Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a Daimler

by James Bryant, October 4th, 2007, 6:00 am

Here at Hoover’s more than a few editors have been waiting on pins and needles for DaimlerChrysler to pull the trigger on its inevitable name change in the wake of selling Chrysler to Cerberus Capital Management back in August. It’s almost certainly going to be Daimler AG, but it seems the Germans just can’t resist a good fight.

Why do Hoover’s editors care? The impact of that name change on our database is huge. In most cases, every place the word DaimlerChrysler appears on Hoover’s will have to be changed manually to whatever the dummkopfs in Stuttgart finally decide on. At this point I feel like I’m still wearing a stinky cast even though my broken arm has been healed for two months.

The decision process in Germany is proceeding with a precision and order that makes a Marx Brothers movie look like the changing of the guard at Lenin’s tomb.

The fight stems from the Germans’ strong sense of history. Evidently, two glorified German grease monkeys, Carl Friedrich Benz and Gottlieb Daimler, merged their respective fledgling car companies to form Daimler-Benz in 1926.

The current plan on the table is to name the company Daimler AG, which will be up for a shareholder vote Thursday. Problem is, some shareholders be old-school, yo. And thay’s representin’ for Carl Friedrich Benz. “Leave out Benz? Why you dissin?”

Some shareholders are positing alternative names: Daimler-Benz AG, Benz-Daimler AG, or Benz AG. One shareholder in particular, Wilm Diedrich Mueller, is leaning toward the last option. He said “The word Benz should be just as clearly connected with the present corporation … as the word Daimler, but the word Benz has the unbeatable advantage compared with the word Daimler that it is shorter and consists of half as many syllables.” So, for the first time in history, a German is worried about a German word having too many syllables! As the Dude would say, Wilm is “into the whole brevity thing.”

In another wrinkle Ford and its tired Jaguar brand are mired in this mess. By a weird twist of licensing, Jag owns some rights to the Daimler name and uses it on über-high-end rides for people like Queen Elizabeth II and, I would assume, Posh Spice. But Ford is selling Jaguar — to who is not at all clear, although there is a quirky batch of front runners, any one of which might find itself involved in the what-to-rename-DaimlerChrysler farce.

Still want Jag, Tata?