Mercedes Benz Trivia
* The "Safety cage" or "Safety cell" construction with front and rear crumple zones—considered by many as the most important innovation in automobile construction from a safety standpoint, and now used in nearly all cars and trucks—was first developed by Mercedes-Benz in 1951.
* Anti-lock brakes (commonly referred to by its acronym: ABS) were used first in Mercedes-Benz cars in 1978. They have been standard equipment on all Mercedes-Benz cars since model year 1989.
* Mercedes-Benz - first cars to use traction control Introduced in 1986 to reduce wheelslip/spin in wet or icy conditions.
* The first air bags offered in the North American market were in Mercedes-Benz automobiles in 1986. Also the first manufacture to include Airbags as standard safety equipment on its cars.
* Mercedes-Benz was the first to introduced pretensioners to Seat belts on the 1981 S-Class. In the event of a crash, a pretensioner will tighten the belt almost instantaneously, preventing the passenger from jerking forward in a crash.
* Stability control, Brake Assist, and many other types of safety equipment were all developed, tested, and implemented into passenger cars—first—by Mercedes-Benz. Mercedes-Benz has not made a large fuss about its innovations and has even licensed them for use by competitors—in the name of improving automobile and passenger safety.
* The fastest (production) automatic road car in the world, was the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren at 334 km/h (208 mph). The car was co-developed by DaimlerChrysler and McLaren Cars. It is assembled at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, England. However it's record has since been surpassed and is now held by the Bugatti Veyron 16.4.
* The fastest street-legal saloon car in the world is the Mercedes-Benz BRABUS (tuned) W211 'E V12' - based on the E-Class saloon. The car uses a tuned version of the AMG biturbo V12 engine which now produces 640 bhp (471 kw) and over 1000 Nm (757 lb-ft) of torque, the top speed was recorded as 350.2 km/h (217.6 mph) in Nardo, Italy.
* The (W211) E320 CDI which has a (VTG) turbocharged, 3.0L V6 common rail diesel engine, set a new world endurance record for covering 100,000 miles (the equivalent of four times round the Earth, which has a circumference of approximately 24,900 miles) in record time with an astonishing average speed of 224.823 km/h (140 mph). Three identical cars did the endurance run (one set above record) and the other two cars set world records for time taken to cover 100,000 km and 50,000 miles respectively. After all three cars had completed the run their combined distance of 300,000 miles is one-and-a-quarter times the distance from Earth to the moon (all records were FIA approved).
* The most powerful naturally aspirated eight cylinder engine in the world is the Mercedes-AMG, 6208cc M156 V8 engine. It is the first engine in the world to combine large displacement with the high-revving concept, allowing it to produce around 20 percent more torque than comparable naturally aspirated engines in this performance class. The V8 engine will be baged '63 AMG' and will replace the '55 AMG' M113 engine in most models (exceptions include the SL55 and G55 AMG which will retain the M113 engine). The M156 engine can produce 510 bhp and 630 Nm of torque; however specific output will vary slightly depending on the model of car.
* Michael McClure's song "Mercedes-Benz", famously sung a cappella by Janis Joplin, was intended as a gentle satire on materialism, but has since been used in the company's advertising. On a BMW advertisement on German TV, the driver of a BMW Z3 convertible raised his eyebrows after the first "buy me a Mercedes-Benz" and threw out the tape after "my friends all drive Porsches."
* Mercedes-Benz was the most popular brand name mentioned in Billboard Top 20 songs in 2003 and again 2005.
* Since 1948, Mercedes-Benz has built the Unimog, or "Universal Motor-Gerät", a 4WD truck. It features extreme offroad capability due to offset axles and elastic frame, drive shafts for numerous additional machines, hydraulic and pneumatic connections, etc. Despite its high price, the Unimog is popular as allround work horse, as snow plow, expedition vehicle in desert, jungle, and mountains, and it has won the truck class at high speed desert races such as Paris-Dakar, and is used in some countries by their armed forces.
* Mercedes-Benz claims all of the wood used in its modern automobiles is raised on tree farms. This claim has not been confirmed.[citation needed]
* The first Daimler-Benz factory to be built outside of Germany after World War II was in Argentina. It originally built a massive number of Trucks. Some of which were slightly modified (by Mercedes-Benz) to Truck-Busses, popularly named Colectivo (in Buenos Aires).
* The "New Russians" cliche includes driving a Mercedes S 600, see Russian jokes: New Russians.
* In the popular animated show The Simpsons, Dr. Hibbert runs into and kills the family's cat with his Mercedes-Benz SUV.
* In September 2003, Mercedes-Benz introduced the world's first 7-speed automatic transmission called '7G-TRONIC'.
* A Mercedes-Benz advertisement is seen before The Lost World: Jurassic Park on an original VHS copy of the 1997 movie (since Mercedes-Benz SUVs are used in the film).
* In the comedy Rat Race, Jon Lovitz and his family steal Adolf Hitler's 1930s Mercedes-Benz from a neo-Nazi museum when their Ford Aerostar is sabotaged. The vehicle is later destroyed by a female biker gang (after Lovitz accidentally flips the bird at them) and crashes into a World War II veterans convention (with Lovitz looking like and speaking like Hitler because of the ordeal).
* The vehicle in the 8 minute short film C'était un rendez-vous, a no-holds-barred romp through the streets of 1976 Paris, was commonly believed to be a Ferrari 275 GTB, due to the engine sound. A recent interview with the producer, Claude Lelouch, revealed that the camera-carrying vehicle was actually a 6.9L Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9, with sound dubbed over.
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