Even the biggest gearheads around the world, who live and breathe cars every day, might not know about the very first mass-produced automobile in history. The Benz Patent Motorwagen was the world's first practical automobile, a lightweight car powered by the first stationary gasoline engine developed by none other than Carl Benz 136 years ago in 1886. The Benz Patent Motorwagen, all the way back in the 19th century, had it all – a gasoline engine, ignition, cooling, transmission, wheels, and brakes. To this day, of course, it has served as the archetype of every single automobile built since, with the inventor Carl Benz himself having co-founded one of the titans of the automobile industry, Mercedes-Benz.
Almost one and a half-century later, the thrill of a self-propelled vehicle has not gone anywhere and only seems to have grown and taken over more people across the world through the years. Carl Benz's creation birthed the automobile world as we know it, and gearheads who are completely taken by these four-wheeled beasts, as we are, have the Benz Patent Motorwagen to thank for it. In that vein, here's a quick history lesson with ten things you did not know about the Benz Patent Motorwagen.
10 Its Patent Number Is Considered The Automobile's Birth Certificate
When Carl Benz was ready to reveal his invention to the world, he first ensured that he patented his work. Patent number 37435, registered for a ‘vehicle with gas engine operation’, was for the Benz Patent Motorwagen, and considering how that machine is essentially what led to the great wide world of vehicles we know today, it is also known as the birth certification of the automobile.
Benz applied for the patent in January 1886, and it took 10 months for the patent to be granted. However, it is the date of application that became the patent date for the invention. Half a year after applying for patent number 37435, Benz unveiled the Benz Patent Motorwagen to the world, in July 1886 in Mannheim.
9 Carl Benz Couldn't Figure Out The Steering Wheel
In the first model of his motor car, Carl Benz was stumped by one aspect, which had been the steering. Benz had later even admitted how he had been “unable to solve the theoretical problem involved in the steering.” This is why he “decided to build the vehicle with three wheels”, as per his admission.
Of course, 7 years on, he also was able to find the answer to the steering problem, by using a toothed rack that pivoted the unsprung front wheel. Working with a single-speed transmission, the Benz Patent Motorwagen had varying torque between an open and drive disc. In fact, he even improved the transmission after feedback from his children, but more on that later.
8 Benz Unveiled His Updated Motorwagen To The World In 1886
Carl Benz, known as quite the tinkerer and inventor, didn’t so much create the first automobile of the world completely from scratch, as he did by assembling it in an unprecedented manner. What Benz had achieved was combining three crucial elements, that remain relevant to this day, in a unique manner which ensured that he would get a patent for his creation granted and then begin development of the same.​​​​​​​
The three elements Benz brought together were an engine that could provide power to his Motorwagen, a chassis that was capable of housing that engine while also being lightweight enough to achieve a decent power-to-weight ratio, and a petroleum-based fuel to power his creation. In 1886, when Benz first unveiled the Motorwagen to the world in Mannheim, his teenage sons followed the motorcar every step of the way, topping the vehicle with fuel.​​​​​​​
7 Benz's Wife Secretly Proved The Car's Practicality To The World
Carl Benz had used his wife Bertha’s dowry to finance his entire operation. Two years after public unveiling and the patent being granted, Bertha Benz had grown tired of Carl’s obsessive upgrades and the consequent lack of commercial success through the motorcar. Thus, without her husband’s knowledge, Bertha took her two teenage sons on the very first cross-country automobile trip.​​​​​​​
This was quite the lesson in marketing, as the two sons and their mother reached Bertha’s maternal home 60 miles away by nightfall. Sure, the trio faced problems on the way, but August 1888 saw the world’s first documented automobile trip, and despite video evidence, one can be absolutely sure that there wasn’t a single neck that didn’t turn their way across the entire 60 miles from Mannheim to Pforzheim.
6 Carl Benz Secretly Kept Working To Solve His Steering Problem
After unveiling the first model of the Benz Patent Motorwagen to the world in 1886, Carl Benz knew that despite such a unique and unprecedented invention, he still lacked the ability to steer the automobile properly. Thus, he kept working and tinkering around to solve the steering issue.​​​​​​​
In fact, the reason he made the first motorcar on three wheels was because of the same issue. Over time, of course, Benz managed to solve the problem. In 1893, Benz managed to employ a toothed rack that would help control and steer the vehicle. All the while, however, he had been worried that somebody might beat him to the solution.
5 The First Automobile Sported A Single-Cylinder Four-Stroke Engine
There is a reason that the Benz Patent Motorcar is heralded as the world’s first automobile, and that is because it truly lay down the basic bare-bones template for cars that is relevant even today, almost 150 years later. The first automobile sported a single-cylinder, four-stroke engine which Benz installed horizontally at the rear end of the motorcar.​​​​​​​
He had even installed a tubular steel frame and a differential to the vehicle, sitting it atop three wire-spoked wheels. According to the patents, there was also an automatic intake slide, a controlled exhaust valve, and a high-voltage electrical vibration ignition that housed a spark plug. Not quite bad for a first model, no?​​​​​​​
4 Benz Tested His Vehicle Only During Nights
As Carl Benz worked on the steering of his motorcar invention, he feared that someone would beat him to the punch since he had already unveiled the car in 1886. Thus, for the first few years, the inventor only dared to test his vehicle on the road in the middle of the night, and that too in the immediate vicinity of his factory. ​​​​​​​
This ensured that he kept his odds of being in the public eye during ‘R&D’ at the lowest, and night after night, he tested and tinkered with his motorcar’s technology and his ideas for steering. Gradually, he learned to take command of the Motorwagen and its technology and even confidently started taking spins in it.​​​​​​​
3 The Benz Patent Motorwagen Made Less Than 1 Horsepower
You read that right. The original Benz Patent Motorwagen did not make even a single whole horsepower. One might find that surprising, since 100 horsepower engines had been invented by 1877, but they were only for stationery use. Thus, Carl Benz experimented in secret to work on and create a smaller, four-stroke benzine-burning engine.​​​​​​​
Benz began working on his engine in 1884, and by 1885, it was working well enough to propel a three-wheel around his own courtyard. The Benz Patent Motorwagen, as it later came to be in its full official glory, made just 0.88 horsepower at 400 rpm, thanks to its single-cylinder engine, 58 cubic-inch engine.​​​​​​​
2 Benz's Sons Inspired Him To Develop A Lower Gear On His Invention
One of the problems that Bertha Benz and her sons faced on their first trip to her maternal town in 1888 was going uphill. As historic as this first unauthorized use of an automobile was, it wasn’t without problems, and an uphill ride was one of them.​​​​​​​
Upon their return to Mannheim, Benz’s sons Eugen and Richard Benz complained about having had to push the Motorwagen uphill along the journey, and it was this complaint that Carl Benz registered as feedback. This resulted in him developing a lower gear to add to his design which would increase the pulling power of the motorcar for uphill use.​​​​​​​
1 There Are Several Discrepancies Between Mercedes' Replicas And Carl Benz' Original Patent
While the most accurate replicas of the original Benz Patent Motorwagen would be found in the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, it is worth noting that even these replicas deviate quite a bit from the original patent drawings that Carl Benz submitted in January 1886.​​​​​​​
There are discrepancies in the way the replicas house the fuel tank, the type of radiator they use, the linkage of the steering, and even the seat design. This is because these replicas actually mimic the oldest Benz three-wheeled motor car which lives in the Deutsches Museum in Munich, which also isn’t the original Patentwagen.