stroke engine to perfection and it gave him all the experienced needed to produce the first four-stroke engine for his first automobiles. By 1885, the Patent Motor-Wagon Benz was rolling through the streets of Mannheim but sales were initially slow. Within five years Benz und Cie would flourish “[The 1890s] were a rewarding and satisfying time for Benz, whose organization and production had leaped ahead of Daimler’s. During the 1890s, Karl Benz became the world’s pre-eminent motorcar manufacturer…By the end of the decade he had built 200 cars and had a production capacity of nearly 600 cars a year” (Steinwedel 18).
Gottlieb Daimler died in 1900 and his son Paul and Wilhelm Maybach controlled the company. Design was shaped by Emil Jellinek, who “demanded mechanically sophisticated, reliable and above all fast cars” (Steinwedel 27). Speed was the one factor missing in the cars produced by Karl Benz. By 1901, Jellinek was in charge of “P
...