The History of Mercedes Benz
The History of Mercedes BenzIn January 1886, Karl Benz created the first automobile. It is a German manufacturer that produced luxury automobiles, as well as buses, trucks, and coaches. The Daimler AG is the oldest automobile company in the world. In 1901, Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach a rival auto manufacturer of Benz produced the first Mercedes, and in 1926, both Daimler and Benz formed a merger of the two companies know as the Daimler Benz Company and together produced the first Mercedes Benz, and in the next few years made many safety and technological changes that are still in use today.Over 130 countries carry a wide variety of trucks and other commercial autos. Mercedes Benz has a reputation for durability and quality and in 2007 won 4th place in the J.D. Powers Quality Study, taking the lead away from Toyota. This prompted Mercedes Benz to make even more improvement in 2008 and brought them to 3rd place.Before the merge with Benz in 1926 both Daimler and Benz had entries in the first motor race, which ran from Paris to Rouen in 1894. The racing continued until the depression years and after the 1955 Le Mans disaster, where 8 spectators were killed when a Mercedes Benz collided with another car.Mercedes which got its name from an Austrian dealer who had become so impressed with the work of Daimler he wanted to make a large order under the stipulation that the cars name would be named after his daughter “Mercedes”. The symbol of the Mercedes Benz is a three pointed silver star, with a circle around it, which represented Daimler’s original idea to make an engine that had a lot of power yet would be small and reliable. His intention was to build engines for land, sea and air, which he accomplished. Mercedes cars were used by many celebrities because just being in one of these Mercedes cars meant that a person had prestige. Mercedes Benz was always using far more technologies that its competitors, as they were the first company to add anti lock brakes and a fuel injection system. However they became over zealous when they tried to use a different kind of brake system and installed it in over 600,000 cars and had so many problems with the system they had to recall them, this cost the company millions of dollars. This recall went against the company’s reputation for not having reliability in their autos.Mercedes Benz also manufactures other vehicles other than cars; they have their large 4 wheel drive, all terrain, truck which is used all over the world from jungles to snow capped mountains, yet it still maintains its high price tag. Mercedes Benz also has a variety of vans and SUV’s for the family, these vans very in the size and weight capacity for industrial use as well.
History of Gas Scooters
The first patents for scooters go back as far as 1921. The Razor scooter was later developed by Gino Tsai in Shanghai, Taiwan and became an instant hit with the public. It didn’t take long for motor scooter popularity to expand all over the globe.
Even before 1950 there were as many as 110,000 scooters on the road in Italy alone. It has been just a little over 50 years since the Vespa-Douglas Corporation in the UK sold their first gas scooters. The Douglas corporation was on the verge of bankruptcy when they first began selling their gas scooters. It was a big hit at the 1950 Motorcycle Show and saved the company from possible financial ruin.
From 1950 to 1958 Vespa sold over 125,000 of their gas powered scooters in the UK. Why the great success? During this period the European countries didn’t have a great deal of money and there was not much gas available to the public. Due to the scarcity of gasoline and the high gas mileage of the gas motor scooter it’s popularity quickly escalated.
It didn’t take long for the Italian models (the Piaggio from Vespa and the Lambretta from Innocenti) to branch out to other countries. In France they became so popular the French tried to get in on the boom by manufacturing their own. By the early to mid 1950s the sale of gas scooters climbed to about 1 million a year in France alone.
Other countries wanted to profit from the newest craze and tried to climb on the band wagon. While some were successful others were not. Germany began to manufacture larger touring models, but this did not satisfy the public in the way the smaller, cheaper and more fuel-efficient models from Italy and France did. These smaller models were extremely popular in the European market.
Tourist Scooters Manufacturers in Germany built some very strong and powerful versions and were the first to install electric starters. These larger versions were great for traveling, touring and even racing, but were not as popular as the smaller, cheaper, more efficient models used for traveling shorter distances around town.
Vespa began marketing a couple of very popular gas powered scooters from Piaggio, the GS 125cc and the GS 150cc. These were improved versions of the earlier models for several reasons. The biggest reason is probably because the heavy gear mechanism rods were replaced by smaller and lighter cables.
France’s Roussey Scooters tried to one-up the Italian competition by coming out with a 175cc model. These were very nice vehicles and included the first water-cooled engines along with other new features, but because it had a pull-start it could not compete with the newer models from Italy that were already offering versions with electric starts.
As these wonderful vehicles have evolved over the years they have become increasingly more popular all over the world. Today they are everywhere. They are cheap to purchase, economical to operate, and are very handy and functional. These are not toys and are genuinely a lot of fun to ride. There are electric, gas powered, foldable, mobility and utility scooters.
The electric types are often used by kids and teens, but are also popular with the elderly and handicapped. Models for the handicapped are usually called mobility scooters. Folding varieties can be folded up and conveniently stored under desks, in closets or in other tiny areas and utility types are used for many different purposes. They are more popular than go karts, mini bikes or go carts. Scooters, sometimes called mopeds or go peds, are very functional, convenient and are here to stay.
J Larry Alan is a freelance author providing information about a variety of scooter topics including gas scooters, the gas motor scooter and other scooter topics.