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Serving the Star Around the World – Rare Mercedes-Benz Book
By slmarket | May 5, 2007
Serving the Star Around the World by Heinz C. Hoppe, 1st President of MBNA
325 pages Hardbound – Originally printed in German and English
Source: SL Market Letter #193
The following book review is written by John Olson:
EVERYBODY KNOWS Max Hoffman obtained the first Post WWII Mercedes-Benz distributorship in North America and that he persuaded M-B to build the 300SL and 190SL. Nearly everybody knows Studebaker-Packard was the second North American distributor, and that Daimler-Benz didn't take on wholly owned distribution of their cars in the US until 1965 through then formed Mercedes-Benz of North America (MBNA). But 1951-1965 were plenty rocky for M-B. Penetrating the American car market has never been easy…witness withdrawals of Citroen, Renault, Fiat, Sterling, Alfa Romeo, M-G. The survival rate for American auto manufacturers has been no better; there have been over 2000 brands of car manufactured in the USA since 1900. Americans are tougher customers than sometimes thought.
Many new details about 1951 through 1970 in the USA and the reorganization of Mercedes-Benz world-wide, come to us from retired M-B executive Heinz Hoppe. With entertaining candor Hoppe has written Serving the Star Around the World. He tells of many goals, not always compatible, that M-B executives had for the USA… from worries about spreading communism to reaching new customers to more selfish goals. Hoppe leaves out precious little.
Adding to common knowledge about Maximilian Edwin Hoffman, Hoppe writes:
"If Maxie Hoffman's sales organization had a major flaw it was that it was set up primarily to serve his own interests, and tended to disregard those of his 40 or so sub-agents, the customers and the manufacturer back in Germany. The sub-agents' main task was to report potential customers to Hoffman, against payment of a rather small commission. Hoffman then collected the main profits:� "The customers suffered badly from Hoffman's sales structure, which landed them with a luxury automobile but offered them no prospects of reliable servicing of it."� "A flood of complaints soon set in, criticizing poor spare parts availability and servicing errors, but also warranty claim problems; all this led to continual disputes between Stuttgart and New York."�
About Carl Kieckhaefer, the famous American manufacturer of Mercury outboard motors, Hoppe: "He wished to collect a new Mercedes 300SL in Stuttgart [alloy-bodied Gullwing #1 incidentally] and I was told to accompany his drive from Stuttgart via Paris to LeHavre, France, where the car was to be shipped to America. Giese [Hoppe's boss at the time] regarded Kieckhaefer as a possible contract partner like Tata in India for the joint production of passenger cars, and wanted to be sure that his journey went off smoothly."�
"The journey was an exciting one, not only because I had never been in the company's celebrated sport coupe before, but because the distinguished visitor I had been instructed to look after was an eccentric personality, to say the least… Even in the Ritz Hotel's restaurant in Paris, he had no hesitation in ordering a sandwich during dinner. The head waiter's face was well worth seeing."
MBNA'S ROCKY ROAD
Despite Mercury Outboard's success, including substantial production of engines for inter-island fighting in the Pacific during the war, Mr. Kieckhaefer was vague about an alliance with Daimler-Benz, so Carl F. Giese's search for a North American assembly facility moved to Quebec for another dubious reception, and later to Curtis-Wright. Giese's goal seemed to ignore the Board of Management's reluctance, only ten years after the war, to take on overseas marketing alone. One statement from Giese's supervisor, Arnold Wychodil: "Daimler-Benz AG earns its money by producing vehicles & supplies them at ex-factory prices to the domestic sales organization & to general agents on the export market." << CONTINUE READING >>
NOTE: We have a few copies of this rare book for sale.
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