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Driving to see mom isn’t a big deal today, but at the time it constituted the first cross-country car trip of any real distance. At the time, there were no fuel stations or even a fuel industry. Bertha Benz stopped at pharmacies along the way to buy the chemicals needed to fuel the car. When the wooden brake shoes kept falling off, she stopped at a blacksmith where she designed and had the blacksmith make the first brake pads, using leather attached to iron castings, in a matter of a few hours. If not for this trip, there may never have been a company called Mercedes-Benz. Bertha Benz took the trip without informing her husband, who suffered from debilitating anxiety and insecurity. He believed his car would never make any money. So in order to show that a car could be useful, and to encourage her husband, she made the first cross-country journey where she not only invented the brake pad but also improved elements of the car’s fuel line. Newspapers around Europe got wind of Bertha’s trip and by the end that drive to mom’s became the most famous car journey to-date. Not every car company was fortunate enough to have a Bertha Benz. The period beginning after 1885 and ending around the time of the First World War saw many horseless

carriage companies come and go. This was the era of the first model cars, in which automakers would make many versions of the same vehicle. While Henry Ford is credited with bringing the assembly line to auto making, it was Karl Benz who created the first series of model cars with the Benz Patent Motorwagen. Before 1885, cars were available on a limited basis in the United States. These cars were all made to order, each one unique. Often the buyer would have to makeshift a horse carriage onto the horseless part. One company would create the chassis . Another company would make the motor, and a third would provide the carriage. Sometimes a fourth company was needed to put the whole car together.

Watch an original Benz Patent Motorwagen 1 in action from 2014. The horseless carriage shown here was made in January 1886. The commentary is in German, but you don’t need words to know this is really cool!

The Benz Patent Motorwagen, seen here on exhibition in China, was designed to create the first series of model cars.

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