[6] Carl Benz was born Karl Friedrich Michael Vaillant on 25 November 1844 in Mühlburg, now a borough of Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, which is part of modern Germany.

[citation needed] Benz had originally focused his studies on locksmithing, but he eventually followed his father's steps toward locomotive engineering.

On 30 September 1860, at age 15, he passed the entrance exam for mechanical engineering for the Karlsruhe polytechnical school, which he subsequently attended.

[citation needed] Following his formal education, Benz had seven years of professional training in several companies, but did not fit well in any of them.

[citation needed] In 1871, at the age of twenty-seven, Benz joined August Ritter, in launching the Iron Foundry and Mechanical Workshop in Mannheim, later renamed Factory for Machines for Sheet-metal Working.

The difficulty was overcome when Benz's fiancée, Bertha Ringer, bought out Ritter's share in the company, using her dowry.

Problems arose again when the banks at Mannheim demanded that the Benz's enterprise be incorporated due to the high production costs it maintained.

They were forced to improvise an association with photographer Emil Bühler and his brother (a cheese merchant), to get additional bank support.

(mechanically operated inlet valves) Benz's lifelong hobby brought him to a bicycle repair shop in Mannheim owned by Max Rose and Friedrich Wilhelm Eßlinger.

Roger added the Benz automobiles (many built in France) to the line he carried in Paris and initially most were sold there.

This limitation was rectified after Bertha Benz drove one of the vehicles a great distance and suggested to her husband the addition of a third gear for climbing hills.

On the morning of 5 August 1888 Bertha – supposedly without the knowledge of her husband – took the vehicle on a 104 km (65 mi) trip from Mannheim to Pforzheim to visit her mother, taking her sons Eugen and Richard with her.

It had been her intention to demonstrate the feasibility of using the Benz Motorwagen for travel and to generate publicity in the manner now referred to as live marketing.

The public can now follow the 194 km (121 mi) of signposted route from Mannheim via Heidelberg to Pforzheim (Black Forest) and back.

The great demand for static internal combustion engines forced Benz to enlarge the factory in Mannheim, and in 1886 a new building located on Waldhofstrasse (operating until 1908) was added.

Because of its size, in 1899, Benz & Cie. became a joint-stock company with the arrival of Friedrich von Fischer and Julius Ganß, who came aboard as members of the Board of Management.

From 1893 to 1900 Benz sold the four wheel, two seat Victoria,[19] a two-passenger automobile with a 2.2 kW (3.0 hp) engine, which could reach the top speed of 18 km/h (11 mph) and had a pivotal front axle operated by a roller-chained tiller for steering.

The model was successful with 85 units sold in 1893, and was produced in a four-seated version with face-to-face seat benches called the "Vis-à-Vis".

The Velo participated in the world's first automobile race, the 1894 Paris to Rouen, where Émile Roger finished 14th, after covering the 126 km (78 mi) in 10 hours 01-minute at an average speed of 12.7 km/h (7.9 mph).

In motorcycles, the most famous boxer engine is found in BMW Motorrad,[24] though the boxer engine design was used in many other models, including Victoria, Harley-Davidson XA, Zündapp, Wooler, Douglas Dragonfly, Ratier, Universal, IMZ-Ural, Dnepr, Gnome et Rhône, Chang Jiang, Marusho, and the Honda Gold Wing.

Benz countered with Parsifal, introduced in 1903 with a vertical twin engine that achieved a top speed of 60 km/h (37 mph).

The bird-beaked vehicle had a 21.5-liter (1312ci), 150 kW (200 hp) engine, and on 9 November 1909 in the hands of Victor Hémery of France,[27] the land speed racer at Brooklands, set a record of 226.91 km/h (141.00 mph), said to be "faster than any plane, train, or automobile" at the time, a record that was not exceeded for ten years by any other vehicle.

[28] This company never issued stocks publicly, building its own line of automobiles independently from Benz & Cie., which was located in Mannheim.

[28][29] Almost from the very beginning of the production of automobiles, participation in sports car racing became a major method to gain publicity for manufacturers.

Later, investment in developing racecars for motorsports produced returns through sales generated by the association of the name of the automobile with the winners.

Unique race vehicles were built at the time such as the first mid-engine and aerodynamically designed, Tropfenwagen, a "teardrop" body introduced at the 1923 European Grand Prix at Monza.

During the following year, 1924, Benz built two additional 8/25 hp units of the automobile manufactured by this company, tailored for his personal use, which he never sold; they are still preserved.

Both enterprises standardized design, production, purchasing, sales, and advertising—marketing their automobile models jointly—although keeping their respective brands.