exhibition starts with the foundation of automotive history – the Benz Patent Motor Car from 1886. Among the exhilarating engineering and style icons also on show in the exhibition will be the Mercedes Simplex 40 hp from 1902, a Mercedes-Benz 500 K Cabriolet B (W 29) from 1936, the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing Coupé (W 198), a Mercedes-Benz 250 SE Cabriolet (W 111), a Mercedes-Benz 280 SL Roadster (W 113) from the 1960s, a Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL 6.9 (W 116) launched in 1975 and the very latest Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Coupé (C 197).

From art to the top flight of motorsport
The Festival of Speed, which was inaugurated in1993, was the brainchild of Charles Gordon-Lennox, Earl of March and Kinrara. The dedicated motorsport fan and Goodwood host bears the title Lord March. His grandfather, the former Earl of March and 9th Duke of Richmond, laid the foundation for the Festival. He was well-known in England as the car designer, engineer and racing driver Freddie March. In 1936 he organised the very first private hillclimb circuit in Goodwood Park. His grandson would rekindle this tradition more than 50 years later.

The Festival has developed from the inaugural event in 1993 into one of the unmissable highlights in the international cultural calendar for automotive fans. Racing and sports cars from across the ages play the symphonies of speed on the circuits for three whole days. Even the top flight of motorsport is represented: at least nine of this season’s Formula One teams are scheduled to participate in Goodwood in 2011, including Mercedes GP and McLaren-Mercedes. A 2.5-kilometre-long rally course was added in 2007 to supplement the hillclimb course.

Leisurely afternoon stroll and automotive fascination
The Festival of Speed is just as much an exhilarating motorsport event as it is an opportunity to stroll along in style and lap up some automotive culture: from the pits, open to all visitors, through vehicle exhibitions in the park grounds, to the automotive works of art created every year by British sculptor Gerry Judah. His temporary sculptures, which are located right in front of Goodwood House, always centre around a single brand and its particular vehicles. In 2001 the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL was the subject of the work of art at the then Festival of Speed.

Source: Daimler AG

Fan­gio drove to a total of five For­mula 1 world titles in vehicles from four different manufacturers. There was something very special about his relationship with Mer­ce­des-Benz though. He had already been working as a dealer for the Stuttgart-based brand in Argen­ti­na since 1951. And following the end of his racing career, he became President of Mer­ce­des-Benz Argentina S.A. in 1974. He died in Bue­nos Aires on 17 July 1995.

It was at the French Grand Prix on 4 July 1954 that Mer­ce­des-Benz made its first ever appearance with the new Silver Arrows from the W 196 R series. The victor at the Reims circuit was Juan Manuel Fan­gio, who had been world champion in 1951 and finished second in 1950 and 1953. The Argentinean was already aged 43 at the time, making him older than many of the other drivers in the field. He had furthermore suffered a serious accident in the 1952 season.

Yet far from being a fabulous finale to his career, Fangio’s win for Mer­ce­des‑Benz at the wheel of the W 196 R marked the start of an extraordinary success story. During 1954 and 1955, Fan­gio lined up on the starting grid for the Mercedes-Benz team for a total of 19 Formula 1 and touring car races, recording ten wins and a number of other impressive results.

Fan­gio was born to Italian immigrants on 24 June 1911 in the small country town of Balcarce in Argen­ti­na – seemingly a very far cry from a future career as a five-time Formula 1 world champion. But the youngster, who did an apprenticeship as a mechanic, was inspired by his fellow countrymen’s passion for motor racing. He came into contact with the local racing driver scene at an early age, gained some experience at the wheel himself and learned how to rebuild vehicles for racing. In 1932, he opened his own car workshop, and four years later Fan­gio competed in his first race in a converted Ford ta­xi.

After the end of World War II, Fan­gio made the switch from rebuilt standard passenger cars to thoroughbred racing cars, and entered the international racing arena. In 1950, he came second in the World Championship driving for Alfa Romeo, before going on to win his first world title for the Ita­lia­n car maker in 1951. 1951 also marked the start of Fangio’s close ties with Mer­ce­des-Benz, however, as it was the year he opened a sales outlet for the Stuttgart brand’s cars in Bue­nos Aires. And it was not long before he was sitting behind the wheel of a Silver Arrow for the first time; in Feb­ruary 1951, Mer­ce­des-Benz came over to Argentina, bringing with it three overhauled pre-war W 154 racing cars for a guest race appearance. Fan­gio was on the starting grid for the “Premio Pre­si­dente de la Nación Juan D. Perón”, along with Karl Kling and Her­mann Lang. However, the Silver Arrows were unable to reach their top speed on the modern circuit with its many chicanes, and Fan­gio only managed to finish third.

During the 1952 season, when the World Championship was switched to Formula 2, Fan­gio suffered a serious accident in Monza. He spent the remainder of the year convalescing from his injuries, most notably from one he sustained to his spine. He was already back in the racing seat in 1953 though, when he finished second in the World Championship with Mase­rati.

International motor racing was made all the more spectacular in 1954 by the return of Mer­ce­des-Benz to the grand prix arena. Racing director Alf­red Neu­bauer signed the Argentinean driving ace as the captain of the racing team. The Stutt­gart­-based outfit had been developing the W 196 R racing car for the new Formula 1 season since 1953. It was powered by a 257 hp (189 kW) inline eight-cylinder engine with a displacement of 2.5 litres, desmodromic valves and direct petrol injection. Apart from the Streamliner version, a clas­sic For­mula racing car with exposed wheels was also created. The new Silver Arrows were not ready for the start of the season, so Fan­gio still competed in a Mase­ra­ti in the first three races. At that time, the Formula 1 World Championship consisted of just a drivers’ title. The constructors’ championship was only contested from the 1958 season onwards.

On 4 July 1954, Fan­gio lined up for his first ever grand prix in a Mer­ce­des‑Benz: exactly 40 years after Mer­ce­des driver Chris­tian Lau­ten­schla­ger drove to victory in Lyon, the Stutt­gar­t team returned to the fray at the French Grand Prix in Reims. Fan­gio took the chequered flag ahead of teammate Karl Kling. The apparently effortless switch from Mase­rati to the W 196 R once again underlined Fangio’s immense ability to adapt: ever since taking part in the tough endurance races in his home country, he seemed to be able to extract the very best from every vehicle. It was this vir­tu­oso impro­vi­sational skill that led to victory for the Argentinean time and time again.

The 1954 season turned into a great tri­umph for Mer­ce­des‑Benz and Fan­gio: he followed up his victory in France with further wins in Germany (Nür­burg­ring), Switzerland (Bremgarten) and Ita­ly (Monza). Fan­gio was crowned Formula 1 world champion for the second time, with almost double the points of his nearest rival. The Argen­ti­nean dominated the 1955 season in similar fashion, winning the grand prix races in Argen­ti­na, Bel­gi­um, the Netherlands and Ita­ly, and finishing second behind teammate Stirling Moss at the British Grand Prix.
Other exceptional performances by Fan­gio during this season included second spot at the Mille Mig­lia, driving solo in a Mer­ce­des-Benz 300 SLR (W 196 S). Winner Stirling Moss, on the other hand, was accompanied by a co-driver, Denis Jenkinson, as was most of the field.

Following Mer­ce­des‑Benz’s withdrawal from motor racing at the end of the 1955 season, Fan­gio went on to win two more world championship titles with Fer­rari (1956) and Mase­rati (1957). The following year, the Argentinean called an end to his racing career at the age of 47. In 1974, he assumed the post of Pre­si­dent of Mer­ce­des-Benz Argen­tina S.A. His five Formula 1 world championship titles remained a record until his death in 1995, which was not surpassed until Michael Schu­ma­cher achieved the feat in 2003.

Today, tributes to Juan Manuel Fan­gio include five identical life-size bronze sculptures depicting the exceptional racing driver together with the W 196 R. They can be found in front of the Mer­ce­des-Benz Museum in Stutt­gart, outside the Mer­ce­des-Benz headquarters in Bue­nos Aires, as well as at the Nür­burg­ring, Monza and Mona­co circuits.

There is also a Fangio Museum in Balcarce that is run by a local association. Featuring numerous vehicles and other exhibits, it is dedicated to the racing driver’s whole life story.

Juan Manuel Fan­gio: races for Mer­ce­des-Benz

The vehicles
The W 196 R
The Mer­ce­des-Benz W 196 R Formula 1 racing car built for the 1954 season was designed around the criteria laid down for the new Grand Prix formula by the CSI (Commission Spor­tive Inter­na­ti­o­na­le): a displacement of 750 cubic cen­ti­me­tres with a supercharger or 2500 cubic cen­ti­me­tres without, no restrictions on fuel composition, race distance of 300 kilo­me­tres with a minimum race duration of three hours.

The Streamliner ver­si­on was completed first, because the season opener in Reims was suited to very high speeds. This was followed by a vari­ant with exposed wheels. This classic-style grand prix car was then also made available with shorter wheelbases for the second season in 1955: the original 2350-mil­li­me­tre car from 1954 was joined by racers with wheelbases of 2150 and 2210 mil­li­me­tres. The shortest vari­ant was ideal for the twists and turns of the city circuit in Monaco.

The space frame was light and strong, while the chassis – featuring a torsion-bar suspension and a new single-joint swing axle at the rear, as well as huge, turbo-cooled dup­lex drum brakes which were initially mounted centrally on the inside – broke with convention and to good effect. It was powered by an inline eight-cylinder engine (displacement of 2496 cc) with direc­t injection and desmodromic valve control (positive closing without valve springs) and an output of 256 hp/188 kW at 8260 rpm in 1954 and 290 hp/213 kW at 8500 rpm in 1955. The drive unit was incorporated into the frame’s structure tilted at an angle of 53 degrees to the right in order to lower the centre of gravity and reduce the size of the frontal area. Top speed was in excess of 300 km/h.

The 300 SLR
The Mer­ce­des-Benz 300 SLR motor racing car was partially based on the engineering of the successful grand prix racer, but was given the body of a road racing car. It scored some major successes in 1955, thereby adding to the brand’s stardom. Its internal designation of W 196 S was already an indication of its close kinship to the grand prix Sil­ver­ Arrow of the time.

Its engine, whose capacity had been increased to 2982 cubic cen­ti­me­tres by increasing the bore by 2 mil­li­me­tres and the stroke by 9.2 mil­li­me­tres, was the most advanced version of the inline eight-cylinder unit from the Formula 1 car. The recommended rev speed, power output and fuel tank capacity varied depending on the nature of the upcoming race, to span the spectrum between sprint (such as the Eifel Race at the Nür­burg­ring over 228.1 kilo­me­tres) and mara­thon (such as at Le Mans).

The wheel suspension of the W 196 R, with double wishbones at the front and a swing axle at the rear, had been adopted with hardly any modifications. The sports car’s space frame, weighing just 60 kilo­grams, was derived more from the 300 SL from 1952, comprising an elaborate framework made up of pipes 25 mil­li­me­tres in diameter with a wall thickness of 1 mil­li­me­tre, particularly around the low-set flanks and the sturdier struts in the vicinity of the suspension. The more unusual solutions used on the 300 SLR included a remarkably effective airbrake at the rear. It was raced at Le Mans and at the Swedish Grand Prix in Kristianstad.

With an output of as much as 310 hp (228 kW), the motor racing car was capable of top speeds beyond the 300 km/h mark.

Source: Daimler AG

The latest historical research suggests that the inventor of the automobile was born in a guesthouse at Rheinstrasse 22 in the Mühlburg district of Karlsruhe. The place of his birth had remained previously unknown. However, the house no longer exists, having been knocked down in the 1950s to allow for the widening of Rheinstrasse. The site is today occupied by a department store with adjoining car park. It is planned to erect a small memorial to the inventor in the direct vicinity of the site.

Carl Benz was born on 25 November 1844. His birth was recorded in the church register under the Germanised surname of his mother, Josephine Vaillant: Carl Friedrich Michael Wailand. It was not until one year later, on 16 November 1845, that Carl’s mother married his presumed father, Johann Georg Benz, in the Catholic parish church of St. Stephan. His mother worked as a maid in Karlsruhe from 1833 up until two months before the birth of her son.

This latest evidence is the result of exhaustive new research conducted by the municipality of Karlsruhe, which involved a search of the relevant church registers by the historian Dr Peter Pretsch , director of the local municipal museum at the Municipal Archive and Historical Museums section. Piece by piece, the names of the godfathers revealed a chain of clues: Karl Axtmann, a master shoemaker, and Michael Kramer, a “burgher, innkeeper and brewer”. Axtmann was a relative, because Carl Benz’s paternal great-grandmother was called Axtmann. It is assumed that Axtmann was instrumental in obtaining accommodation for the heavily pregnant Josephine Vaillant at the guesthouse owned by Michael Kramer at Rheinstrasse 22. As home births were the norm in those days, it is reasonable to conclude that this was the place where Carl Benz was born. Kramer’s guesthouse was later given the name “Stadt Karlsruhe”.

After their wedding, Josephine and Johann Georg Benz moved with their child to Erbprinzenstrasse 13 in Karlsruhe – another finding to emerge from the latest research, discovered in this case with reference to the 1846 street register. Benz was an engine driver with Baden Railways. Being required to perform his work in the open cabs of the steam locomotives of those days, he contracted pneumonia, from which he died in the summer of 1846 – not quite two years after the birth of his son. Thereafter, his widow provided board and lodging in Karlsruhe to students from the polytechnic school in order to finance her son’s studies.

Carl Benz first attended the scientific grammar school in Karlsruhe. Aged 15, he passed the entrance examination for the polytechnic school on 30 September 1860. Four years later, on 9 July 1864, he successfully completed his studies, after which he began work as a mechanic. Having moved to Mannheim in connection with his work, he married Bertha Ringer on 20 July 1872. In 1885 h e built his first petrol-engined automobile, a three‑wheeler, for which he filed a patent application on 29 January 1886 (German Imperial Patent No. 37.435). The patent specification may be considered the birth certificate of the automobile. Carl Benz died on 4 April 1929 in Ladenburg. Consequently, he lived long enough to witness the triumph of his invention – in contrast to Gottlieb Daimler, who died as early as 1900.

Source: Daimler AG

Design: 300 SL
Component group: 15 parts
Dimensions: 30 x 21 cm
Art & Mold: jigsaw puzzle landscape

Price: 12,90 Euro
Item-Number: B66055630

Source: Mercedes-Benz Classic Shop

Box Size: 110 x 110 x 105 mm (external dimensions)
Box material: polystyrene double-walled, transparent
Slip of paper: appr. 98 x 98 x 95 mm
Material paper: offset paper, white

Price: 9,90 Euro
Item-Number: B66055629

Source: Mercedes-Benz Classic Shop

The Dot Grid was developed as an alternative to traditional lines and boxes. The light geometric dot matrix serves as a subtle guide for your notations and sketches. Front with application of the historical 300 SL Gullwing – rear with embossing www.mercedes-benz-classic.com. The imprint “Mercedes-Benz Classic” is located on each sheet.

Paper Size: A5
Paper: 80 g/qm
Color: white paper
Number of sheets: 50 sheets
Price: 4,90 Euro
Item-Number: B66055628

Source: Mercedes-Benz Classic Shop

The Dot Grid was developed as an alternative to traditional lines and boxes. The light geometric dot matrix serves as a subtle guide for your notations and sketches. Front with application of the historical 300 SL Gullwing – rear with embossing www.mercedes-benz-classic.com. The imprint “Mercedes-Benz Classic” is located on each sheet.

Paper Size: A5
Color: white paper
Number of sheets: 48 sheets
Twin-wire binding
Price: 14,90 Euro
Item number: B66055626

Source: Mercedes-Benz Classic Shop

This patent is see as the birth certificate of the automobile. “Patentirt im Deutschen Reiche vom 29. Januar 1886 an” – “patented in the German Empire from 29. January 1886 on”: thus reads the document; and that very day the automobile’s triumphal march began that was to change the world to an unimaginable extent. The Federal Finance Ministry is issuing a special postage stamp and a special coin to celebrate the automobile’s 125th birthday.

The special postage stamp shows the first motor car in the world, with a drawing of the patent of 29th January 1886 as a background. The stamp has a denomination of 55 cents and will be available at all Post Offices and agencies from 5th May 2011 on.

From 9th June 2011 on a special commemorative coin “125 years of the automobile” with a denomination of 10 euros, will be issued, available in banks and savings banks. With a dynamic, modern graphic design based on the circular shape on the steering wheel, both obverse and anverse deal with the theme of individual mobility such as that which the motor car makes possible.

Official presentation of both commemorative editions by the Federal Finance Ministry is to take place in Berlin on 7. June 2011.

Transcending space and time reaches a new dimension with the Benz patent motor car. Carl Benz’s invention is the world’s first automobile, which through its autonomy and availability created the foundation for the individualisation of transport. Starting with the Benz patent motor car, the new means of transport opens up for broad segments of the population broad new horizons and countries undreamed of until then. The associated fascination remains unbroken to this day. And the transport of goods and passengers experiences a dramatic change thanks to the flexibility, performance and economy of the automobile.

The same year as Carl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler builds his first automobile. On 8. March 1886 he orders a carriage from carriage construction factory Wilhelm Wimpff & Sohn in Stuttgart. He has his compact, fast-running petrol engine installed in this carriage. Daimler’s focus is on motorising transport on land, on water and in the air, he never loses sight of the universal application possibilities of the engine he has invented.

The real invention of Carl Benz, who had already carried out his first test runs in October 1885 with his three-wheeled patent motor carriage under exclusion of the public, was the self-sufficient, closed concept of an autonomously driven motor car. It is the first comprehensively conceived automobile – engine, chassis and drive system are exactly adapted and adjusted to each other, forming a unity. The first automobile in the world has a horizontal single-cylinder engine that produces an output of 0.75 hp (0.55 kW) from its displacement volume of 954 cc at a speed of 400 rpm. It can reach a top speed of 16 km/h.

At first, Benz trusts a single front wheel, because he sensibly considers the kind of front-axle steering system used in carriage construction, the turntable steering, to be a technical dead-end alley. It is only after Benz himself invents and patents a “carriage steering mechanism with steering circles tangential to the wheels”, that he builds a four-wheeler from 1893 onwards. With his models Victoria and Vis-à-Vis he returns to typical carriage build, but with the “engine velocipede” a year later, he produces the first automobile of the world made in large-series production.

The patent motor car has its public maiden journey on 3. July 1886 on the Ringstraße in Mannheim. Newspapers report enthusiastically about the event. Benz does not remain idle, satisfied with the first version; he develops the three-wheeler further in several steps, makes it marketable and even builds it in series. And with the vehicle he enjoys international success because he sells it – in particular – abroad. With this Benz is far head of all those other inventors who never manage to go beyond the research stage.

Source: Daimler AG

Two Mercedes-Benz cars – an SS model and an SSK model – will commemorate Rudolf Caracciola’s fabled victory in April 1931 at this year’s exclusive event, which takes place from 11 to 15 May 2011. Back in 1931, with an average speed of 101.1 km/h, the Mercedes-Benz driver along with his co-driver Wilhelm Sebastian was the first non-Italian driver to win the Mille Miglia.

In the year which would have seen the 100th birthday of Juan Manuel Fangio, who died in 1995, his nephew – who bears the same name – will participate along with Mika Häkkinen in the Mille Miglia for the Mercedes-Benz works team in a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR. Driving an identical car with the starting number 658, Juan Manuel Fangio took second place in the 1955 Mille Miglia.

Juan Manuel Fangio II, as he is usually known, was born in 1956 and was a professional racing driver like his famous uncle. He achieved his main successes in the 1980s and 1990s, when he won two championship and two manufacturer titles in the North American IMSA GT series. He is also a two-times winner of the prestigious 12 Hours of Sebring race.

And to mark the 125th anniversary of the motor car, we will also be exhibiting two vehicles that span that period from 1886 to 2011 in the centre of Brescia: a replica of the motor car patented by Carl Benz as well as the Mercedes-Benz F 800 research vehicle.

Once again, Mercedes-Benz is sponsoring the revival of this distinguished Italian road race. In the Mille Miglia 2011, the works team will be fielding the SS and SSK as well as a 300 SLR racing car (W 196 S), recalling Mercedes-Benz’s second great triumph in this, the most famous 1,000-mile race. Stirling Moss and his co-driver Denis Jenkinson won the 1955 Mille Miglia in a 300 SLR, setting the fastest ever time.
Racing drivers and eminent guests will be in the cars of the Mercedes-Benz team. In 2011, the 300 SLR racing car from 1955 will be driven by two-times Formula 1 world champion Mika Häkkinen and Juan Manuel Fangio II, who is involved in motor sports just like his famous racing-driver uncle, who won the world championship for Mercedes-Benz in 1954 and 1955. Former Formula 1 driver Jochen Mass and 15-times motorcycling world champion Giacomo Agostini will be behind the wheel of an SS. Racing drivers Bernd Mayländer and Roland Asch will take part in an SLS AMG. The Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG has close ties with motor sport, for example it is the official F1 safety car and ensures maximum safety in dangerous race situations. Five-times German Touring Car (DTM) champion Bernd Schneider will be driving a 300 SL (W 198), as is the racing driver Klaus Ludwig.

Another racing car lining up at the start will be a Mercedes-Benz 300 SL (W 194 model series) from 1952 – the car in which Rudolf Caracciola took fourth place in the 1952 Mille Miglia, the last time that he competed in the event. Finally, the brand team will also be represented by eleven Mercedes-Benz 300 SL cars (W 198 model series) with their famous gullwing doors, as well as a 220 model (W 180) and a 180 D model (W 120). A total of 18 cars will be starting for Mercedes-Benz. Cars of all the model types mentioned took part in the Mille Miglia between 1927 and 1957 – the prerequisite for all cars participating in the revival, which was first held in 1977.

Motor Klassik magazine is offering a remarkable opportunity in 2011: it is holding a draw to select one lucky reader to be the co-driver of a black Mercedes-Benz 300 SL with starting number 417 in the 2011 Mille Miglia. John Fitch and his co-driver Kurt Gessl drove this sports car model to victory in the GT category in 1955, coming fifth in the overall standings.

The opening and preparation day will take place on 11 May 2011 in Brescia. This year’s Mille Miglia race, for which 375 cars have registered, will start at 7 p.m. on 12 May 2011 in Viale Venezia, with the cars setting off at intervals. From Brescia, the route heads through Sirmione and Ferrara to Bologna, where the first leg ends. The cars will arrive there from 0:30 a.m. On 13 May 2011, the cars will leave Bologna from 8 a.m., travelling via Gambettola, San Marino, Sansepolcro, Spoleto, Terminillo and Rieti to Rome. The high-speed cavalcade will arrive in the Italian capital from 8:30 p.m., heading for the Castel Sant’Angelo near the Vatican.

The third and final leg begins at 6:30 a.m. on 14 May 2011 in Rome, with the route leading through Vallelunga, Viterbo, Radicofani and Pienza before reaching Sienna and Florence. A highlight en route will be the two passes, Passo della Futa and Passo della Raticosa, from where the cars will head to Bologna, Modena, Maranello, Reggio Emilia, Parma and Cremona before crossing the finish line back in Brescia. At 10:55 p.m. the first participants are expected to return to Viale Venezia, where all the vehicles will again be presented to the public. The awards ceremony on 15 May will mark the end of the 2011 Mille Miglia.

Source: Daimler AG

Exciting milestones from the Daimler art collection will be on display in this special exhibition, some of which deal with Mercedes-Benz’s history, models or design. Over 120 internationally renowned artists – including Bertrand Lavier, Willi Baumeister, Sylvie Fleury, Adolf Hölzel and Robert Longo – will be showcased within the permanent car exhibition. The special display ranges from classic works of constructivist and concrete art from South Germany to contemporary videos and photographs by today’s artists from all over the world.

There will a catalogue to accompany the exhibition, and children and adults can look forward to a comprehensive range of art appreciation activities. Admission to the special exhibition is included in the regular day ticket. The Mercedes-Benz Museum is open from Tuesday to Sunday between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. For registration, reservations and current information please telephone 07 11 / 17 – 30 000 or visit www.mercedes-benz-classic.com.

Source: Daimler AG

Through its involvement the brand with the three-pointed star will not only demonstrate its commitment to the active historic motor racing scene, but also revive memories of an exciting chapter in its own history. For when the world championship winning era in Formula One and sports racing cars came to an end in 1955 there then followed a period in which Mercedes-Benz achieved years of success in international long-distance racing and rallying.

This period was dominated above all by the six-cylinder “fintail” saloons (220 SE and 300 SE models) of the early 1960s. These vehicles were raced to great success in rally and touring car events by private drivers with works backing from Mercedes-Benz.

The vehicles and drivers from this era – including such famous names as Eugen Böhringer, Dieter Glemser, Eberhard Mahle and Ewy Rosqvist – continue to hold fans of motorsport in their thrall even today. And this same fascination also provides the motivation for Mercedes-Benz Classic to stand shoulder to shoulder as a partner with FHR’s GT and touring car race series.

The partnership will also entail the presence of Mercedes-Benz Classic at all race events. From the season’s curtain-raiser on 8 April 2011 in Hockenheim onwards, Mercedes-Benz Classic will be creating a meeting point for drivers and teams under the banner “Mercedes-Benz & Friends”.
Two of the most notable successes of the 1960s were the triple victory for Mercedes-Benz at the Monte Carlo Rally in 1960, which this year celebrates its 100th anniversary, and the victory of Ewy Rosqvist and Ursula Wirth at the Touring Car Grand Prix of Argentina in 1962 (in both cases in a Mercedes-Benz 220 SE, W 111 series).
Another vehicle to achieve great success in touring car races and rallies was the Mercedes-Benz 300 SE (W 112 series), the winning car of Eugen Böhringer and Klaus Kaiser at the Touring Car Grand Prix of Argentina in 1963 and 1964. Böhringer also drove this car to a class victory at the Six Hours Race at Brands Hatch in 1964.
Founded in 1983, the Fahrergemeinschaft Historischer Rennsport (FHR) has been promoting historic motorsport for almost 30 years and has made a significant contribution to boosting the popularity of the current race series with historic competition vehicles. The FHR, which has been administered since 2000 under the umbrella of ADAC Nordrhein, currently has around 600 active members.

Events taking place during the 2011 season include the “FHR HTGT for the Dunlop Trophy”, held as a series of sprint races for pre-1965 GT and touring cars, and the “Dunlop FHR Long Distance Cup”, a series of long-distance races for pre-1971 GT vehicles and touring cars built before 1976. In addition there will be two series for formula vehicles.

Source: Daimler AG