NEMAČKA U FOKUSU GERMANY IN FOCUS
ART AUTOMOBIL BIRTHPLACE OF THE MOTOR CAR STUTTGART C ars around the world may have dif- ferent fathers, but they all have a common hometown. From the day when Gottlieb Daimler and Wil- FUTURISTIC HISTORY OF MERCEDES
ulous new fuel known as petrol, and which ignited using a rotating hand lever. Daimler protected his patent on 29 th August 1885, but he soon concluded that the prototype engine was not powerful enough and that the“Petroleum Reitwagen”motorcycle, as it was then called, was an unstable machine that was extremely difficult for driving. As a true visionary, Daimler decided to focus his attention on producing a “horse- less carriage”– the precursor to the modern car, and thus his motorcycle was abandoned and left to oblivion in the place where it can still be seen today – in the Daimler-Benz Mu- seum in Stuttgart. Daimler’s dream was for his engines to serve all of humanity, and he lived to see them used on land, in water and in the air. This German engineer died three years before the Wright brothers’ pioneer- ing flight, but he lived to see his engines
launch a balloon, the first motor boat and, of course, the motor car.
helm Maybach, working in a greenhouse converted into a workshop, constructed the first high-speed petrol engine, this city has become synonymous with four-wheel- ers. It is the city where both Mercedes and Porsche operate today. It is the city where the prototype model of the most popular car of all time – the Volkswagen Beetle – was created in 1934. It is, in a word - Stuttgart!
We are brought back to the present by Mercedes-Benz and the architectural won- der of a museum that was opened less than two years ago by German Chancellor Ange- la Merkel. This futuristic building, the most modern edifice of its type in the world, cost 120 million euros to build and is the world’s only museum to represent the complete his- tory of the automotive industry. Here you can see a lot of interesting things, from fas- cinating old models to those that compete on the world’s most famous racing circuits. However, the Mercedes Museum is not on- ly interesting to car lovers, as it represents a
DAIMLER’S VISION
Everything began in 1885, when Daim- ler and Maybach produced the first motorcy- cle powered by a single-cylinder four-stroke engine, which was fuelled by the then mirac-
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