Benz Velo

1894 · Light Production Motor Car · Work 246 of 1,871

Benz Velo, 1894, Light Production Motor Car

A light four-wheeled motor car with a padded bench seat, a horizontal engine and large exposed flywheel mounted behind the seat, belt pulleys and drive chains beneath, a tiller column rising between the driver's knees, in a factory courtyard.

What it was used for
Benz & Cie. of Mannheim added the "Motor Velociped" to its range in April 1894 as a low-priced small model. According to the Mercedes-Benz archive the first version cost 2,000 marks, ran at about 20 km/h and had no clutch; a reverse gear was an option only from 1896. The archive gives about 1,200 Velo and Comfortable built, most of them for export. One became a dispute: Henry Hewetson stated in 1903 that he had imported a Velo into England in November 1894. The invoice produced for him in 1944, however, names a company form (AG) Benz adopted only in May 1899; historian Malcolm Jeal calls it fraudulent. According to the works records he examined, the first Benz for London left the factory only on 29 November 1895. Who the other buyers were and what they used the car for is not documented in the sources checked.
What was new
Mercedes-Benz calls the Velo the world's first series-produced automobile. That is the maker's own claim, and it needs a qualifier: Panhard & Levassor built a first series in 1891, and Peugeot built 64 of its Type 3 from 1891. What was new about the Velo was scale: a light, cheap model made in about 1,200 examples. The archive itself is inconsistent about when production ended – 1901 on one page, 1902 in the title of another.

Connections

Every connection names its kind. “Forerunner” on its own would be a claim.

  1. Follows fromBenz Victoria1893Benz filed for the double-pivot steering on 28 February 1893 (DRP 73,515) and realised it first in the Victoria and the Vis-à-Vis. The Velo came on the market in 1894 with four wheels and that same steering.Source: Initiative Kulturgut Mobilität: Benz Motor-Velociped, das erste Großserienautomobil der Welt

Further reading