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A Brief History of Car Makers Part-III
Each car company has a history of its own which speaks volumes of the car maker itself. The origin and the story or the background of the yesteryears of car companies are as glorious as the marquees themselves and we in Carazoo.com thought we will give our readers something related to the history of car makers that will interest all the car enthusiast throughout the world. We came across loads of histories of car companies while writing this article and so thought we could as well give the articles in parts. You'll be reading the first part of the three “Brief History of Car Makers” articles and the subsequent parts will soon follow again in parts over the next two days.
We bring you the third and the final part of our article “A Brief History of Car Makers” article. We presume from where we have stopped and begin with the remaining set of the famous car makers.
We bring you the third and the final part of our article “A Brief History of Car Makers” article. We presume from where we have stopped and begin with the remaining set of the famous car makers.
Mercedes-Benz
Daimler and Benz joined hands in 1926, with each company bringing with it 40 years of motorcar building experience, to form Mercedes-Benz. Mercedes had been the passenger vehicle line of the Daimler Motor Company from Bad Cannstatt, Germany. After the Daimler-Benz merger, the company renamed all of its products Mercedes-Benz. The marque has been a symbol of high-quality German engineering since its inception and has produced a number of classics such as the 500K of the 1930s and the 300SL Gullwing of the 1950s. In 1998, Daimler-Benz merged again, this time with America's Chrysler Corporation. The new company was renamed DaimlerChrysler, but the vehicle brands have remained separate.
Porsche
Dr. Ferdinand Porsche founded Porsche automotive company in Austria in 1948. He introduced two-seat sports cars based on the Volkswagen Beetle, before moving the company to Stuttgart, Germany, two years later. In the early 1950s, Porsche began sending cars to the United States - the most popular import was the Type 356. The years that followed brought the famous 911, the unloved 914 and 924, the finely balanced 944/968 and the V8-powered 928. The Boxster, a mid-engined roadster, was introduced in 1997 and is currently offered alongside the legendary 911 series.
Rolls-Royce
Charles Stewart Rolls and Frederick Henry Royce led to the formation of Rolls-Royce in 1906. The first car had a 10-horsepower two-cylinder engine and a sharply angled Grecian-style radiator that Rolls-Royce cars have worn proudly ever since. Larger, more powerful engines soon followed, as this was to be a luxury brand. The cars were sold in chassis form, with various coach-builders supplying bodies to satisfy customer desires. The company had a short-lived, small-scale manufacturing operation in Springfield, Mass., from 1921 to 1931; otherwise, all Rolls-Royce cars have been hand-built in England since the beginning (the current Crewe facility opened in 1938). The cars developed a following with nobility the world over, and the various iterations of the Phantom (1925-1992) were the most prestigious Rolls offerings. Roll-Royce officially went bankrupt in 1970 due to problems with an engine contract, but a new public company, Rolls-Royce Motors Ltd, was created in 1971. The company was then purchased by the engineering group Vickers Ltd in 1980. Vickers decided to sell in 1998 and arranged for Rolls-Royce to be acquired by BMW; however, in a surprise move, Volkswagen outbid BMW. The two German automakers arranged for Volkswagen to relinquish control of the Rolls-Royce name on January 1, 2003, with VW keeping Bentley and the Crewe plant. As a result, BMW is building a new facility in Goodwood, England, to accommodate the distinguished British manufacturer.
Toyota
Toyota evolved from a small textile company into Japan's largest automaker. Currently it is the largest car maker of the world. Becoming interested in the auto industry in 1933, the Toyoda Automatic Loom Works Company launched both trucks and cars a few years later. In 1937, the auto-manufacturing division separated from the rest of the company and was named the Toyota Motor Company. Though Japanese-production vehicles were built during World War II, it wasn't until the late 1950s that Toyota cars came to U.S. shores. Today, Toyota sells an impressively broad range of cars and SUVs.
Volkswagen
In 1934, Ferdinand Porsche was commissioned to build a small, inexpensive car at the request of Adolph Hitler. His masterpiece has been a beetle-shaped sedan that was called a Volkswagen, German for “people's car” that debuted two years later. The war delayed production of the vehicle until 1949, however, and during the 1950s the car became known as the Volkswagen Beetle, later earning the distinction of the best-selling car of all time. Wolfsburg-based Volkswagen has since gone on to manufacture more contemporary cars, though the world's fondness for the Beetle, or the “Bug”, till runs strong - strong enough to justify a 1998 New Beetle debut.
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