Wednesday 28th July 1926

Daimler-Benz AG was created from the fusion of the Daimler and Benz & Cie businesses. The manufacturer applied the widely followed German naming conventions of the time. Thus on the Mercedes-Benz 8/38 PS the “8” defined the car’s tax horsepower, used by the authorities to determine the level of annual car tax to be imposed on car owners. The “38” defined the manufacturer’s claims regarding car’s actual power output in metric horsepower (PS, cv, hk, pk, ks, ch). In Germany tax horsepower, which had been defined by statute since 1906, was based on the dimensions of the cylinders in the engine.