Except for a rear-mounted engine that put out a feeble 0.7 hp, there was little to tell between a horse carriage and the Benz Motorwagen. And therefore, when it arrived in 1886 on three thin-rimmed wheels, the Motorwagen was hailed as the first horseless carriage.
It has another first to its credit. It is believed to have introduced the world to the possibility of long-distance travel by an “engine-powered” carriage. In 1888, Bertha Benz, wife of Karl Benz, the man who made the Motorwagen, bought cans of benzene and set out from Mannheim to Pforzhem in the car, along with her sons, and covered a distance of 194 km.
One of the objectives of the trip was to promote the Motorwagen and the Benz company. The 194-km road trip worked like a charm from Benz.
C.S. Ananth, vintage car restorer, says, “Bertha undertook that daunting trip when nobody trusted a vehicle that had an engine.”
Quaint charm This car seems to have always got the people bowled over by its quaint charm, to step out of their comfort zone and go the extra mile. G.D. Gopal, managing trustee, G.D. Naidu Charities, is one of them.
When replicas of the Benz Motorwagen were popular, Mr. Gopal wanted to have one of them, and add it to the collection of vintage cars at the GedeeCar Museum in Coimbatore.
He did not, however, stop with acquiring a replica. He wanted to create one such car himself.
The vintage cars at the museum had undergone restoration. Here, Mr. Gopal was going to “recreate” the oldest car in the world. It was uncharted territory.
He brought students of the Gedee Technical Training Institute on board. Mr. Gopal said last year, 21 students of the institute dismantled the replica part by part, studied them and created drawings so that they could fabricate them.
Challenging exercise Small-scale units in Coimbatore contributed to the effort. “They took this exercise as a challenge,” Mr. Gopal said.
The greatest challenge lay in having to retain entirely the features of the very first Benz Motorwagen.
The engine had to be just as underpowered and run on benzene.
The institute made the replica, meeting all these challenges.
Call it the Motorwagen effect or what you will, Mr. Gopal wanted to again step out of his comfort zone.
As a result of this, the car reached Chennai on Friday, having been driven non-stop by six drivers from Coimbatore, covering an incredible 500 kilometres.
