Mercedes 35 hp

The name Mercedes given by Mr.Emil Jellinek for German Daimler car company  who was a business man living in south of France at the 20th century.The first Mercedes car were 28 hp Daimler Phoenix models in 1900. The next Mercedes models were the most significant cars of their era. Jellinek thought to start a sporting car and he asked Daimler to produce a faster,lighter and better-handling machine which would be more competitive in sporting event.The response from the Wilhelm Maybach who was the chief engineer that he built a new 35 hp engine for the first time, an aluminum crankcase to reduce weight. conventionally intake valves were automatic and which opens by vacuum in the cylinder and improved valve timing with twin carburetor one for each pair of cylinder. The 35 hp engine offered sparkling performance together with unmatched smoothness. The chassis was equally innovative for the first time the side members were stamped from sheet steel to save the weight.

The first "Mercedes," the great 35 HP of 1901, was conceived by Daimler's distributor in Nice, the formidable Emil Jellinek: Austria-Hungary's vice-consul in the city, a seller and sometime racer of Daimler machines, a scion of the Hapsburg establishment. Writer David Scott-Moncrieff described Jellinek as "a small, excitable man -- in the matter of cars, like Toad of Toad Hall -- whatever he had, he wanted something bigger and better."

Jellinek especially wanted light cars, which was an uncommon idea in those days. He yearned for a "mechanical greyhound." Wilhelm Maybach and Daimler's talented son Paul set to work on a Daimler to meet his specifications. Jellinek encouraged them, promising to buy the first three dozen. He also selected the name Mercedes, after his 10-year-old daughter.

As often, things didn't quite go as planned. Daimler was able to complete only six cars by January 1901, and there was no time for a shakedown run before the Grand Prix of Pau in February, which was to be its racing debut. The race proved a fiasco. Both engine and gearbox were troublesome and the Mercedes retired after running only a few yards.

But things were different at Nice, where the Mercedes of factory driver Wilhelm Werner dominated events. The 35-bhp Mercedes was fastest in both the sprints and hillclimbs, and also won the 393-km (244-mile) Nice-Aix-Senas-Nice road race that climaxed the proceedings.

Today, 35 horsepower from a six-liter engine in a car weighing 2,200 pounds seems very pedestrian, to put it mildly. But it was truly sensational by the standards of 1901. The four-cylinder engine, with its camshaft-operated intake valves, was quite advanced, and gave the car a higher power/weight ratio than most others of the time.

Also, the Mercedes handled better than any other car yet seen. The secret was in its squat stance. The earlier Daimlers Jellinek had been racing were bulky, over twice as heavy as the Mercedes, and relatively high on a short wheelbase. The resulting instability was thought to have caused the death of a driver in the La Turbie hillclimb of 1899.

But the Mercedes was altogether lower and sleeker. Its hoodline was little higher than the tops of its fronttires, the chassis side members rode at least six inches nearer to the ground, and its driver sat closer to the midpoint of a longer wheelbase and behind a considerably more raked steering column.

On the next page, learn about the features of the 1901 Mercedes 35 HP.