: : Mercedes-Benz Owners : :

December 2011 News

		Convertible boom Mid-life crises have helped double the number of convertible cars on Britain’s roads in the past 10 years. A fifth of owners bought their first soft-top in their fifties and more than one in 10 said it had ‘helped recapture their lost youth’. Cars such as the Mercedes SLK have helped make the convertible the fastest growing car type in the market. A recent survey found that owners put their car roof down for an average of 10 days a month, dropping to three days in the depths of winter. Half of those polled also said they would rather put the heater on than close the roof if it was a cold day. The most popular reasons for buying a soft-top were ‘feeling the wind in your hair’, as well as the car’s appealing style, and the status it brought. However, convertibles are also the most vandalised type of car, with almost a quarter of owners reporting vandalism or theft, and scratching the car’s paintwork with a key the most commonly reported crime.

		New Mercedes perfume Mercedes’ first fragrance for men will be available from selected retailers from the first quarter of 2012, as an eau de toilette, after shave, deodorant and shower and body gel. This distinctive perfume fits in with Mercedes-Benz's systematic expansion of its range of high-end accessories, which includes watches and eye-wear. The fragrance has been composed by renowned perfumer Olivier Cresp and combines woody notes with floral freshness. The bottle design is masculine, modern and elegant.

		SLR heaven 25 SLR owners joined the field of this year’s Mille Miglia as back-up vehicles. The exclusive field comprised 16 SLR Coupés, Roadsters and 722 S, along with 9 SLR Stirling Moss vehicles. The Mille Miglia took place over a route from Brescia via Bologna, Rome and Florence back to Brescia and this year commemorated the historic win by Rudolf Caracciola and Mercedes-Benz. Driving an SSKL racing car, Caracciola was the first non-Italian to win the race in 1931. And, once again, Mercedes-Benz was a sponsor of the event, the Stuttgart works team taking part in with a Mercedes SS, an SSK, and a 300 SLR racing car, bringing back memories of the company’s great victory in what was probably the most famous 1000-mile race of all time: in 1955, Stirling Moss and his co-driver Denis Jenkinson won the Mille Miglia in a 300 SLR in the fastest time ever achieved.

		60 years of go-anywhere It's hard to believe that the go-anywhere, do-anything off-roader, the mighty Merecedes Unimog, began life in 1951 when the first models rolled off the production line in Gaggenau. Over the decades, the magnificent Moggie has proved itself worldwide as a versatile implement carrier and transport vehicle with some 380,000 examples being produced so far. However, the first drawings for an agricultural vehicle from the pen of Albert Friedrich, previously head of Daimler-Benz Aero Engine Construction, actually date back to autumn 1945. Series production of the vehicle known as the Universal-Motor-Gerät (tool), abbreviated to Unimog, started in 1948. As demand for the production run grew bringing with it a need for long-term investment, Daimler-Benz took over the business in autumn 1950 and the new plant in Gaggenau started manufacture on 3 June 1951. The rest, as they say is history, and from May 1953 onwards, the Unimog has proudly carried the Mercedes star.

		Anniversary parade Car fans witnessed an impressive anniversary parade in Stuttgart as part of Mercedes’ 125th birthday celebrations. Exactly 125 old and new vehicles drove from the Mercedes Museum into the historic city centre with invited guests including tennis legend Boris Becker, boxer Vitali Klitschko, who drove a mighty Actros truck, and racing drivers Ralf Schumacher and Susie Stoddart in charge of a 1902-manufactured Mercedes 40 hp Simplex.

		Fashion force Mercedes emphasised its sponsorship of New York Fashion Week by providing a fashion-inspired taxi service to ‘style setters’ in the downtown Manhattan area. A team of ‘Fashion Enforcers’took to the streets in a Mercedes CLS 63, pimped out as a mock police car, in order to track down and reward fashion trendsetters. Those selected received a free taxi service to their destination, with some also benefiting from invitations to runway shows and a special Fashion Force event in the Mercedes-Benz Star Lounge.

		DTM disappointment Mercedes driver Bruno Spengler missed out on his chance to clinch victory in this season’s DTM championship as Audi’s Martin Tomczyk took the crown. This was the second year in a row that Spengler narrowly failed to clinch victory after a close finale saw him defeated also in 2010. Spengler admitted “We have been fighting hard, but we simply couldn’t do more.” So congratulations to Audi for their win once again this year and good luck to Mercedes in 2012.

		KERS success story Amid the attention attracted this year by both DRS and the performance characteristics of the Pirelli tyres, the return of KERS to Formula One has been somewhat swamped in the public eye. Yet there’s a firm case to suggest that it, too, has played its own crucial role in enabling the significant increase in overtaking for 2011, with the system being variously used to boost drivers into the ‘DRS zone’ (i.e. less than one second behind the car in front) during an overtaking manoeuvre, or to defend against a car behind with DRS in operation. While no hard data exists on this point, anecdotal evidence suggests KERS plays a role in nearly every overtaking manoeuvre for cars equipped with the system, as well as providing valuable research into electronics and battery technology; in fact, exactly what the philosophy of Formula One has always been about. The Mercedes KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) has been developed by Mercedes High Performance Engines in the UK with the support of Mercedes R&D in Germany, a process that also resulted in significant knowledge transfer to series production of hybrid technology. The KERS is made up of the Motor Generator Unit (MGU), the Power Electronics (PE) and a number of batteries that make up the Energy Storage System (ESS). When harvesting power that would otherwise be dissipated as heat through the braking system, the MGU works as a generator, providing three-phase electricity to the PE. This converts the electricity to DC voltage, and stores the energy in the battery. The process works in reverse when the driver requests boost, with the generator unit becoming a motor to supplement the engine power. The processes of harvesting and boosting are both approximately 80% efficient. The motor in the MGU is approximately ten times smaller than commercial automotive units, while the battery is around eight times smaller than those commercially available. Overall, there are approximately 3,500 parts in a single KERS! It is a true example of cutting-edge engineering. The best-case scenario for KERS boosting is relatively slow corners followed by very long straights, something that Monza, for instance, features plenty of. There are four times in the lap at this circuit when the car accelerates from relatively low speed to near terminal velocity, and this means that there is a relatively large lap-time benefit from boosting out of any of these four corners. Typical KERS deployment in Monza would see four boosts per lap, which are delivered to the wheels 20ms after the button is pressed. The lap time gain from full use of KERS at Monza is over 0.4s.