Benz Patent-Motorwagen

Chronology and Nomenclature

This article adopts the following nomenclature:

Nr. 1, Nr. 2 and Nr. 3 are used for what appear to have been the three stages through which the original vehicle passed:

Nr. 1: the motorised velocipede developed between 1884 and early1886;

Nr. 2: the motorised Stanhope gig of 1886 which Benz is driving in this photograph;

Nr. 3: the motorised calèche of 1887 in this photograph; and

Model 2 and Model 3 are used for production versions:

Model 2: the vehicle which appears as Fig. 27 of Benz's Lebensfahrt; with the caption "My first production car from 1888"

Model 3: the rebodied version as in a photograph of Benz driving it outside the works with Josef Brecht beside him.

While Model 3's external form remained unchanged during its production, its engine and transmission were transformed around 1890 when a second belt-system was added and the flywheel was switched from horizontal to vertical.

The vehicle constructed in 1895 is referred to as the "1895 rebuild of Nr. 1" or "1895 rebuild".

With this nomenclature, the table below shows when various versions of Patent-Motorwagen are believed to have been built and their characteristics. An "x" indicates strong likelihood that production took place in that year; a "?" the possibility of production. To keep things simple, whole years are used. The exact dates of the transitions from one version of the original vehicle to the next are not known: that from Nr. 1 to Nr. 2 probably took place over the early months of 1886.

Motorwagen Nr. 1

Benz began work on his vehicle in 1884 but it was in Spring 1885 that he got his prototype moving under its own power for the first time. He worked continually to improve his vehicle. Initially it would only run for a short distance and was driven only in the factory grounds. Over the year 1885 its range grew, and in the latter part of the year Benz took it out on unfrequented roads and at night.

By the end of 1885 Benz was sufficiently confident in it to prepare a patent application. A further factor was progress in litigation which challenged Nicolaus Otto's patent for his four-stroke engine. Benz's patent application was filed on 29 January 1886. and granted on 2 November 1886 (if a patent is granted, the date of the patent is the filing date). This first vehicle is known as Patent-Motorwagen Nr. 1.

As Benz was developing Nr. 1 continuously, by the time patent DRP37435 was submitted, the vehicle was no longer that depicted. Around the end of 1885 or in early 1886, work began to build a new body with wooden wheels and heavier-duty transmission; meanwhile, testing and incremental development of Nr. 1 continued. At some point Nr. 1 was scrapped and the engine and some other parts were transferred into the new vehicle: Nr. 2, the motorised Stanhope gig. Exactly when this happened is not known, nor is the final form of Nr. 1. In 1895 the Sales Manager sought to recreate the final form of Nr. 1, incorporating surviving parts from the original vehicle. The nature of the rebuilt vehicle and the final form of Nr. 1 are discussed in the section Rebuild of Patent-Motorwagen Nr. 1.

Motorwagen Nr. 2

The engraving captioned Patent-Motorwagen Nr. 2 was used by Benz & Cie in advertising in 1888 without any identification as to what it depicted. It appeared in William Worby Beaumont's 1900 book Motor Vehicles and Motors with the caption "Benz second motor tricycle carriage // Made in 1886, and ran at 10 miles an hour maximum". Worby Beaumont states that the image is "from an engraving lent me by Mr. Benz, of the second type of car he made. It differs from the first mainly in the seat or body."

The engraving shows a vehicle which looks like a motorised Stanhope gig. The rear half of the vehicle is similar to the surviving Patent-Motorwagen in the Science Museum in London. It has:

the same type of seat and controls: hand levers on stalks in the middle and a lever outside the frame tube on the left;

two vertical cylinders (silencer and carburettor) to the left of the sprocket of the rear wheel;

a horizontal flywheel at the back which barely projects behind the rear wheel.

These tie this vehicle to the vehicle in the Science Museum and distinguish it from the vehicle in the patent drawings DRP37435. But it was not a completely new vehicle: the efforts in 1895 to recover parts of the original vehicle from what had been salvaged in 1887 imply that the engine and transmission from Nr. 1 were largely carried over into Nr. 2.

On 4 June 1886 a report appeared in the Neue Badische Landeszeitung which describes a motorised tricycle, including that In front of [the seat] are the steering and brake levers. By means of another lever, the vehicle is set in motion or stopped at will, by directing the belt, which transmits the motive power of the engine to the wheels, onto the loose or fixed pulley. This describes the levers in Model 2 and is mostly correct about what they did (the hand lever beneath the steering controlled the clutch which engaged low gear).

Another report appeared in the Neue Badische Landeszeitung of 3 July 1886. Mercedes-Benz's Chronicle 1883 – 1900 records this as First public outing of Carl Benz with a heavily retouched photograph of Carl Benz driving Nr. 2 with Max Rose, director of Benz & Cie, beside him.

Motorwagen Nr. 3

Two photographs exist showing side and rear views of a vehicle which is intermediate between Nr. 2 and the Science Museum's vehicle. Nr. 2 had a single seat and no suspension at the front. The photograph of the side shows a vehicle very similar to the Science Museum's, with a front rear-facing seat and full suspension, i.e. a calèche. The photograph of the rear reveals signs of welding which suggest that it has been modified from some previous form. The engine is consistent with that depicted in Nr. 2.

In the records of Benz & Cie, there is a Patent-Motorwagen Nr. 3. Nr. 3 is usually identified as the vehicle in a contemporary newspaper illustration in which Benz and his wife Bertha are depicted driving around Munich in September 1888. This vehicle looks very similar to its prototype: the differences lie at the back, where the engine of the prototype is not enclosed behind the seat.

Nr. 1 and Nr. 2 are stages in the development of the Patent-Motorwagen. Nr. 3 is used here for the final stage in this development. Benz appears to have used it as his personal car until switching to a new Model 2 around the end of 1887. Around this time, Nr. 3 was scrapped ("disassembled"). Parts which could be reused were salvaged.

Model 2

Benz made his first sale of a motor vehicle in 1887 to Émile Roger, a bicycle manufacturer who went on to become his French agent for motor cars. This sale seems to have been semi-private: Roger came to see Benz in Mannheim and Mercedes-Benz date public sale (and therefore production) as having started in 1888.

In September 1888 Benz exhibited a vehicle in Munich and was pictured in a newspaper driving around Munich with his wife Bertha. The vehicle in that image matches exactly the Science Museum's and (slightly less well) the photograph used here with the caption Patent-Motorwagen Model 2. It too has a horizontal flywheel which projects slightly behind the rear box. This photograph is Fig. 27 of Benz's Lebensfahrt, a combined memoir and technical history published in 1925. Its caption translates asMy first production car from 1888. 1.5 hp, 2 speeds up to approximately 16 km/h, price at the time 3000 MarksThat the vehicle with the rectangular wooden box over the engine and the horizontal flywheel was the first production car is confirmed by an advertisement of unknown date which appeared in Britain with the caption "The first petrol motor car".

Worby Beaumont does not depict this vehicle: his next image is that shown here as Patent-Motorwagen Model 3. In it, the body was changed to emphasise the passenger-carrying part and semi-circular ribs were added to the sides of a smaller rear box. They were the external face of two water tanks / radiators which were added to the coolant system. Given the visible changes to the body, the vehicles with a single large wooden box are identified here as Model 2, while those with ribs are Model 3.

Model 3

The image used here of Model 3 is that in Worby Beaumont. He captions it "Benz third motor carriage // Made in 1888, for running at 12–15 miles an hour". The image is derived from a photograph taken outside the works in Mannheim. The photograph is sufficiently clear to be able to see the vehicle's horizontal flywheel. In his Lebensfahrt, Benz tells a story of selling an 1888 car to a schoolmistress from Hungary. Circumstances suggest that this may have been the first Model 3 with a horizontal flywheel, implying that it was produced in 1888.

The initial changes from Model 2 were mainly to the form of the body. However, Bertha Benz's trip in a Model 2 to Pforzheim in August 1888 highlighted problems going up hills. This prompted the use of a larger engine and the addition of a second belt-system in place of the reduction gearbox; the flywheel was changed from horizontal to vertical. As no vehicles survive between the Model 2 in the Science Museum in London and Eugen Zardetti's Model 3 of 1893, there is no information about what exactly happened and when. What can be said is that the engine of Zardetti's Model 3 resembles that of the Velo of 1894 and a smaller version of the Vis-à-vis of 1893.

Given the scale of the changes to the engine, it seems unlikely that the two-belt Model 3 was produced before 1890. As sales before 1890 appear to have been made only by Émile Roger in Paris, he would have dictated what was produced. The existence of a print of 1890 of an apparently Parisian scene with a Model 2 suggests that Roger continued to sell the Model 2.

In 1890 Friedrich von Fischer and Julius Gauss replaced Max Rose and Friedrich Esslinger as directors of Benz & Cie. This allowed Benz to spend more time and money developing his vehicle; a professional sales operation was introduced to complement Roger's activities in France. Sales of the two-belt Model 3 may have begun in 1890 but outside France are unlikely to have been before 1891.

Rebuild of Motorwagen Nr. 1

Around 1895 the Sales Manager at Benz had surviving parts of the original vehicle sought out with a view to recreating its first form, the motorised velocipede. The reconstructed vehicle was photographed in the late 1890s. In 1906 it was given to the Deutsches Museum in Munich. In 1925 it headed a procession of historic vehicles with Benz at the controls. A video from the 1920s or 1930s shows it being demonstrated. It remains in the Museum today.

The original vehicle appears to have been rebodied twice. It seems likely that the motorised velocipede was developed further after the drawings for patent DRP37435 had been prepared and that the 1895 rebuild was based on its final form before it was given a new body as Nr. 2.

The 1895 rebuild provides evidence as to the final form which Nr. 1 took. But it is not an accurate copy. Its carburettor is from the Benz Velo and it uses a crossed drive belt, which appears to have been introduced with the two-belt Model 3. A sight gauge has been added to the carburettor, as in the 1880s, but it is not positioned as in the 1880s.

Other changes may have been made to make the vehicle easier and safer to drive. The platform in patent DRP37435 is 80cm above the ground; in the rebuild it is 60cm. Benz's expenditure on his private project was severely constrained. As his aim was a true horseless carriage, it seems unlikely that he would have given the motorised velocipede a new frame first.

Replicas of the rebuilt vehicle have been produced from the mid-twentieth century. About 150 examples from various suppliers have been made. In 2001, Daimler (now Mercedes-Benz Group) began manufacturing replicas by hand. They can run on petrol but are not permitted on public roads.

Conclusion

The Patent-Motorwagen has been recognised as the first practical automobile (Nr. 2) and the first to enter production (Model 2). As its creator, Carl Benz has been hailed as the father and inventor of the automobile.