When my valet broke my hot spider’s milk body in the morning, soak me to let me know that the parent company of Mercedes-Benz will no longer be Daimler, I was so angry that I kept his bad face under the spider’s milk until he peed. I regretted this almost immediately, because at the moment I only own a pair of pants and he used them. I also realized that this could be the perfect opportunity to clear up some of the confusion about the Daimler name that some of you would have been afraid to ask. So let’s do it.
The thing about cars called Daimler is that I know that many car enthusiasts have long been aware that Mercedes-Benz was really Daimler-Benzes and that they probably saw images of cars with Daimler badges that look like the suspicion of Jaguars.
I guess a lot of younger enthusiasts, who aren’t particularly old, may have noticed this in passing and wonder about a connection, but then it became a little strange to ask, like when you forget someone’s name at a party. , but you I’ve been talking to them for almost 20 minutes and now it’s weird to ask again.
Don’t worry, though – Uncle Torchy has his back to you.
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The root of all Daimlers there is our old friend, Gottlieb Daimler, the famous early car pioneer who worked with the father of the four-stroke engine Nicolaus Otto as early as the 1870s and eventually developed his own high-speed gasoline capable of acceleration. engines.
Daimler installed its engines in two-wheeled cycles and then a true four-wheeled car until 1886. Daimler did not work with Benz until 1926, and in the decades before this famous partnership, Daimler started engines and impressed the people of all parties. Europe, which led to the licensing of Daimler engine projects everywhere, including here in America, where Daimler Manufacturing Company launched “Daimlers” from 1898 to 1907, including one called the “American Mercedes”.
In Europe, Daimler licensees included Peugeot and Panhard et Lavassor in France, Austro-Daimler in Austria (where Ferdinand Porsche started) and Daimler, which I suspect is causing the most confusion, the British one.
It is also worth mentioning this aspect of the reason why Daimler-Benz started selling its cars under the name a particular model named for a Jewish girl, Mercedes, because so many Daimler licenses were there that people got confused.
British Daimlers start with an engineer named Frederick Simms, who encountered Daimler engines in small wagons he saw in Germany in 1889 and, by 1891, arranged to have British rights over Daimler patents, and by 1895 , started Daimler Motor Company Limited to build cars.
There were a lot of complicated back and forth with partners, and in 1896 the company was reformed and began building cars until 1897, starting with some with Panhard engines, then moving on Daimler cars.
It is also noteworthy that in 1899 Simms developed the Motor Scout, considered to be the first gasoline-armed vehicle ever built. Apart from the iron panel behind the Maxim machine gun there, it seems that most of the armor on this is layers of tweed and leather, which doesn’t inspire much confidence.
Simms later made a real armored car, The motorized war machine, which I actually wrote about before.
Daimler soon became a respected British carmaker, probably the oldest British carmaker to build cars in quantity. In 1902, they were given a royal mandate to supply cars to the British Crown, and Queen Elizabeth still owned a 1984 Daimler Double-Six since 2019.
Now, even if you know Jack Squatingshire about the Daimlers, I bet you notice a few things about the queen there: more precisely, she looks exactly like a Jaguar from the same era, but has a funny grooved grille.
This is because Jaguar bought Daimler in 1960 and soon after, Daimlers relied on Jags, usually just Jaguars with more popular specifications. While the style changes were quite minimal, a change that was always present was that grooved grille, which was a Daimler trademark from the earliest days, when there was a visual stylization of very early radiator tanks, which have been swum to dissipate heat more effectively:
In the US, I never received Daimler-Jaguars, but sometimes I got grooved grilles on Jaguars that had the high quality Vanden Plas finish level.
So, I hope this will help you next time you see a car called Daimler, but you’re sure it looks like a Jaguar, but you just don’t really know what the company that built Mercedes-Benz has to do with it.
This was a very quick overview, but I absolutely suggest you search further into the histories of these companies, ideally by entering your local library and starting a new life there, reading about old German and British car manufacturers until when the police shoot you out, screaming.