It is generally accepted that the Mercedes brand appeared thanks to Emil Jellinek — a French enthusiast of the emerging car industry and a representative of the German company Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft. One of the first cars built by Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach under this brand went under the hammer at a Gooding auction for 12.1 million dollars. Experts say this is a record for classic cars.

The Mercedes Simplex 60 HP was a development of the Mercedes 35 HP, created by the pioneers of the motor industry at Jellinek’s initiative. Its main asset was a brand-new 9.25-litre engine that allowed speeds of up to 130 km/h. Combined with other developments, it earned this Mercedes international recognition among wealthy admirers of the horseless carriage.

It was the Mercedes Simplex 60 HP that gave the cars of Daimler and Maybach their reputation as dual-purpose machines — comfortable everyday carriages that could also compete in gruelling races. In the first half of the 1900s this model won a great many events organised by admirers of technical progress.

In all, Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft built 102 Simplex cars with the 60 hp engine (there was also a 40 hp version). The car put up for auction was originally built for the British businessman Alfred Harmsworth, considered one of the patrons of the emerging industry. This example holds, for instance, the record for the mile run in Nice in 1903.


After several races Harmsworth ordered a new luxury body for his Mercedes from the Paris coachbuilder J. Rothschild et Fils, which the car still wears today. After the businessman’s death the grand tourer passed to his son and was handed down from generation to generation, although after the Second World War it spent more than six decades on display in a European museum.

According to the auction house, only five such cars survive today, one of which — originally owned by Emil Jellinek — is kept in the Mercedes-Benz factory collection. It is also claimed that this rarity has the most thoroughly documented history of sporting success. Notably, the Mercedes Simplex 60 HP was sold with the registration plate issued to its very first owner — one of the oldest number plates in Great Britain.