Emil Jellinek and the Week of Nice

Mercedes is a female Spanish name and means "mercy". Mercedes was also the name of the daughter born to Austrian businessman, Emil Jellinek, who lived in Baden near Vienna and in Nice, in 1889.

Jellinek, a progressive gentleman who was interested in sport, was an enthusiastic champion of technical progress and the automobile. He was convinced that the automobile would shape the future. As early as 1897 he travelled to Cannstatt and ordered his first Daimler car, a six-horsepower belt-driven vehicle with a two-cylinder engine.

After taking delivery in October 1897, the 24 km/h maximum speed of this car was soon too slow for Jellinek. He wanted a top speed of 40 km/h and ordered two Daimler Phoenix models with a front-mounted eight-horsepower engine. These two cars delivered in September 1898 were the world's first road vehicles equipped with a four-cylinder engine.

As a businessman, Emil Jellinek enjoyed good relations with international financial circles and the aristocracy: in 1898 he began to sell Daimler automobiles to the members of high society. In 1899 Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG) already delivered ten vehicles to Jellinek and in 1900 this increased to no less than 29.

Jellinek urged DMG to produce increasingly powerful and fast vehicles and from 1899 he entered them for racing events – above all the Week of Nice. He usually entered these races under the pseudonym "Mercedes", the name of his ten year-old daughter. Although the name became increasingly well-known amongst automobile lovers, Jellinek initially used it only as a team or driver name, not as a brand name