You’ve probably heard it since grade school. Karl Benz. 1886. The Patent-Motorwagen. It’s the standard answer to who created the first automobile, and honestly, it’s the easiest one to put on a history test. But if you actually dig into the grease-stained records of the 19th century, the story gets a lot weirder and way more crowded.
History isn't a straight line.
It’s a jagged, chaotic mess of failed steam boilers, forgotten Austrian inventors, and a woman who basically saved the entire industry during a 60-mile illegal road trip. Benz got the patent, sure. He played the legal game perfectly. But he wasn’t the first person to make a vehicle move without a horse, and he definitely wasn't the only one trying to solve the puzzle of the internal combustion engine in the late 1800s.
To understand how we actually got the car, you have to look past the shiny Mercedes-Benz marketing and see the guys who were literally blowing up their workshops decades earlier.
The 1769 problem: Steam before gas
Long before Karl Benz was even a thought, a Frenchman named Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot was scaring the absolute life out of people in Paris.
In 1769, Cugnot built a massive, three-wheeled steam tractor. It was designed to haul heavy artillery for the French army. It was loud. It was terrifyingly heavy. It moved at a blistering 2.25 miles per hour—basically a slow walk for a tired human. Most importantly, it crashed into a stone wall during a demonstration, which technically makes it the world’s first car accident along with being the first self-propelled mechanical vehicle.
Cugnot’s machine didn’t have a steering wheel in any sense we’d recognize. It had a giant boiler hanging off the front that made it nearly impossible to balance. But it worked. It moved under its own power. So, why don't we say Cugnot is who created the first automobile?
Mostly because of the "auto" part.
A steam engine requires a massive amount of water and a constant fire. It’s not practical for a grocery run. For a vehicle to be an "automobile" in the modern sense—something personal, somewhat reliable, and capable of being operated by one person—it needed a more compact power source. That’s where things started to get competitive in the 1800s.
The forgotten guy: Siegfried Marcus
If you go to Vienna and ask about the car, you might hear a different name: Siegfried Marcus.
Marcus was a Jewish-Austrian inventor who, around 1870, put a liquid-fueled internal combustion engine on a simple handcart. It was crude. It didn't have seats. It was basically an engine on wheels that he had to start by lifting the drive wheels off the ground. But he did it sixteen years before Benz’s famous patent.
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By 1888, Marcus had built a second vehicle that was remarkably sophisticated. It had a four-cycle engine, a carburetor, and magneto ignition. It looked like a car.
So why isn't he the "father" of the car?
Politics and timing. Marcus was an eccentric who didn't care much for patents or commercializing his work. He once reportedly called his own invention a "pointless waste of time." Then, decades later, when the Nazis rose to power, they systematically erased Marcus from the history books because of his Jewish heritage. They literally went into libraries and changed encyclopedias to credit Benz and Daimler instead.
We’re still correcting that historical erasure today. Marcus might actually be the man who created the first automobile as we define it—internal combustion and gasoline-powered—but he died without the fame or the legal paperwork to prove it to the world.
Why Karl Benz actually gets the credit
Karl Benz was a brilliant engineer, but he was also a meticulous businessman. On January 29, 1886, he applied for German patent number 37435. That document is often called the "birth certificate of the automobile."
The Patent-Motorwagen was a three-wheeled vehicle because Benz wasn't satisfied with contemporary steering systems for four wheels. It had a rear-mounted, single-cylinder four-stroke engine. It produced a whopping 0.75 horsepower.
It was fragile.
People think the first car was an instant hit. It wasn't. People laughed at it. They thought it was a toy for the rich or a dangerous nuisance. Benz himself was a bit of a perfectionist and a neurotic who was afraid to actually drive the thing long distances. He kept tinkering in his shop, terrified that a public failure would ruin his reputation.
Bertha Benz: The real MVP
The car probably would have died in that workshop if it weren't for Bertha Benz. Honestly, she’s the most important person in this whole narrative.
In August 1888, without telling her husband, Bertha "borrowed" the Patent-Motorwagen. She took her two sons and drove 66 miles from Mannheim to Pforzheim to visit her mother. This was the first long-distance internal combustion road trip in history.
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She wasn't just a driver; she was a mechanic.
When the fuel lines got clogged, she cleaned them with her hatpin. When an ignition wire shorted out, she used her garter as insulation. When the wooden brakes started to fail, she stopped at a cobbler and had him nail leather strips to them, effectively inventing the brake lining.
Her trip proved to the world that the car was a practical tool, not just a laboratory experiment. When you ask who created the first automobile, you're really talking about a joint venture between Karl’s engineering and Bertha’s marketing and field-testing.
The American side of the street
While the Germans were dominating the patent office, the United States was catching up fast. In 1893, Charles and Frank Duryea built the first successful gas-powered car in America.
They weren't the first in the world, but they were the first to treat it like a real industry. They won the first-ever American car race in 1895, driving from Chicago to Evanston in a blizzard.
Before the Duryeas, there was George Selden.
Selden is a fascinating footnote. He was a patent lawyer who saw a three-cylinder engine at an exposition and decided to patent the concept of a gasoline carriage in 1879. He didn't even build one for years. He just sat on the patent and collected royalties from almost every car manufacturer in the US.
It took a young, stubborn Henry Ford to break Selden’s grip. Ford refused to pay the "Selden tax," went to court, and eventually won by proving that the engines being used in cars were different from the one Selden had described. This cleared the way for the mass production of the Model T.
Complexity in the "Firsts"
Defining the "first" depends entirely on your criteria.
- First self-propelled? Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot (1769).
- First electric car? Robert Anderson (1832). Yes, EVs existed nearly 200 years ago.
- First hydrogen car? François Isaac de Rivaz (1807). He used a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen.
- First internal combustion gasoline car? Likely Siegfried Marcus (1870) or Karl Benz (1885).
The reason Benz wins the history books is because his machine was the total package. It had an integrated chassis, an engine designed specifically for transportation, and a patent that stood the test of time.
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It wasn't a carriage with an engine slapped on it. It was a car.
Actionable insights for the history buff
If you're researching who created the first automobile, don't stop at the Wikipedia summary. The nuance is where the real value lives.
Check the sources yourself
Look into the Smithsonian’s archives regarding the Duryea brothers or the Mercedes-Benz Museum’s digital archives for the 1886 patent. You’ll see that the "invention" was actually a series of incremental updates over 100 years.
Visit the Mercedes-Benz Museum
If you’re ever in Stuttgart, go see the replica of the Patent-Motorwagen. It’s tiny. Seeing the scale helps you realize how brave Bertha Benz actually was to take that thing through the mountains.
Understand the "Eras"
When discussing car history, separate it into the Steam Era (Pre-1860), the Experimental Era (1860-1885), and the Veteran Era (1885-1905). This makes you sound like a pro who knows that the car didn't just appear out of thin air.
Recognize the Electric irony
Keep in mind that by 1900, electric cars actually outsold gasoline cars in the US. They were quieter, cleaner, and easier to start. We only switched to gas because of the discovery of cheap oil and the invention of the electric starter (which meant you didn't have to hand-crank the engine and risk breaking your arm).
The story of the first automobile isn't about one genius in a vacuum. It’s about a collection of obsessive, often frustrated people trying to replace the horse. Benz just happened to be the one who crossed the finish line with a lawyer and a courageous wife by his side.
To get a true feel for this era, look up the "Red Flag Acts." These were laws in the UK that required a person to walk in front of any "self-propelled" vehicle waving a red flag to warn people. It shows you exactly how much the world resisted the invention that eventually changed everything.
The transition from horse to horsepower wasn't a smooth ride. It was a bumpy, smoky, and often litigious journey that involved dozens of "firsts" before we settled on the one we remember today.