"The Mighty Mercedes"

“The Mighty Mercedes” by Michael Frostick. 212 pp. 10 in. 7 1/2 in. (Dalton Watson Ltd., 76, Wardour Street, London, WAV 4AN. £7 .50)

In the same excellent series as the book reviewed above, this one about Mercedes, Benz, and Mercedes-Benz cars, from 1895 to 1977, is very different, because instead of unpublished or at any rate little-seen illustrations, it makes much use of those from the Daimler-Benz archives, which are, in the main, well known to most of us. However, some originals are included and the silver lining comes in the form of a unique list of those S, SS, SSK, 500K, 540K, and 300SL Mercedes-Benz models sold in Great Britain, with their engine, chassis and Reg. Numbers, body types, dates of delivery, and owners’ names; this enormously interesting list, running over five pages, was contributed by Mrs. Betty Wilkins, whose father was with Mercedes before the First World War and whose 1930s London Sales Ledgers he had fortunately kept.

It is, in any case, excellent to have all this Mercedes history in picture form, of racing and record-breaking cars as well as of the very early horseless-carriages, the veterans and the Edwardians (some rare pictures here), and of the later models, including the great sports cars, all so nicely reproduced, between two covers, a total in all of 450 fine illustrations. There are frill-page portraits of Jellinek’s daughter Mercedes, Of Gottlieb Daimler, in about 1896, and of Karl Benz, in about the year 1914, two colour-plates of Philip Mann’s 1914 GP Mercedes, and line drawings of prominent Benz and Mercedes vehicles front 1885 to 1963, these again from the Stuttgart Library. In short, Dalton Watson have done it again!—W.B.