Bertha Benz’s roadtrip proved her husband’s first car was reliable enough for longer trips and suitable for women to drive

BERTHA Benz’s eye on the road in August 1888 showed her husband Karl the possibilities of his prototype motor car.

Car maker Carl Benz with wife Bertha in one of his cars in 1894.

IF a man with dreams needs a woman with vision, then Bertha Benz’s eye on the road showed her husband Karl the possibilities of his prototype motor car.

Without Karl’s knowledge, 130 years ago Bertha pushed the vehicle out of his workshop and embarked on a 104km trip to visit her mother.

Their sons Eugen, 15, and Richard, 14, helped her start the car once it was a safe distance from the factory and accompanied Bertha on her road trip, designed to prove the vehicle was reliable enough for longer trips and suitable for women to drive.

Bertha and her sons left Benz’s Mannheim workshop at dawn in early August 1888, to reach her mother’s home at Pforzheim after dusk, when they notified Karl by telegram of their successful journey.

Bertha Benz, wife of car engineer Karl Benz, around 1870.

Several inventors, including Austrian Siegfried Marcus’s 1870 attempt, Frenchman Etienne Lenoir and American engineer George Brayton’s carriage powered by a two-stroke kerosene engine in 1873, had experimented with gasoline-powered vehicles. Italian Enrico Bernardi invented a one-cylinder motor for a tricycle and a motorcycle in 1882.

After graduating from a German technical college and working in machine shops, in 1871 Karl Benz opened a machine tool manufacturing company in Mannheim with partner August Ritter. After a poor first year, the business’s tools were impounded.

Benz’s then-fiancee Bertha Ringer, from a wealthy family in the southwestern German town of Pforzheim, used her dowry to buy out Ritter’s share in the company.

Benz and Bertha married in July 1872 and Eugen, the first of their five children, arrived in May 1873, followed by Richard in 1874, Clare in 1877, Thilde in 1882 and Ellen in 1890.

But Benz lost control of their company, and used Bertha’s ongoing financial support and business acumen to begin a new manufacturing venture in 1883 in partnership with a bicycle repair shop in Mannheim owned by Max Rose and Friedrich Wilhelm Esslinger. The company, Benz & Company Rheinische Gasmotoren-Fabrik, generally called Benz & Cie, made industrial machines and added gas engines.

Benz then returned to his early passion, his quest to design a horseless carriage.

Working from his experience with bicycles, he used similar technology to create an car with a four-stroke engine, of his own design, placed between the rear wheels. Two roller chains transmitted power to the rear axle. Completed in December 1885, Benz named it the Benz Patent Motorwagen. But it was difficult to control and collided with a wall during a public demonstration. The Motorwagen was patented on January 29, 1886, as DRP-37435: “car fuelled by gas”. Its first successful tests on public roads were completed in the early summer of 1886, and in 1887 Benz created the modified Motorwagen Model 2.

Being a perfectionist, Benz did not believe his car, with a single-cylinder 1.6-litre engine, was yet suitable for long distances.

An illustration of Bertha Benz with the Benz Patent Motor Wagen at the Wiesloch Pharmacy, the world's first filling station in 1887.

Car maker Carl Benz with wife Bertha in one of his cars in 1894.

Rough and cluttered roads were a challenge, and Bertha and her sons took turns to steer the vehicle, sometimes pushing it up hills to keep it running. They frequently had to refill the cooling water and find fuel, as the carburettor held 4.5 litres and there was no fuel tank. Called ligroin, the colourless, flammable fuel was distilled from petroleum. As well as motor fuel, it was a dry cleaning solvent for fats and oils, and sold only in pharmacies.

The Stadt-Apotheke in Wiesloch became the “first filling station in the world”, as displayed on a sign dedicated to Benz’s first car trip.

With no road signs, the trio also travelled some distance in the wrong direction. When a fuel line became blocked, Bertha jabbed her hat pin into the pipe to fix it. When an exposed ignition wire needed insulating, she used one of her garters, while a blacksmith in Bruchsal helped mend a chain. Cobbler Karl Britsch invented brake linings when he nailed leather onto the wooden brake blocks in Bauschlott/Neulingen.

After taking about 15 hours to arrive, travelling at about the same pace as a brisk walker, Bertha returned a few days later by a flatter, more direct route, partly to save the Motorwagen’s brake shoes.

Bertha died in 1944 at age 95, and in 2008 her 180km trip from Mannheim to Pforzheim and back opened as the Bertha Benz Memorial Route.

In an interview in 1956, Eugen recalled his father was not angry when he received their telegram.

“But we had to send the car’s chains back to Mannheim as fast as possible,” he said, because Karl needed them for a car going to an exhibit in Munich.