Benz Patent-Motorwagen ("patent motorcar") is used today to refer to the first cars produced by Benz & Cie between 1885 and 1893; these had three wheels, a single-cylinder four-stroke engine and belt-drive. Benz & Cie used the designation "Patent-Motorwagen" for their four-wheel cars until c.1900, but these are known today by their other names, such as Viktoria and Velo. All these cars used the same layout and belt-drive technology for which Benz received patent number DRP37435 in 1886, hence the designation.
The original Patent-Motorwagen was developed over the period 1884 – 1887 by the German engineer Carl Benz and is widely regarded as the first practical automobile. It was also the first car to be put into production, being manufactured and sold between 1887 and 1893.
The engine's output was stabilised by a flywheel. In the first vehicles this was horizontal and the vehicles had a single belt-drive. Later vehicles had a vertical flywheel and two belt-drives. Each belt-drive gave a single transmission ratio; from 1886 the single-belt-drive vehicles also had a reduction gearbox which provided a second transmission ratio.
Production ceased after Benz had perfected two-wheel steering and began manufacturing four-wheel models from late 1892. Around 1895 the Sales Manager at Benz & Cie sought to recreate the form which the original vehicle took in early 1886 before it was given a new body. The rebuilt vehicle was given to the Deutsches Museum in 1906; replicas of it have been produced from the mid-twentieth century.
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. +Original Model 2Model 3ViktoriaVeloVis-à-visWheels34FlywheelHorizontalVertical Belts + Gears1 + 01 + 11 + 11 + 12 + 02 + 01884Nr. 118851886Nr. 21887Nr. 3x1888xx1889x?1890???1891x1892xx1893xx1894?xx1895Rebuildxx1896 onwardsxx This nomenclature differs from that which Mercedes-Benz use in their records. They use Nr.1 and Model 1 interchangeably for the motorised velocipede and the rebuild of 1895 and give the dates 1885 – 1886 for each of them. All the other 3-wheelers are identified as Model 3, with the dates 1886 – 1894.
No images or drawings of Mercedes-Benz's Model 2 are available, but in Mercedes-Benz Personenwagen 1886-1945, Werner Oswald states that it consisted of a single development vehicle which had small full-elliptical springs each side of the front wheel and that this vehicle was subsequently converted to four wheels.
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.
The combination of Benz's statement to Worby Beaumont that the engraving is of his second motor tricycle with the detail about the levers in front of the seat and the photograph of Benz driving Nr. 2 with Max Rose beside him combine to establish that:
the engraving shows the vehicle which Benz drove around Mannheim in early summer 1886; it was Benz's second type of car, hence Patent-Motorwagen Nr. 2; Patent-Motorwagen Nr. 2 was the first practical car, not Patent-Motorwagen Nr. 1.
Motorwagen Nr. 2 was far better suited to use on public roads than Nr. 1: it had two gears and better brakes; all the controls could be reached by the driver; it was less top-heavy and had stronger, wooden wheels with iron tyres.
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.