bavarikon4UDescription
The "Benz Patent-Motorwagen" (patent motorcar), built in 1886 by Carl Benz (1844-1929), is considered today to be the first functioning car with a petrol engine. The patent car came to the Deutsches Museum as early as 1906 through a donation from Benz himself and is today one of the most important and valuable objects in the collection.
The heart and real innovation of the car was the water-cooled 1-cylinder gasoline engine, which – unlike contemporary stationary gasoline engines – was small and light enough to move the car (with less than one hp).
You can clearly see the strong influence of bicycle construction on the patent car: for exa-mple, when designing the car, Carl Benz was not only guided by the chain transmission and lightweight construction of the two and three-wheelers of his time. Benz ordered the wheels for the car from a bicycle manufacturer, Fahrradfabrik Adler.
The "Benz Patent-Motorwagen" was the vehicle on which Carl Benz’s patent application for a vehicle with a gasoline-powered engine was based. It is unique, all other motorised tricyc-les of this type are replicas. For Benz, it was a development stage. It was followed by a few more three-wheeled vehicles with slightly different bodies and then soon four-wheeled cars. The Benz company thus became the birthplace of the German automotive industry.