The Real Influencers: Karl Benz

Contrary to what popular history teaches and Mercedes-Benz preaches, Karl Benz did not invent the automobile. But he did produce the first commercially available car in 1885, patented the following year. In the rollcall of ‘Real Influencers’, it’s difficult to beat the man widely known as ‘the father of the car’.

His formidable wife Bertha also helped to ensure the survival of Benz’s nascent car making business. Without her there would have been no Benz & Companie Rheinische Gasmotoren-Fabrik, meaning no Mercedes-Benz today.

Her dowry bankrolled her husband’s car making business, including building the first three prototypes. She also undertook the first long-distance journey by a petrol-powered car. On 5 August 1888, three years after Benz’s prototype car ran well enough to be driven into a brick wall, 39-year-old Bertha Benz, accompanied and encouraged by her two mechanically minded teenage sons, drove over 60 miles from her marital home in Mannheim to Pforzheim, north-west of Stuttgart, to see her mother. Driving Benz’s Patent-Motorwagen number three, their journey took 12 hours. A few days after arriving, Bertha and her boys drove back home, for a round trip of more than 120 miles.