Who manufactured the first petrol-driven motor cars?
PETROL-DRIVEN MOTOR CAR
The manufacture of PETROL-DRIVEN MOTOR CARS was begun by the Rheinische Gas motoren fabrik Karl Benz of Mannheim, Germany in 1888. Benz had produced the first efficient and commercially practicable motor car three years earlier but the first recorded sale was made to Emile Roger of Paris, the invoice being dated 16 March 1888. The 2 hp single-cylinder car, a three-wheeled two-seater, was forwarded to Paris in four packing-cases, and when it arrived Roger found he was unable to assemble the parts. He took the vehicle in pieces to the Panhard et Levassor factory to consult with their engineers, but the car remained immobile until May, when Benz himself paid a visit to the firm.
Benz issued their first catalogue the same year. Initially the cars were all three-wheelers, but in 1893 two basic four-wheeled models were produced, the Victoria and the vis-a-vis. Neither of these was standardized, being built according to the customer’s specifications. Total sales of Benz vehicles at the end of that year stood at 69. The first standard model in series production was the Benz Velo, produced in April 1894. Powered by a 14 hp engine, it had a maximum speed of 12 mph and was priced at 2,200 marks (£ 110).
In Britain there were no less than five manufacturers with some claim to have fathered the industry; the most probable in the light of existing evidence was the Arnold Motor Carriage Co. of East Peckham, an offshoot of W. Arnold & Son Ltd, a firm of agricultural engineers founded in 1844.
The first public demonstration of Benz’s three-wheeler took place on 3 July 1886, when it was driven for about a kilometer in Mannheim at a speed of 15 kph.)
During the winter of 1886-87 Benz built a more powerful 1 hp car, and this was followed by a 2 hp model which won a Gold Medal at the Munich Industrial Exhibition in September 1888. Meanwhile Gottlieb Daimler of Cannstatt had produced the first successful four-wheeled petrol-engined car at the Esslinger Maschinenfabrik in August 1886. The single-cylinder engine was mounted on to an ordinary horse-drawn carriage, but Daimler soon realized that if motor transport was to have a future, it was essential for the vehicle to be designed as an entity. His Stahlradwagen (Steel-wheeled carriage) of 1889 marked this departure and is also notable as the first car with a two-cylinder high-revving V-engine. It had a respectable maximum speed of 17.5 kph, and was remarkably reliable for its time.
A monument erected to the Austrian inventor Siegfried Marcus in Vienna bears the inscription: ‘Inventor of the Petrol Automobile-1864.’ For over 60 years the claim of Siegfried Marcus to have built the first petrol-engine vehicles—a motorized hand-cart allegedly of 1864 and a full-size car allegedly in 1875—was generally accepted by motor historians as legitimate and factually accurate.
The first British petrol-engined motor car was built by a young gas-fitter and plumber called Frederick William Bremer, in his workshop at the back of his mother’s house in Connaught Road, Walthamstow. His original idea was to fit a gas-engine to a bicycle to reduce the effort of pedalling, but he abandoned this idea in favour of a four-wheeled motor car, which he began work on in 1892 when he was 20 years of age.
Bremer’s car first ran on the public highway in December 1894, a month after the first imported car braved the Locomotives on Highways Act. The body at this date was incomplete but was finished in January 1895. Its speed was claimed to be between 15 and 20 mph, put this may be a slightly exaggerated estimate.
