The name Daimler has almost disappeared, but it was always confusing: an interpreter

When my attendant interrupted my morning hot spider milk body to let me know the parent company of Mercedes-Benz will no longer be DaimlerI was so furious that I covered his stupid face in spider milk until he peed himself. I regretted that almost immediately because at the moment I only have one 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 may not have dared to ask about. So let’s do it.

The thing about cars called Daimler is that I know many avid car enthusiasts have long known that Mercedes-Benzes really Daimler-Benzes, and that they have probably also seen photos of some cars with Daimler badges that look suspiciously like Jaguars.

I suspect a lot of younger enthusiasts who aren’t particularly into old-man vintage stuff might have noticed this in passing and wondered about a connection, but then it got a little tricky to ask, kind of like when you forget someone’s name on a party but you I talked to them for almost 20 minutes and now it feels weird to ask again.

But don’t worry – Uncle Torchy is behind you.

The root of all the Daimlers out there is our longtime friend, Gottlieb Daimler, the famed early automotive pioneer who had partnered with four-strokes father Nicolaus Otto since the 1870s and eventually developed his own throttle-able, high-speed gasoline. engines.

Daimler installed its engines in two-wheelers, then in 1886 a real four-wheeled car. Daimler did not work with Benz until 1926, and in the decades leading up to this famous partnership, Daimler turned off engines and impressed people all over Europe, leading to Daimler engine designs being licensed everywhere, including here in America, where a Daimler Manufacturing Company launched “Daimlers” from 1898 to 1907including one dubbed the ‘American Mercedes’.

In Europe, the licensees of Daimler Peugeot and Panhard et Lavassor in France, Austro-Daimler in Austria (where Ferdinand Porsche got his start) and the Daimler that I suspect is causing the most confusion included the British.

It’s also worth noting that part of the reason Daimler-Benz started marketing their cars under the name a particular model named after a little Jewish girl, Mercedes, was because so many Daimler licenses were available that people got confused.

The British Daimlers start with an engineer named Frederick Simms who encountered Daimler engines in some of the small railroad cars he saw in Germany in 1889, and by 1891 he arranged British rights to Daimler’s patents, and in 1895 started the Daimler Motor Company Limited to build cars.

There was a lot of complicated back and forth with partners, and in 1896 the company was re-formed and started building cars in 1897, starting with some Panhard engines and then moving to cars with Daimler engines.

Also noteworthy is that in 1899 Simms developed the Motor Scout, which is believed to be the first gasoline-powered armed vehicle ever built. Aside from the iron panel behind the Maxim machine gun there, it looks like most of the armor on this thing is layers of tweed and skin, which doesn’t inspire much confidence.

Simms later made one really armored car, The Motor War Car, which I have written about before.

Daimler quickly became a respected British car manufacturer, arguably the oldest British car manufacturer to build cars in bulk. In 1902, they received a royal order to supply cars to the British crown, and Queen Elizabeth still owned one 1984 Daimler Double-Six as recent as 2019.

Even if you know Jack Squatingshire about Daimlers, I bet you’ll notice a few things about the Queen’s up there: it looks exactly like a Jaguar from the same era, but has a funny ribbed grille.

That’s because Jaguar bought Daimler in 1960, and soon after, Daimlers were all based on Jags, usually just Jaguars with a more luxurious specification. While the style changes were fairly minimal, one change that was ever-present was the ribbed grille, a trademark of Daimler from the very early days, when it was a visual stylization of the very early radiator tanks, which were fitted with fins to dissipate heat. feed. effective:

In the US we never actually got Daimler Jaguars, but sometimes we got the grooved grilles on Jaguars that had the high-end Vanden Plas trim level.

So I hope this helps next time you see a car called a Daimler, but you’re sure it looks like a Jaguar, but it’s not really clear how it’s related to the company that built Mercedes-Benzes .

This was a really quick overview, but I absolutely recommend digging more into the history of these companies, ideally by breaking into your local library and just starting a new life there, reading about old German and British car makers until the police drag you out screaming.