Mercedes-Benz is arguably the oldest car manufacturer still around. But did you know that its famous logo was actually a fusion of two former German automakers? Recently we decided to start a new video series called “Ask A Car Nerd” where we had you, the readers, send in questions to our highly trained staff of car nerds. We got some really good ones that we’ll be answering in future episodes, but we decided to kick the first video off with a great question that came in via email from Danny. He asked: Back in 1989 I actually bought one of the curiously named “Chrysler TC by Maserati.” One of the (only) things that fascinated me about this was the logo. It featured the Maserati trident surrounded by the Chrysler Pentastar. Are there any other instances where the logos of two distinct car manufacturers appear on the same car? Well Danny, there is only one person I know that would could easily answer question, Raphael Orlove. The studied Jalopnik Car Historian, was on the case and knew the answer almost immediately. He also found one of his old books The Great Cars by Ralph Stein, which had photos of these historic automobiles. Watch the video to get a better answer as to how the Mercedes-Benz logo was actually formed from two independent German Automakers. And of course, if you have a question you want one of our resident Jalopnik (or maybe even in the future guest) Car Nerds to answer, feel free to leave a comment or better still email us at: AskANerd@jalopnik.com. I’ll say that the shorter questions are generally easier for us to get to for the video.
