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But a real Museum, designed from the outset as a collection for display purposes, was not created until 1936, ten years after the merger of Benz & Cie. and DMG into the new Daimler-Benz AG in 1926. The occasion for installing the collection in premises on the factory grounds in Untertürkheim was the fiftieth anniversary of the invention of the automobile. A 1938 guide to the Museum describes the Collec-tion: “All recorded Daimler and Benz products from the start in 1883 onwards, which represent important stages in the growth of motorization, have been put together with great care in this exhibition.”
Visitors were able to sense from the concept that only ten years had passed since the amalgamation of the two brands. A major focus of the exhibition was the period before 1926, when Daimler and Benz were still competitors. According to the “Guide to the Untertürkheim Museum of Daimler-Benz AG,” eighteen Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft vehicles, nine Benz vehicles, and six automobiles from Mercedes-Benz were on display in 1938. Besides, 19 engines (stationary, automobile, aircraft and boat engines), three rail vehicles, a replica of the Riding Car and the Daimler motorboat of 1888, Marie, were shown. But the collection was open to inspection in this form only for a brief period since the Museum was vacated when World War II began. To protect the exhibits from attacks on the plant, they were moved out to various company-owned sales and service branches throughout Germany.
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