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Carl Benz Is Resurrected to Demonstrate That Germans Have a Sense of Humor

This year is special for the automotive industry as a whole and extra special for the German part of it. Back in January, Mercedes-Benz celebrated 130 years of history for the modern automobile, which was pretty much created by Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler independently from each other.
Carl Benz taking a selfie 1 photo
Photo: Screenshot from YouTube
About a month or so later, BMW was congratulated by its BFFs from Stuttgart for a century of activity and friendly rivalry, and the way it was done certainly didn't go under the radar for most media outlets out there.

Since today is April Fools' Day, Mercedes-Benz saw fit to try its chance at fun-poking once more, and the result is a video that is a mix of cringing, cool, and even downright funny moments in a single package.

While at first we didn't see the idea of resurrecting Carl Benz and bringing him in the present all that amusing, the rest of the following video did its best in changing our opinion.

The footage also shows one of the few moments in modern times when Mercedes-Benz marketing has used self-deprecating humor, something that shouldn't be taken lightly. The part where Mr. Benz pokes fun at the current Mercedes-Benz Matryoshka design language or at the fact that the larger company is named Daimler is particularly amusing.

Apparently, the Carl Benz lookalike was also around the 2016 Geneva Motor Show floors, where he inadvertently came across a blurry BMW representative and repeated the cheeky “happy birthday!” message from about a month ago.

His impromptu meeting with the other mustache-lover in the Mercedes-Benz hierarchy was equally amusing, but the part where he's head-banging and listening to German hip-hop in the new E-Class gave us shudders.

The best bits are the subtleties in Mr. Benz's speech at some points, especially when he's talking about automotive history in the making and what will happen in the future with the company that he pretty much founded and cars in general.

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About the author: Alex Oagana
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Alex handled his first real steering wheel at the age of five (on a field) and started practicing "Scandinavian Flicks" at 14 (on non-public gravel roads). Following his time at the University of Journalism, he landed his first real job at the local franchise of Top Gear magazine a few years before Mircea (Panait). Not long after, Alex entered the New Media realm with the autoevolution.com project.
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