Growing Old Richly

While West German officials watched nervously, Jordan's King Hussein recently sped round and round a Stuttgart test track in a Mercedes 230 SL sports car, so enthralled that he refused to continue his tour of a nearby assembly plant. The products of Stuttgart's Daimler-Benz A.G. have proved irresistible not only to Hussein but to enough other kings and commoners to make Daimler Europe's third-ranked automaker and the Continent's biggest manufacturer of trucks and buses. Half the "big" cars-with engines larger than 1.7 liters-and half the trucks on German highways carry the shiny, three-pointed Daimler-Benz star. Daimler's star has risen even higher with the company's announcement that revenues in 1964 will top $1 billion for the first time as a result of record sales of 165,000 cars, 8% more than in 1963, and 65,000 trucks and buses.

Cars to Trucks. Daimler is driving hard for an even better 1965. It has just begun full production of the new Grand Mercedes 600, a 20-ft.-long limousine that will cost as much as $16,000, and this month it will introduce a bus with "all the comforts of first-class air travel." The company is rushing work on a $75 million plant that will double Daimler's truck capacity. And Daimler-Benz General Director Walter Hitzinger, 56, met recently in Frankfurt with Volkswagen's Heinz Nordhoff to discuss an increase in the "cooperation" that began in October when VW paid $20 million to become the major partner in Daimler's Auto-Union subsidiary.

Daimler, which was building cars as early as 1886, is the world's oldest existing automaker-and in some ways it acts its age. In Germany's rapidly expanding auto market, it cautiously concentrates its efforts on high-quality but low-volume automobiles. Explains Hitzinger: "We are interested in building vehicles in a class by themselves." Because of this exclusiveness, Daimler's annual production has risen by only 28,000 cars since 1961. Chief Stockholder Friedrich Flick, the 81-year-old tycoon who sets company policy, firmly adheres to traditional Daimler practices: the company never "rushes" into a market or "moves quickly" to produce a new model.

People to People. While Daimler-Benz is best known for its elegant Mercedes, the company's truck and bus sales account for 41% of revenues and seem to have the greatest potential for growth. Daimler produces twelve basic trucks in more than 100 different styles, including a highly successful utility vehicle with a science-fiction name and capabilities: the Unimog. This ungainly, versatile product is one of Daimler's biggest sellers; it can be used to cut roses, bore shafts, or climb 70DEG slopes, is the transportation for the first motorized west-to-east expedition across the wide part of Africa, now underway. To sell its buses, which range from a ten-passenger miniature to a 180-passenger monster, Daimler has developed a "people-to-people" campaign aimed at developing nations. It has sold 1,350 buses to Teheran for its public-transportation system, wishes that it could do as well in its own headquarters city. Despite fervent Daimler salesmanship, Stuttgart continues to use trolley cars.

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