Meet the trailblazers
Although the motor industry unquestionably grew up in the 20th century, it was well established by the end of the 19th.
Back then, marques we are very familiar with today, such as Cadillac, Chevrolet, Ferrari, Ford or any based in Japan, did not yet exist, but there were still many opportunities to acquire an example of the then-new technology.
To illustrate that, we’re presenting a list of 20 car manufacturers which were up and running at the time, some of them now mostly forgotten, others still part of the motoring scene, and still others which live on under new names.
All were active by 1900. They’re listed here in alphabetical order.
1. Benz
The three-wheeled Benz Patent Motorwagen, which was granted the patent of its title in 1886 and popularised by Bertha Benz two years later, is widely, though not universally, regarded as being the first car in the modern sense.
Benz followed it in 1893 with the four-wheeled Victoria, but by the end of the century the company’s most important model was the Velo (pictured).
In standard and upmarket Comfortable forms, the Velo was so popular (“what we made was sold immediately,” Carl Benz would later claim) that around 1200 examples were produced during a period when building just a few dozen was considered an achievement.
The Benz name lives on in Mercedes-Benz, created in 1926 by means of a merger with Daimler.
2. Daimler
In the 1890s, Daimler made a name for itself as a supplier of engines to other manufacturers, including Peugeot.
The first vehicle it sold to the public was officially called the ‘wire-wheel car’, but is better known as the Schroedter car in honour of technical director Max Schroedter.
This sold so badly it nearly rendered Daimler bankrupt, but the Phoenix of 1897 pictured here (the marque’s first front-engined car, featuring a very efficient radiator devised by Wilhelm Maybach) was more successful.
At the suggestion of Emil Jellinek, Daimler created the Mercedes 35hp in 1900, and all of the cars it produced from then until the merger with Benz were branded as Mercedes.
3. De Dion Bouton
The name of this French marque refers to the Marquis Jules-Albert de Dion, who provided the money, and engineer Georges Bouton, though Bouton’s brother-in-law Charles Trépardoux was also one of the founders.
De Dion Bouton concentrated initially on steam vehicles (one of which was the fastest car in the 1894 Paris to Rouen event, though it was disqualified on a technicality), but later transitioned to petrol engines, reportedly to Trépardoux’s dismay.
Engine manufacturing became an extremely important part of the business, but De Dion Bouton continued to build cars such as the 1899 Voiturette pictured here, also known as the Vis-à-Vis (face-to-face) because of its seating arrangement which, though bizarre in modern terms, was not particularly unusual for the period.
4. Duryea
John Lambert is believed to have built the first US car in 1891, but he did not go into production until 1905.
In contrast, brothers Charles and Frank Duryea built a car of their own in 1893, and in the following year built another (pictured) which won the country’s first motorsport event, the Chicago Times-Herald race, in 1895.
1895 was also the year in which Duryea became, by common consent, the first manufacturer to sell cars in the United States.
Frank had gone his own way by the end of the century, but Charles persevered until more than two decades after he and his brother had essentially created the US motor industry.
5. Fiat
Giovanni Ceriano, one of four brothers who figure highly in the early history of the Italian motor industry, manufactured bicycles under the very unItalian-sounding name Welleyes, and expanded the marque’s range by introducing a 3.5hp car in 1899.
In the same year, the business was acquired by a consortium of which Giovanni Agnelli was a member, and which established the Fabbrica Italiana Automobili di Torino (‘Italian car factory of Turin’), later known by its initials F.I.A.T. and, later still, simply as Fiat.
Like BMW, which started building Austin Sevens under licence, Fiat therefore did not design the first car it ever produced, but the 3.5hp nevertheless stands as the only Fiat-branded car available in the 1800s.
6. Flocken
It’s easy nowadays to think of electric cars as being a modern invention, but Andreas Flocken built what is believed to be the very first of its kind (if you don’t count Robert Anderson’s much earlier electric vehicle, which wasn’t really a car as we would understand it) way back in 1888.
The Flocken Elektrowagen was itself only just a car. Similar to a prototype Daimler built two years earlier, it was more like a carriage without a horse, the latter being replaced in the Daimler by a single-cylinder, internal-combustion engine and in the Flocken by an electric motor.
Flocken would go on to build other vehicles, but the marque expired very early in the 20th century.
The Elektrowagen pictured here is a reconstruction completed in 2011.
7. Haynes-Apperson
Claims that Haynes-Apperson built the first North American car are open to question, since there is no record of one of its models running before 1894 (the year after the first Duryea and three after John Lambert’s prototype) and sources vary wildly in their estimation of when the concern was formalised into a business.
There is, however, no question that by the late 1890s, Haynes-Apperson was an important part of the US auto industry, the 1897 advertisement from which the above picture is taken mentioning a variety of ‘hydro-carbon motors’ producing four, six, eight or 10 horsepower.
The double-barrelled name refers to Elwood Haynes, and brothers Elmer and Edgar Apperson, who collaborated until the Appersons decided to leave in the early 1900s.
This led to the formation of separate marques called Haynes and Apperson, both of which folded in the mid 1920s.
8. Humber
It’s believed that cars first ran on British roads in 1895, and soon after that Daimlers were built under licence in Coventry.
The first British-designed car, however, was the Humber Sociable, which went on sale in 1898.
Possibly named after the fact that two people could sit in it (or, one might say, on it), the Sociable was a three-wheeler with tiller steering, powered by an engine designed by Charles McRobie Turrell.
Humber would go on to become part of the Rootes Group in the 1920s, and was incorporated four decades later into the newly formed Chrysler Europe, which subsequently eliminated not only Humber but all its other British marques, too, and called every car it produced a Chrysler.
9. Léon Bollée
Named after a French inventor whose achievements included designing a calculating machine which won a gold medal at the 1889 Paris Exposition, Léon Bollée Automobiles began selling its first car in 1896.
The Voiturette pictured here was a rear-steered three-wheeler, with space for two passengers at the extreme front and a driver sitting approximately in the centre.
Even for the 1890s, this was hardly a premium vehicle, but Léon Bollée switched to producing four-wheelers before the end of the century.
The company survived its founder’s early death in 1913 at the age of 43, but closed in the first part of the 1930s despite a late intervention by UK manufacturer Morris.
10. Locomobile
Like several of the other early manufacturers, the US Locomobile company started building steam cars, before adopting internal-combustion engines.
However, it did not make this switch until a few years into the first decade of the new century, so for the period we’re studying here, every Locomobile built and sold was a steamer.
In this case, that period is quite short, because the company was founded in 1899, which also happens to be the year the car pictured here was manufactured.
Locomobile was acquired by William Durant after the second of his two departures from the General Motors empire he had created, and was dropped in 1929.
11. Miari & Giusti
Predating Fiat by five years, Miari & Giusti became Italy’s first car manufacturer in 1894.
The company was named after engineers (later soldiers, later still politicians) Giacomo Miari and Francesco Giusti del Giardino, using the designs of an older engineer, Enrico Bernardi.
The Miari & Giusti cars were small three- and four-wheelers, sometimes fitted with enormous fabric protective covers which more or less doubled their height.
Bernardi’s name was added to the title in 1896, but the company was forced into liquidation two years later, and although it was quickly resurrected it did not survive long into the 1900s.
12. Opel
After several decades building sewing machines and bicycles, Opel moved into the car business by acquiring a company created by Friedrich Lutzmann, who had built several machines on a small scale.
The Opel Patentwagen System Lutzmann, powered by a 3.5bhp, 1545cc, single-cylinder engine driving the rear wheels through a two-speed gearbox and a belt, went into production in spring 1899, and was the only Opel sold during the 19th century.
Even by the standards of the time, the car was old fashioned, and according to several reports Lutzmann did not feel he could design anything more modern, so the association came to an end in 1901.
Opel moved on to building cars with the assistance of Darracq, and then revealed the 10/12hp, its first model designed in-house, at the 1902 Hamburg motor show.
13. Packard
Packard built five cars in 1899, of which the first is known to have been driven on the road in November of that year.
According to a Packard authority, these Model As, as they were called, ‘might be regarded as production prototypes as there were differences in each’, though they were all powered by the same 9hp, single-cylinder engine and the last of them found a customer in Ohio businessman George Kirkham.
The longer, but mechanically similar, Model B was introduced in 1900, the final year of the 19th century.
Packard would go on to be hailed as one of the finest manufacturers in the United States, spoken of in the same terms as Peerless, Pierce-Arrow and Rolls-Royce, but like its American rivals, though very much unlike Rolls-Royce, it has since disappeared, the last model having been built in 1958.
14. Panhard et Levassor
Later known simply as Panhard, this French marque achieved early success building Daimler engines under licence, and fitted one to a carriage in 1890.
A more serious effort resulted in the 1891 model, which featured the front-engined, rear-wheel-drive layout that became almost universal in the following decades.
A Panhard et Levassor driven by co-founder Émile Levassor won the Paris-Bordeaux-Paris race of 1896 (and was promptly disqualified for having only two seats when the rules demanded four), and by the turn of the century, the company had progressed to building the elegant 16hp pictured here.
Panhard’s last car was built in 1967, though the name continued to be applied to military vehicles for many years after that.
15. Peugeot
Peugeot’s interest in steam power lasted only long enough to create a single example of the Type 1.
For the Type 2, Peugeot switched to a 565cc V-twin designed by Peugeot but manufactured under licence in France by Panhard et Levassor, which also looked after the car’s marketing (though not very effectively, because of the four Type 2s built in 1890 the first did not find a buyer until June the following year).
The same engine was used in the Type 5 (pictured), but Peugeot soon moved on from it, and continued to develop new models at such a rate that by 1900 it was already up to Type 31.
Peugeot, of course, is active today as part of the Stellantis group, and is the oldest of the French car manufacturers still in existence.
16. Präsident
The Präsident was the first car produced by the Czech company Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau-Fabriks-Gesellschaft, now known as Tatra.
Laurin & Klement, which evolved into today’s Škoda, did not start building cars until 1905, so the Präsident was the only motorised Czech passenger vehicle on sale during the 19th century.
Tatra already had a long history of building horse-drawn carriages and the Präsident was very much of this type, with the exception that it had an engine – reputedly a 2.7-litre version of the Benz Contra flat-twin, though Benz did not use this in one of its own cars until 1899, two years after the Präsident had been revealed.
Tatra built a replica (pictured) in 1977 to mark 80 years since the car was launched.
17. Renault
Driving up the steep Rue Lepic in Paris is no great feat for any car today, but Louis Renault’s demonstration in December 1898 that it could be done by his prototype voiturette (with a 273cc, De Dion Bouton single-cylinder engine but Renault’s own gearbox) drew so much attention that there was an immediate clamour for replicas.
With his brothers Marcel and Fernand, Louis set up their own business in February 1899, and built around 80 examples of what had become known as the Type A (replica pictured) before moving on to other voiturettes based on the original, but with larger engines.
The company’s range and reputation both expanded enormously after that, and within eight years of that epoch-making drive up a Parisian street it had won the inaugural French Grand Prix with a 13-litre monster which could in no way be described as a voiturette.
18. Riker
Founded by the electric-vehicle pioneer Andrew Riker, this New Jersey-based marque produced several EVs, including trucks, from 1898.
Contemporary advertising claimed that Riker ‘represent the last step in the perfection of automobiles’, and while this could certainly be questioned, it was also true that one particular example dominated a 50-mile road race in 1900, winning by nearly 15 minutes, while another (specially built for the purpose, and extremely low-slung) achieved 91.42kph, or 56.8mph, the following year.
In 1901, Riker was taken over by the Electric Vehicle Company, which folded six years later.
Andrew Riker himself moved to Locomobile, where he oversaw production of that company’s first petrol-engined vehicle, and became the first president of the Society of Automotive Engineers, a position he held from 1905 to 1907.
19. Vincke
Based in the Belgian city of Mechelen, Vincke produced lorries and buses as well as cars until it folded in 1905.
Car production began in 1894, and the various models were powered by single-, two- or four-cylinder petrol engines, generally bought in from other manufacturers including, at least one source claims, both Benz and its German rival Daimler.
The Motocycle magazine praised Vincke highly, saying that its cars ‘are thoroughly complete in detail, being built in a substantial manner and designed to give the maximum amount of service with a minimum of wear’, and also pointed out that before being handed over to a customer each one was given ‘a thorough trial over a 75-mile run on the Belgium [sic] roads, which have the reputation of being the roughest roads in Europe’.
20. Winton
According to a famous story, expatriate Scot Alexander Winton responded to criticism of one of his cars by telling its owner that if he thought he could build something better he was welcome to try, which is how the Packard company came into being.
This does not show Winton in a particularly good light, but by the end of the 19th century his business was already among the more successful American car manufacturers, despite having been founded only in 1897.
The car pictured here is believed to be the first Winton ever built, with Alexander Winton himself in the driving seat, and it was followed by a series of increasingly upmarket models, one of which was driven (or at least sat in) by Buffalo Bill Cody in 1904.
There were trucks, too, and a separate engine company which was taken over by General Motors, but vehicle production eventually came to an end in the 1920s.
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