New Car Love…
Still in it…
The tire pressure warning hasn’t come back, so I’m writing that one off to something they did during service ‘A’. I’ve got almost fourteen grand on the car now and it still drives like a dream come true…so solid and sure. Problem is gas is now at about $3.60 a gallon for premium at the cheap station near me (which is part of a convenience store chain, so they may be writing gas off as a loss leader…something the regular gas stations cannot do. I’m tempted to go to Costco to fill up but the numbers just don’t justify it. I’m using more gas to make the trip then I save in cost. So I might as well fill up locally. But I just can’t pop into it and take a drive just anywhere for the shear pleasure of driving it like I did in the weeks just after I bought it. I have to plan my pleasure drives out now. Oh well…it’s getting to be springtime here in Baltimore now, and there is a lot of yard work to do around the house anyway. But the annual road trip to California is going to be a tad costly this year. I’m really starting to be afraid now, that I’m going to live to see the end of the open road.
DMG now had a successful brand name, but still lacked a characteristic trademark. Then Paul and Adolf Daimler – the company founder’s two sons, and now senior executives at DMG – remembered that their father, who had died in March 1900 shortly before his 66th birthday, had once used a star as a symbol.
Gottlieb Daimler had been technical director of the Deutz gas engine factory from 1872 until 1881. At the beginning of his employment there, he had marked a star above his own house on a picture postcard of Cologne and Deutz, and had written to his wife that this star would one day shine over his own factory to symbolize prosperity.
The DMG board immediately accepted the proposal and in June 1909, both a three-pointed and a four-pointed star were registered as trademarks. Although both designs were legally protected, only the three-pointed star was used. From 1910 onward, a three-dimensional star adorned the radiator at the front of the car.
The three-pointed star was supposed to symbolize Daimler’s ambition of universal motorization – “on land, on water and in the air”…
So now you know where the star came from. And on that note, here’s a little something I found on YouTube for any other Mercedes fanboys out there reading this.
Mercedes Jellinek
Whose father named his very famous
Daimler made racing car after her,
and whose name has been on every
car Daimler has made ever since…
