Maybach Stahlradwagen

1889 · Steel Wheeled Motor Car · Work 244 of 1,871

Maybach Stahlradwagen, 1889, Steel Wheeled Motor Car

The Maybach Stahlradwagen on the exhibition floor of the Paris world fair, tubular steel wheels with solid rubber tyres, V-twin engine at the rear, four-speed sliding gear with exposed cogs.

What it was used for
Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach built the light four-wheeler in Cannstatt as a carrier for their new V engine and presented it at the Paris World Exposition in October 1889. Frame and wheels came from Neckarsulmer Strickmaschinen-Fabrik AG, later NSU; the steel tubes of the frame also carried the cooling water. The engine was meant as a universal drive for road, rail and water vehicles. In Paris, according to the FFVE blog, Daimler met Émile Levassor and René Panhard, and probably Armand Peugeot.
What was new
New was the two-cylinder V engine with a 17° cylinder angle (DRP 50839, issued 5 February 1890): 1.5 hp at 600 rpm per the Mercedes-Benz archive, 700 rpm in other accounts; displacement 565 cc according to these. Added to this was Maybach's gear-only four-speed transmission, while Benz still shifted by belt; about 16 km/h in fourth gear. The twist: the Mercedes-Benz archive says the Paris presentation marks the birth of the French car industry. Panhard & Levassor built Daimler engines under licence from October 1889, Peugeot built cars with these engines from 1890 – before Daimler's own company delivered its first production car in August 1892.

Further reading