Made in Germany: History of the German Car Industry

The first gasoline-powered car was invented by a German inventor named Siegfried Marcus in 1864. Marcus was a technician and engineer who worked in Vienna. He designed his first car to look like a simple handcart but with wheels powered by an engine that used gasoline.

The car had to be lifted off the ground to start the wheels. Marcus continued to work on his design and created several more gasoline-powered cars, each one better than the last. In 1888, Marcus designed a model much more like the cars we see on the road today.

It had a driver’s seat, a steering wheel, a clutch, and a brake. This car is now considered a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. You can still see it today in Vienna’s Technical Museum.

1885 – Benz goes into production

Marcus was the first person to create a gasoline-powered vehicle, but his designs were not very practical initially.

The first automobile successfully mass-produced was the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, designed by Karl Benz in Mannheim in 1885.

Karl Benz had previously worked on developing an engine that ran on gasoline, and he was eventually able to fit it into a three-wheeled coach in the 1880s.