Benz Patent-Motorwagen - The first car?
#Blogpost

The Benz Patent-Motorwagen was an automobile developed by the Rheinische Gasmotorenfabrik Benz & Cie, or Benz for short. This brand would later become known as Mercedes-Benz.
It’s often regarded as the very first automobile, that was specifically designed to be propelled by an internal combustion engine.

The original cost of the car was 600 German marks (around 150 US dollars) this is equivalent to around 4.000 dollars in 2016).

Oddly enough it was not Karl Benz (the founder of Benz) who financed the development process, it was his wife who did. But since married women weren’t allowed to apply for patents back then her husband, Karl Benz received the patent.

The car for unveiled to the public on July the 3th 1886, on the Ringstrasse in Mannheim.

The Benz was powered by a small rear-mounted 954cc single-cylinder engine producing 2 to 3 horsepower. He developed this small piston engine in 1873, after which he started focussing on building a complete car.
Steering was by way of a toothed rack that pivoted the unsprung front wheel.
The car was chain driven with a single-speed transmission, which varied torque between an open disc and drive disc.

The very first Motorwagens used a single-cylinder four-stroke engine with a trembler coil ignition. This engine produced 2 to 3 horsepower at 250 rpm.
The first Motorwagens didn’t use a carburettor, instead they used a basin with fuel soaked fibers that supplied the cylinders with fuel by evaporation.

Benz later made more versions of the Motorwagen, the model number 2 used the same engine but with 1.5 horsepower this time, and the model number 3 with 2 horsepower giving the car a top speed of approximately 16km/h (10mph).

In early August 1888, Bertha Benz (Karl Benz’s wife) wanted to demonstrate the car’s feasibility.
Supposedly without permission she took a No. 3 Motorwagen and drove the first long distance journey in a car. Along with her two sons, Eugen and Richard, they drove from Mannheim all the way to her mother’s home in Pforzheim, almost 100 kilometres.
During the trip she also acted as the mechanic. She used her hat pin to clean the carburettor and a garter to insulate a wire.
When the car ran out of fuel she stopped at a local pharmacy where she bought some ligroin to be used as fuel, making that pharmacy the first filling station in history.
When the brakes wore down, Benz asked a local shoemaker to nail leather on the brake blocks, thereby inventing brake linings.

They spent the night at her mother’s house before returning home, the total trip covered 194 kilometres (121 miles), all done in a car with a top speed of just 15 km/h.

Thanks for reading! :)

Marijn M.