Mercedes-Benz Saloon Coupe E-Book

Nik Greene

• Herausgeber: The Crowood Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 272

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

First produced in 1928, Mercedes-Benz Coupés became the embodiment of elegance and exclusivity on four wheels. Their design became an experience for all the senses, appealing to every emotion. Hans-Dieter Futschik, the designer responsible for many of the later Mercedes-Benz models, said of the Saloon Coupé: 'A shorter wheelbase compared with the saloons gives it different proportions that are almost sports car-like in character. The passenger compartment is set further back. This gives it a sportier look than a saloon. In addition, the greenhouse is smaller and more streamlined than the basic body. It looks like a small head set on a muscular body, exuding a powerful and more dynamic attitude... Everything radiates power, elegance and agility.' This complete guide includes an overview of early automotive history; pre-merger design from both Benz and Daimler; the historical protagonists and how they influenced the design; how design and fashion change vehicle shape; the continued development of Saloon Coupe design to suit every class and finally, the modern idea of the Coupe.

Leseprobe

Mercedes-BenzSaloon Coupé

THE COMPLETE STORY

OTHER TITLES IN THE CROWOOD AUTOCLASSICS SERIES

Alfa Romeo 105 Series Spider

Alfa Romeo 916 GTV & Spider

Alfa Romeo 2000 and 2600

Alfa Romeo Spider

Aston Martin DB4, 5, 6

Aston Martin DB7

Aston Martin V8

Austin Healey

BMW E30

BMW M3

BMW M5

BMW Classic Coupes 1965–1989

BMW Z3 and Z4

Classic Jaguar XK – The Six-Cylinder Cars

Ferrari 308, 328 & 348

Frogeye Sprite

Ginetta: Road & Track Cars

Jaguar E-Type

Jaguar F-Type

Jaguar Mks 1 & 2, S-Type & 420

Jaguar XJ-S

Jaguar XK8

Jensen V8

Land Rover Defender 90 & 110

Land Rover Freelander

Lotus Elan

Lotus Elise & Exige 1995–2020

MGA

MGB

MGF and TF

Mazda MX-5

Mercedes-Benz ‘Fintail’ Models

Mercedes-Benz S-Class 1972–2013

Mercedes SL Series

Mercedes-Benz SL & SLC 107 Series 1971–1989

Mercedes-Benz Sport-Light Coupé

Mercedes-Benz W114 and W115

Mercedes-Benz W123

Mercedes-Benz W124

Mercedes-Benz W126 S-Class 1979–1991

Mercedes-Benz W201 (190)

Mercedes W113

Morgan 4/4: The First 75 Years

Peugeot 205

Porsche 924/928/944/968

Porsche Air-Cooled Turbos 1974–1996

Porsche Boxster and Cayman

Porsche Carrera – The Air-Cooled Era 1953–1998

Porsche Carrera – The Water-Cooled Era 1998–2018

Porsche Water-Cooled Turbos 1979–2019

Range Rover First Generation

Range Rover Second Generation

Range Rover Sport 2005–2013

Reliant Three-Wheelers

Riley Legendary RMs

Rover 75 and MG ZT

Rover 800 Series

Rover P5 & P5B

Rover P6: 2000, 2200, 3500

Rover SDI

Saab 99 and 900

Subaru Impreza WRX & WRX ST1

Toyota MR2

Triumph Spitfire and GT6

Triumph TR7

Volkswagen Golf GTI

Volvo 1800

Volvo Amazon

Mercedes-BenzSaloon Coupé

THE COMPLETE STORY

NIK GREENE

First published in 2021 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

[email protected]

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2021

© Nik Greene 2021

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 934 1

Cover design by Sergey Tsvetkov

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Timeline

CHAPTER 1 EARLY AUTOMOTIVE HISTORY

CHAPTER 2 THE AGE OF THE MOTOR CAR

CHAPTER 3 THE COUPÉ AUTOMOBILE

CHAPTER 4 PRE-MERGER BENZ

CHAPTER 5 PRE-MERGER DAIMLER

CHAPTER 6 POST-MERGER MERCEDES AND BENZ

CHAPTER 7 POST-WAR MERCEDES-BENZ

CHAPTER 8 THE INTERMEDIATE CLASS SALOON

CHAPTER 9 A NEW DAWN: THE FOUR-DOOR SALOON COUPÉ

Appendix I: Milestones of Mercedes-Benz Design

Appendix II: The Coupé Explained

Index

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As always, the archive department of Daimler Stuttgart has been a special resource of material – this year more than ever. The people involved with the archive have worked even harder (if it were possible to do so) to bring information to us by email and online due to the COVID-19 virus. I have missed my trip to the archives this year but hopefully will return soon.

Thank you to everyone at Crowood for turning my work into real books.

I also wish to thank Gerrit den Hollander for his treasured catalogue and brochure information; Harry Niemann for his valued assistance with research and amazing books; the Worshipful Company of Coachmakers and Coach Harness Makers for their assistance with carriage history and photographs; Stefan Dierkes for sharing his knowledge and information on the Pietro Frua estate and sharing his website http://www.pietro-frua.de; Paul and Sigrun Alice Bracq for their willingness to share; and Paolo Pininfarina for his time; my spaniel Troilus, who sits by my side in the spare chair every time I write; and last but never least, my dear wife Trudy for listening to my ramblings and watching the back of my head as I peer at my screens.

TIMELINE

1885

The age of the motor car begins

1886

Patent Motorwagen

1887

First Benz twin-cylinder engine

1889

Daimler wire-wheeled car

1900

Mercedes 35 HP

1902

Mercedes Simplex; Mylord Coupé (Dos-à-Dos)

1903

The Benz Parsifal

1908

Simplex Coupé

1911–15

Mercedes 37/90 HP

1924–30

Mercedes 24/100/140 Coupé

1925

Benz 16/50 HP

1926

DMG merges with Benz & Cie

1926–36

8/38 HP and Stuttgart 200/260

1928

5/25 W14, the ‘City Coupé’

1931–3

15/75 HP Mannheim 370 S

1930–38

770 ‘Grand Mercedes’

1933–6

200 W21

1934

130 compact saloon Coupé (W23); 150 sport saloon Coupé (W30)

1936

170 H saloon Coupé (W28)

1934–9

500 K/540 K (W29)

1937–42

320 (W142 IV), 320 N Combi Coupé and Coupé

1951–7

300B and 300 Sc Pininfarina Coupé (W188)

1951–8

300 S and 300 Sc Coupés (W188)

1952

Barényi crumple zone patent

1953–5

220 Coupé (W187)

1956–9

Ponton 220 S Coupé/W180 II

1958–60

220 SE Coupé/W128

1961–71

111 and 112 series Coupés

1966

Frua 230 SLX shooting brake coupé; 600 Coupé (W100)

1968–73

114 series Coupé

1973–6

Facelifted 114 series Coupé

1977–85

123 series Coupés

1987–96

124 series Coupés

1993

Mercedes-Benz coupé concept

1997–9

208 series 1 CLK Coupé

1998

CLK GTR C297

1999–2003

208 series 2 CLK Coupé

2005

Maybach Exelero

CHAPTER ONE

EARLY AUTOMOTIVE HISTORY

Workers on the Great Wall of China used wind and sail to assist with barrow propulsion.

Gaocang Wu Shu succeeded in building a wind chariot. There was another built in about AD 610 for the Emperor Yang of Sui (r. 604–617), as described in the Continuation of the New Discourses on the Talk of the Times.

Leonardo da Vinci, some time around the year 1478, drew plans for his own self-propelled cart, which was powered by coiled springs and also featured steering and brake capabilities. It is uncertain whether it was actually built, but it was said to be a special attraction at the Renaissance festivals. The regulator mechanism, like that of a more modern differential, propelled the vehicle forward smoothly at the release of a lever, while the steering was programmable to go either straight or at pre-set angles. In 2006, Italy’s Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence built a working model based on da Vinci’s design and, to the surprise of many, the cart worked.

Leonard da Vinci’s own ‘self-propelled’ cart (left) with the 2006 working model built by the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence.

One of the most famous examples of a self-propelled vehicle – thanks to an engraving rich in valuable information – is that of the mathematician Simon Thévenin, who was born in Bruges in 1548. He built a sailing cart for the ‘grandees of the court of the Prince of Orange to enjoy themselves’.

The Thévenin chariot.

The chronicler of the time Jean de la Varende reported that twenty-eight people climbed into this sailing cart, amongst whom were the ambassadors of the emperor, the great lords of France, England, Denmark and even an illustrious prisoner, Admiral Don Francisco of Mendoza. The ‘flying chariot’ managed to travel an estimated distance of 75km (47 miles) in less than two hours at an average speed of around 37km/h (23mph); it actually reached 60km/h (37mph) and at one point the speed ignited the axles. The Thévenin chariot was exhibited at the Museum of Newport.

In 1769, Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot invented the first powered vehicle in history capable of transporting passengers, named the Cugnot in honour to its creator. It was a heavy three-wheeled vehicle purposely built from timber, and it was powered by a 2-cylinder steam engine that needed a huge boiler attached to the front. The single front wheel worked like a guide wheel to steer the vehicle on its course. All this made the vehicle extremely slow and difficult to drive, but nevertheless it appeared thirty years before the invention of the first steam locomotive.

Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot’s steam powered vehicle appeared thirty years before the invention of the first steam locomotive.

Cugnot started a trend, and for the next forty years or so there were a number of ‘steam-powered’ carriages, including that of Richard Trevithick in 1801, which became known fondly as the ‘Puffing Devil Road Locomotive’. Although it became a precursor to the railway steam engine, the engineering principles of external combustion contributed greatly to the development of the hydrogen-powered internal combustion engine of François Isaac de Rivaz in 1807.

The hydrogen-powered internal combustion engine of François Isaac de Rivaz in 1807.

The horseless carriage went through many variations in power source, including compressed air, hydrogen, oil and even electric motors, but it wasn’t until German inventor and engineer Siegfried Marcus that a motorized carriage powered by an internal combustion engine became a reality.

Siegfried Marcus’s 1864 motorized carriage, powered by an internal combustion engine.

The idea for Marcus’s first car, in around 1864–5, apparently came to him by chance while he was considering the production of illumination by igniting a mixture of gasoline and air with a stream of sparks. The reaction was so violent that it occurred to him to use it as a power source.

His first vehicle was a handcart that married a two-cycle, one-cylinder engine geared to the rear wheels without any intervening clutch. To start it, it was necessary to have a strong man lift the rear end while the wheels were spun, after which it ran for about 180m (600ft). Marcus was so dissatisfied at its performance, however, that he dismantled it and didn’t return to it until ten years later due to a multitude of other commitments. These included patenting in the mid-1870s his ‘rotating brush carburettor’ device that would convert raw fuel to gas and mix with air to create a clean internal combustion, and adding to this in 1883 a patent for a low-voltage ignition magneto, enabling an efficient new petrol engine to be built.

In 1888–9, Märky, Bromovsky & Schulz built another car from scratch for Marcus, making him instantly famous throughout the world. The heavy vehicle, made of wood and iron, was not particularly suited to the uneven tracks and roads, but with the recently patented magneto-electric ignition and the spray brush carburettor used on the fourstroke engine, it made the engine extremely convenient and reliable for the day. It had a capacity of 1570cu cm, an output of approx. 0.75hp and generated a speed of around 6–8km/h (4–5mph).

The Märky, Bromovsky & Schulz horseless carriage built in 1888.

Thirty-five years after Marcus died, and soon after Hitler came to power, the Nazi regime attempted to destroy any evidence of Jewish success, so all record of the inventor’s achievements, blueprints, files and patents were destroyed, including a monument honouring Marcus at the Vienna Technical University. In 1950, however, Marcus’s second car was found where it had been hidden: bricked up behind a false wall of a Viennese museum by employees to protect it from Nazi destruction. So robust was this car that when it was retrieved it was still possible to drive it. In fact, it remains operable to this day and is now owned by the Austrian Automobile, Motorcycle and Touring Club in Vienna and on display at the Vienna Technical Museum; once in a while, it has even been seen trundling the streets of the city.

Most early vehicles, not to mention those that only existed on paper, were small, self-propelled carriages that were not capable of transporting people. As much as Siegfried Marcus achieved, when questioned he expressed the opinion that his vehicles would never succeed commercially and essentially further development was ‘a senseless waste of time and effort’.

Although Marcus can be credited with perhaps building the first purpose-constructed automobile with a ‘petrol internal combustion engine’ it has been accepted that his invention was purely an intellectual curiosity, and, just as he made clear, he had no interest in developing the ‘motor car’ to be become anything more.

If the horseless carriage were to become anything more than just an experiment, it needed more devotion and tenacity to develop it further. Karl Benz may not have been the first inventor of the motor car, but his greatest achievement lay in the tenacity with which he developed his idea of a ‘horseless carriage’ into a product for everyday use, which he then brought to market and made accessible for the entire world – unlike any of the other inventors mentioned here.

CHAPTER TWO

THE AGE OF THE MOTOR CAR

To change the way people thought about travel required so much more than just an engine driving wheels, whether it was a cart or purpose-made frame. People already had a perfectly decent way of getting around with their carriages and horses, and all they had to do was to feed and care for their horses, so why change the power source from a reliable horse to some new-fangled and potentially unreliable motor? Initially it was thought that the cheaper and simpler source of power that the Lenoir two-stroke engine could provide would only be of benefit to ‘others’, like boat and static farm implement manufacturers, and it would never be used as a mode of transport, yet it was essentially this that eventually drove the advancement and development of the internal combustion engine.

The Étienne Lenoir two-stroke engine.

Lenoir’s attempt at a ‘gas-powered vehicle’, known inauspiciously as the Hippomobile, was merely a carriage placed on top of tricycle frame. However, it was a wake-up call to the public and played an important part in exciting the engineers to improve things.

The Hippomobile was powered by a substance dubbed ‘town gas’, a mixture consisting of around 50 per cent hydrogen, plus carbon dioxide, nitrogen and methane. Approximately 600 such machines were sold.

It was Nicolaus Otto’s four-stroke engine that contributed to what would be a huge leap forward for the potential automotive world. Although initially, due to its cumbersome size and slow stroke speed, it was considered only as a stationary power source, by 1885 two of his engineers, Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach, had managed to develop a more compact 1.5hp vertical ‘high-speed’ engine with a 600rpm capability that turned things over.

The Nicolaus Otto four-stroke stationary engine of 1876.

Daimler and Maybach succeeded in developing and building a considerably more compact and upright version of the Otto four-stroke engine; it was later referred to as the ‘Grandfather Clock’ due to its shape.

The age of the ‘motor car’ was started primarily by the contributions made by Karl Benz and Emile Levassor, not because of their engines or even the contraption to which they were attached, but because for the first time they made the concept of the automobile commercially feasible.

The reason perhaps that Benz succeeded, albeit sixty years after the first tentative steps into building ‘motor cars’, where all those others fell by the wayside was down to timing. Just before Benz made his auto, the modern bicycle had come into being, and this brought the possibility of individual, independent transportation into the public’s imagination.

THE SALOON COUPÉ BEGINNING

At the time there were carriages with a multitude of names for a multitude of purposes, from small shooting carriages to full long-distance travelling coaches. However, as with many things in history, defining moments are made by changes in necessity as much as fashion.

The ‘Berlin’ (later the ‘Berline’) was a case in point. The carriage was designed around 1660 or 1670 by a Piedmontese architect commissioned by the general quartermaster to Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg. The Elector would often travel from Berlin to the French capital of Paris and needed an enclosed comfortable carriage to do the long journey.

On its very first trip to Paris, his carriage created a sensation. While heavy-duty vehicles had used double-railed frames before, passenger vehicles normally only had a single rail. Its strength and ride made it more convenient than other carriages of the time and, being lighter and more controllable, it was far less likely to overturn.

The elegant but durable style was soon widely copied and was officially named ‘Berlin style’ after the city from which the carriage had come (French ‘Berline’). It quickly replaced the less practical and less comfortable state coaches and gala coaches in the seventeenth century and was consequently adapted and altered in many ways, often with a view to enhancing elegance of shape, with superior compactness and convenience.

Over its lifespan it was cut longitudinally and latitudinally; it was halved and quartered; the front was cut off, the top cut off – in fact, it was cut about in every manner that fancy could devise. When the Berlin was cut in halves longitudinally, the resulting vehicle was called the ‘Vis-à-Vis’, a term later adopted by both Daimler and Benz, in which form it accommodated two persons sitting face to face.

The original plain and simple Berlin carriage.

The Berlin of the Cardinale Luciano Luigi Bonaparte shows how elaborate style became over time.

When the process of cutting was carried still further, and the Vis-à-Vis was also cut down latitudinally, the Berlin was so dismembered that only one quarter of it remained; this vehicle was, appropriately, called a ‘Desobligeant’, or ‘Disobliger’, as it could take one passenger only and if anyone asked for a ride they were disobliged. The slightly bigger version with two seats, the ‘Carrosse-Coupé’ or ‘Berlingot’, when first used for travel was nicknamed ‘Diligence’, on account of the speed with which it performed the journey from Paris to Calais.

Although the term ‘coupé’ was never really used in England, the English did borrow the style from the French coupé, which was generally referred to as the ‘dress chariot’. It was based on this carriage that Lord Chancellor Henry Brougham, a fashion-forward gentleman, designed his very own four-wheeled, one-horse carriage that became extremely popular during the 1800s.

The top carriage was referred to as the ‘Disobliger’ due to there only being enough room for one passenger. As a wider version it was the first carriage to use the term ‘Carrosse-Coupé’ (cut body).

The brougham appeared as if the front were cut away, preserving only the two doors of the rear section of a coach body. Designed to be cosy and intimate, it had one forward-facing seat for two passengers with sometimes one, sometimes two, fold-away coachman’s seats at the front corners where extra passengers could also ride, and it usually had a glazed front window through which passengers could see forward.

There were many variations on this design, such as the country brougham and depot brougham. Due to their neat size and compactness, many broughams were later converted into hacks (town taxis) called ‘growlers’. One style of coupé carriage even had a folding child’s seat inside, facing backwards. Another was slightly longer, with a full-framed seat inside the front of the body, and was called a clarence. In the USA, both the coupé and the clarence were also known as extension-front broughams.

The original ‘British’ version of the coupé body was always referred to as the brougham.

The innovative design proved very popular and became an instant success with middle-class and wealthy families. Unlike the high, heavy, bulky coaches of the time, the brougham was a light and compact carriage, cheaper to buy and ideal for travelling around busy streets; it also claims the distinction of being the first to have elliptical springs.

Many carriage manufacturing companies built brougham styles in varying sizes that would accommodate from two to four passengers. It went on to influence the construction of carriages across the whole world and even early car designs – the brougham name also went on to be used by several automobile manufacturers such as Rolls-Royce, Studebaker, General Motors, Cadillac and Ford.

The brougham style went on to be used in automobile categories. This Rolls-Royce was known as the brougham landaulet.

The landau carriage was a four-wheeled carriage invented in Germany that seated four people on two facing seats (vis à vis) with an elevated front seat for the coachman. It was distinguished by two folding hoods, one at each end, which met at the top to form a box-like enclosure with side windows. It was a heavy vehicle, often drawn by a team of four horses, and was widely used from the eighteenth century in England. Usually these landau carriages were severely cut away underneath at each end, so that the bottom of the door was the lowest point of the carriage body for ease of access.

The landau carriage had two tonneaus for closed or open-air travel whereas the landaulet only had one at the rear.

From the landau came the landaulet, or landaulette; appearing as if the front were cut away, with a forward-facing seat for two people, this was often referred to as the ‘landau coupé’, which really could be the origin of the coupé convertible automobile.

KARL FRIEDRICH BENZ

Born:25 November 1844, Mühlburg, Germany

Died: 4 April 1929, Ladenburg, Germany

Karl Benz alongside what has become known as the ‘birth certificate’ of the automobile.

Karl Benz built his first motor car with a single-cylinder, four-stroke engine, and a patent was granted on 29 January 1886. This patent, No. 37435, granted by the imperial patent office for his ‘vehicle with gas-engine drive’ was to be the automobile’s birth certificate.

This will always be remembered as the first practical motor car.

Karl Benz did not content himself with simply outfitting an existing carriage with an engine: his engine, drivetrain and chassis were designed from the ground up. His design and layout of engine, ignition, cooling, transmission, wheels and brakes became the standard for every automobile built since then.

So fierce was the competition at the time to produce a motor car that Benz worked tirelessly in fear that another inventor would beat him to it.

A comparison of the Benz patent motor car from 1888 (left) and the world’s first automobile from 1886.

During testing and before the patent had been granted, he only dared to go out on the road at night and only around the immediate neighbourhood of his factory, which, being in an industrial area, was luckily deserted. Night after night, he progressively learned to take command of his vehicle and its technology, cautiously extending the length of the drives he took with it, until on Sunday, 3 July 1886, he took a drive around the ramparts surrounding Mannheim.

He rattled around the town at a steady 15km/h (9mph) with his son Eugen running alongside the vehicle with a bottle of gasoline to keep it fuelled; baffled onlookers stood aghast at the strange tricycle, and the next day all Mannheim talked about Karl Benz and his invention. The single-minded determination Karl Benz showed when he developed his idea of a ‘horseless vehicle’ into a product suitable for daily use, and made his vision a reality, was his crucial achievement. He had the idea of a motor car, designed it, built it, tested it, patented it, marketed it, produced it in series, developed it further, and thus made his innovation usable.

His third model, a slightly revised version to make it more marketable, was exhibited in 1887 at the Paris Exposition and almost immediately sold to a Frenchman by the name of Emile Roger, a fortuitous meeting that resulted in him becoming an agent based in Paris. For the first time motor cars were being offered for sale to the public.

For Type III, there was a return to the wooden wheel as the public were unsure of the more fragile wire wheel. Different body types were also available. For instance, the customer could choose an additional vis-à-vis bench and thus have four seats all together, or he could choose a folding cover.

A close look at Type III showed significant differences marking technological progress over the preceding models and simultaneously making it more suitable for serial production. The vehicle had two forward speeds, the wheel spokes were made of wood instead of wire, the wooden body was completely separated from the chassis, the engine was encapsulated, and the steering was improved, along with a sprung front wheel.

For the record, it was this model that Bertha Benz used to go on her ‘long-distance trip’ from Mannheim to Pforzheim (88km/55 miles).

The Benz ‘axle-pivot steering’ patent (DRP 73151) was granted on 28 February 1893.

Both variations were equipped with a horizontally installed one-cylinder engine with vertical flywheel; displacement and performance were continuously enlarged up to the end of production in 1900.

Karl Benz had not wasted any time on the design of a steering system but had gone for a simple three-wheeler to start with, while Daimler had opted for the age-old carriage ‘fifth wheel’ system. Neither Benz nor Daimler knew that, as early as 1816, carriage builder Georg Lankensperger in Munich had been granted a ‘privilege’, as patents were called at the time, for a ‘steering device for horse-drawn vehicles’. It was only by coincidence that Karl Benz came across this privilege when browsing through a trade journal in 1891, specifying that ‘the extended lines of the wheel axes must converge in the centre point of the bend’. He realized the significance of this design for the automobile, and double-pivot steering was to become the solution to the automotive steering problem. His own ‘axle-pivot steering’ solution paved the way for a safe and reliable steering system and from then on he moved to four-wheeled vehicles, his first being the Victoria, which was also available as a four-seated version with face-to-face seat benches, the Vis-à-Vis.

GOTTLIEB WILHELM DAIMLER

Born: 17 March 1834, Schorndorf, Germany

Died: 6 March 1900, Stuttgart, Germany

Daimler and Maybach had been developing the internal combustion engine, initially for Nicholas Otto, but later under their own direction in his conservatory workshop in Cannstatt.

On 16 December 1883, they patented the first of their engines, fuelled by ligroin, a volatile solvent extracted from petroleum. It achieved Daimler’s goal of being small and running fast enough to be useful at 750rpm. Improvements over the next four years brought that up to 900rpm. Daimler had three engines built to this design early in 1884, and a flywheel was included in one of the engines. This design was smaller and lighter than engines by other inventors of the time and was called the ‘Grandfather Clock’, having achieved the goals of producing a throttling engine with high enough rpm while being small enough to be used in transportation. Daimler and Maybach built the 1884 engine into a two-wheeled test frame, which was patented as the ‘Petroleum Reitwagen’ (petroleum riding car).

The petroleum riding car was simply a test-bed to demonstrate the feasibility of a liquid petroleum engine using a compressed fuel charge to power a vehicle.

Independently of one another, Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler each produced an automobile in 1886, both in Germany, about 100km (60 miles) apart.

On 8 March 1886, Gottlieb Daimler secretly ordered a carriage in the version ‘Americaine’ from the coachbuilder Wilhelm Wimpff & Sohn, ostensibly as a present for his wife Emma’s forthcoming birthday, but in fact to install an engine into it. A 1.1hp air-cooled version of the previous one-cylinder ‘Grandfather Clock’ was installed by a German engineering company called Maschinenfabrik Esslingen. The engine power was transmitted by a set of belts and, during testing on the roads to Untertürkheim, it became the first four-wheeled vehicle to reach 16km/h (10mph).

The Daimler ‘motor coach’, built in 1886, seen here with both Gottlieb and his son Adolf Daimler.

In 1887, the cooling method for the motor carriage was changed from air to water, with a large-surfaced finned radiator mounted underneath the rear seats.

Although Daimler’s motor vehicle was the first four-wheel vehicle driven by a high-speed combustion engine, it was merely considered a carriage without shaft or horses. Daimler had not given any thought to an evolution model or even the series production of his motor vehicle – he merely wanted to demonstrate the possible ways of using his engine and carried on looking for alternatives.

In 1886, his engine was mounted to a longboat and achieved a speed of 6 knots (11km/h or 7mph). This was the first motorboat, and boat engines became Daimler’s main product for several years. To allay the first customers’ fears that the petroleum fuelled engine could explode, Daimler hid the engine under a ceramic cover and told them it was ‘oil-electrical’.

The petrol engine rapidly became the power of choice for boat engines.

On 10 August 1888, Leipzig-based bookseller Dr Karl Wölfert took off in a motorized airship from the factory yard of the Daimler Motor Company at the Seelberg in Cannstatt for a flight to Kornwestheim. The drive system was the famous single-cylinder Daimler engine with an output of 2hp (1.5kW), which powered two propellers: one in a vertical position and the other horizontal.

With a growing reputation for safety and reliability, the engine was primarily used in ‘commercial vehicles’.

The single-cylinder engine went on to be used in streetcars and trolleybuses.

In 1889, Daimler and Maybach built the ‘Stahlradwagen’ (wire-wheeled car), their first automobile that did not involve adapting a horse-drawn carriage with their engine, but which was somewhat influenced by bicycle designs. There was no production in Germany, but it was licensed to be built in France and presented to the public in Paris in October 1889 by both engineers.

The Stahlradwagen (wire-wheeled car).

Daimler and Maybach continued to work together and develop engines and engine technology using the abandoned conservatory at the Hermann Hotel as their workshop.

Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG) was founded on 28 November 1890, with Maybach as chief designer. Its purpose was the construction of small, high-speed engines for use in land, water and air transport. The three uses were expressed by Daimler in a sketch that became the basis for a logo with a three-pointed star. No one at the DMG corporation had any faith in a profitable market for the automobile, however, and after many company ‘stockholder’ disagreements and battles, DMG didn’t manage to sell a single automobile until 1892. They resigned their shares and places at DMG, although eventually the pair were reinstated into the corporation, primarily to aid with producing a new automobile based on their new Phoenix 2-cylinder engine.

CHAPTER THREE

THE COUPÉ AUTOMOBILE

Once the motor car took hold in the minds of the general public, its move away from carriage and bicycle design was swift; however, as is often the case with technical consumables, the shape remained more about form through development and function. The shape of a motor car’s frontal area in the early days of development is a case in point. Engines were in the rear, so all it needed up front was space for driver and passenger and a means to steer. Once the more efficient water-cooled engines took over from earlier air-cooled ones, it was found that for a more efficient cooling effect the radiator needed to be in the front, which then needed protecting from the elements.

The Daimler 3 HP taxi was step two in the advancement of cooling the engine. The copper tank of water with a zigzag of pipes can be clearly seen under the front.

Then it was decided to fit the engine in the front, which extended the area at the front further; then, in addition to the actual shape constraints, other aspects came to include the choice of materials, touch and feel, and the greatest ease of use. All of these factors became more than just function, and the outward appearance started to reflect the inner values of the product, such as reliability, innovation and emotion. The design of an automobile became exciting and eye-catching and, as well as reflecting the value of the brand, it started to reflect the values of its owner.