Portia? Why did they name her after a car?
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brupey-1 — 13 years ago(April 25, 2012 03:32 PM)
Mercds a Spanish girls name meaning grace was the name of the daughter born in 1889 to the Austrian businessman, Emil Jellinek, who had homes in Baden near Vienna and Nice.
A progressive thinker with an interest in sport, Jellinek turned his enthusiasm to the dawning age of the automobile, an invention he knew would be of key importance for the future. As early as 1897, he made the journey to Cannstatt to visit the Daimler factory and ordered his first Daimler car a belt-driven vehicle with a six-hp two-cylinder engine.
But the car, delivered in October 1897 and with a top speed of 24 km/h, was soon too slow for Jellinek. He demanded 40 km/h and ordered two more vehicles. Supplied in September 1898, the two Daimler Phoenix cars with their frontmounted eight-hp engines were the worlds first road vehicles with four-cylinder engines.
Emil Jellinek had good contacts with the worlds of international finance and the aristocracy and became increasingly active as a businessman. In 1898, he began to promote and sell Daimler automobiles, in particular, within the higher echelons of society. In 1899, DMG supplied Jellinek with ten vehicles; in 1900, he received as many as 29.
Jellinek demanded ever faster and more powerful vehicles from DMG. From 1899, he entered these in race meetings first and foremost of which was the Nice Week where he would race under his pseudonym Mercds - the name of his daughter, ten years old at the time, and a name that was well known in motoring circles. In the early days, the name referred to the team and driver not to an automotive brand.
At the beginning of April 1900, Jellinek made an agreement with DMG concerning sales of cars and engines and the decision was taken to use the Jellineks pseudonym as a product name. In addition, it was agreed that a new engine bearing the name Daimler-Mercedes was to be developed. Two weeks later, Jellinek ordered 36 of the vehicles at a total price of 550,000 marks a sizeable order even by todays standards: in 2005, this total would have been equivalent to 2.3 million euros. Just a few weeks later, he placed a new order for another 36 vehicles, all with eight-hp engines. -
chester-copperpot-1 — 11 years ago(February 26, 2015 08:43 PM)
A car manufacturer is Porsche.
A woman's name is Portia.
The joke is on the ignorance of the character.- That he actually thought her name was "Porsche" and not "Portia".
- That he associated the sound more with the car than the name.
- That he didn't know of the name "Portia".
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TVippy — 10 years ago(September 05, 2015 02:06 PM)
What spoiled the movie was inconsistency. One scene he's super smart and witty, the other - he doesn't know the difference between "Porsche" and not "Portia".
I own you.
https://goo.gl/0avZjB -
PussyCrusher_Principal — 13 years ago(May 26, 2012 02:04 PM)
"To try to make it up to her, I started reciting
he thinks the Gettysburg address is where Lincoln lived.
the London underground is not a political movement.
We didn't lose Vietnam. It was a tie.
& on & on"
Aristotle was NOT Belgianha ha! Good Stuffthis movie's 24 years old and it STILL makes me laugh my a** off!
Otto - "Monkeys don't read philosophy"
Wanda - "Yes they dothey just don't understand it!"
Gut-bustingly funny!
"The things I do for love" Jaime Lannister -
meininki — 13 years ago(June 24, 2012 07:22 AM)
To be fair to the wannabe yuppies, the proper German pronunciation actually
is
closer to "portia" than "porsh".
http://www.forvo.com/word/porsche/ -
thesnowleopard — 13 years ago(January 31, 2013 11:12 PM)
My favorite part of that whole speech is: "To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people! I've known sheep that could outwit you! I've worn dresses with higher IQs!" Classic!
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