The idea of a carriage that did not have to be pulled by animals or people already existed in the Middle Ages. But much time was to pass before the idea could be realised. It was not until the engines invented by Etienne Lenoir (1859) and later Nicolaus August Otto (1876) were produced that relatively compact yet powerful motors became available.

The engineers Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach initially worked and carried out research in the Otto’s Deutzer gas engine factory. Then, in 1882, they founded their own company. Daimler improved the engine with glow-tube ignition and used fuel with a high energy density – petrol. In 1885 he built a motorcycle together with Maybach which was the first vehicle with a combustion engine. Its one cylinder engine, the so-called grandfather clock, had a horsepower of 0.5.

By 1885, Karl Benz had improved his engine with an electrical ignition system to such an extent that he was able to integrate it into a vehicle. The vehicle he chose had three wheels and a steel tube frame. In 1886, Benz obtained a German patent for the first automobile in the world. One year later he began series production of the automobile in his Mannheim motor vehicle factory.

In 1888, Daimler followed this with a four-wheel car which was driven by a 1.1 horsepower engine. However, the first automobiles were not very well received in Germany. The French were more open-minded: the third car company in the world, the Société des Automobiles Peugeot, was founded in 1896 and had worked its way up to become one of the leading automotive manufacturers by 1900 with a range of 15 motor vehicles.

As the first cars were manually assembled piece by piece they were, at first, hardly affordable. That was until 1913 when the American Henry Ford revolutionised automotive manufacturing with mass production. As a consequence, prices dropped considerably and the sales figures rose. Whilst a “Ford T” still cost $850 in 1908, it could be bought for 300 US dollars after the introduction of the assembly line. The car had become affordable.