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- A CONTINUATION OF THE ‘PRE-HISTORY’ OF THE MOTOR VEHICLE ARTICLE WHICH APPEARED IN THE SEPTEMBER 2020 TOURER
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AUTOMOBILES
The internal combustion engine appeared early in the history of the motor vehicle, but took over three quarters of a century to be perfected to the level where it could be used in a vehicle capable of running on the roads – the 1805 powered cart of the Swiss Isaac de Rivaz was no more than an elaborate toy, only capable of crawling from one side of a room to another, and the 1863 car built in Paris by J-J Etienne Lenoir took three hours to cover six miles. It was not until the mid-1880s that the first successful petrol cars appeared, developed independently by two German engineers, Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz. Of the two vehicles, that of Benz was incontestably superior, for it was designed as an entity, using the new technology of the cycle industry, while Daimler’s carriage was no more than an adopted horse vehicle. Benz went into limited production of his threewheeled carriages in 1888; Daimler was more interested in selling his engines as a universal power source. Neither man found immediate success, but neither had the great geniuses of the The first petrol driven car conceived as an entity was steam vehicle who were their the 1885-86 Benz three-wheeler. contemporaries. The Bollèe family of Le Mans built some truly advanced steam carriages between 1873 and the mid-1880’s, vehicles which pioneered independent front suspension, while blacksmith’s son Lèon Serpollet conceived the ‘flash boiler’ for instantaneous generation of steam and held the first driving licence issued in Paris. And while Comte De Dion and his engineers Bouton and Trèpardoux built some excellent steam vehicles during the 1880s and early 1890s, they were to achieve their greatest fame as manufacturers of light petrol vehicles from 1895 on. The crucial event in the story of the motor car was the 1889 Paris World Exhibition, for it was there that the French engineers Panhard and Levassor saw the Daimler ‘Steelwheeler’ car powered by the Daimler vee-twin engine. Levassor’s lady friend, an astute widow named Louise Sarazin, held the French rights to the Daimler engine in succession to her late husband, and Panhard and Page 15
