![Andrew English test drives the Mercedes Simplex 28-32 1904](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/images/2023/12/16/TELEMMGLPICT000359652028_17027306030770_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=680)
‘Of all the cars I’ve driven this year, this wonderful old machine has been a high point’
It set the pattern for the cars we drive today, so how does it feel to drive this 1904 Mercedes Simplex?
![Andrew English test drives the Mercedes Simplex 28-32 1904](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/images/2023/12/16/TELEMMGLPICT000359652028_17027306030770_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=680)
It’s 1886 and Karl Benz has applied for a patent on what is generally acknowledged to be the world’s first motor car, or “vehicle powered by a gas engine” as he put it. But what a machine it was, a three-wheeler, made of spillikins, with a tiny single-cylinder engine pushing out barely three-quarters of a horsepower.
![Karl Benz with his wife Bertha in a Benz-Viktoria, 1893](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/images/2023/12/16/TELEMMGLPICT000359870942_17027308199210_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqRXuknvhZsb7bf88i7wdmgueYhsuib3opPsHFqtgRqIw.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Meet a hill in this car and you’d be pushing. Benz’s wife, Bertha, certainly did when she undertook a record 112-mile journey in that first car in August 1888. Bertha Benz, who was an investor in the business and a pretty good engineer, left a note on the dining table and took her teenage sons Eugen and Richard from Mannheim to Pforzheim to visit her mother. At the time it was the longest ever journey by motorcar, not that Bertha’s resolve and determination didn’t play a part – she fixed the ignition with a garter, unblocked a fuel pipe with a hat pin and fuelled the car with cleaning fluid (Ligroin) bought from a chemist.
![Bertha Benz](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/images/2023/12/16/TELEMMGLPICT000359871049_17027304074810_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqHSsWwmhMD5R23vgpg6apoLVRQZhQ6gOrPDPZbFWiXRE.jpeg?imwidth=350)
At this time the nascent motor industry was feeling its way into what would become the adopted design for passenger car of today. The first passenger cars took their lead from the horse-drawn coaching trade and resembled them, too. Tiller steering was soon rejected, vis-a-vis layouts (where passengers sit in front facing the driver), ditto and also hideously dangerous hot-plate vapour carburation, along with trembler-coil ignition, and hand controls instead of pedals, all were tried and then tipped in the bin marked ‘a good idea at the time’.
Yet it was a mere 18 years later that the pattern for our current cars was set with another Mercedes model, the Simplex. I’m at the wheel of this 1904 example and while the seating position is high, look around and you can see all the rudiments of the modern automobile: pedals (even if there are five of them), high-efficiency honeycomb radiator in front of a four-cylinder engine mounted between the chassis rails to give a low centre of gravity and an inline transmission driving the rear wheels. And while the wheels might have wooden spokes, they also have proper pneumatic tyres.
Claus Balle from the Mercedes-Benz Museum, where this extraordinary pioneer motor car normally lives, explains the pedal layout: “From the right, they are a brake, accelerator, another brake, clutch and an exhaust thing to warn walkers of our approach…”.
That’s an exhaust cut-out, which is hardly going to be required at Mercedes Benz World at Brooklands in Surrey where we are driving this Mercedes Simplex 28/32hp Phaeton.
![Mercedes Simplex 28/32hp Phaeton](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/images/2023/12/16/TELEMMGLPICT000359652673_17027309188120_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqsACoKwLuheJWUL32yVf-EQ5lo8mtBad8M4vGAV3N2tw.jpeg?imwidth=350)
You usually pull the starting handle upwards with your thumb and fingers on the same side as each other, on what the Americans call these ‘brass era’ cars – the Brits call them ‘Edwardians’. The reasoning is simple, if the engine backfires, then your grip will be lost and the handle will spin down and safely away. The Mercedes Simplex has to be started by pushing the handle downwards, which means you swiftly say a prayer to Mercedes’s mechanics as you heave.
Balle looks on as I swing the handle. Displacing 5.3 litres, you need to put your back into it, but the engine’s T-shaped cylinder head and mere 12bhp at 1,200rpm means the compression ratio is low (4.5:1), so once you’ve got the handle moving, it’s relatively easy to get it running.
And so it proves, and Balle and I rush round to the cockpit to adjust the hand throttle and the advance/retard engine timing quadrants in the centre of the steering wheel. The resulting soft mechanical clatter fills the air and the idle is so slow you can count the individual cylinder beats. At the same time the Ducellier headlamps and mirrors dance around in a figure of eight quadrille so the whole car seems to wag like an eager puppy before supper.
![The steering wheel](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/images/2023/12/16/TELEMMGLPICT000359652623_17027310355470_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Look deeper, however, and there’s sophistication here which belies its years. The engine has mechanically operated valves via twin enclosed spur-gear-driven camshafts, a magneto-based electric ignition system, a piston-type carburettor and a four-speed transmission with a spring clutch driving the rear axle via stout chains. The chassis has I-beam axles sprung with leaf springs and there are twin transmission brakes augmented with a hand brake, which operates on the rear wheels.
At the time these mechanical features were rare and virtually unknown when combined together, small wonder the list of Mercedes Simplex customers included the wealthy and powerful and even Kaiser Wilhelm II was a fan.
As we climb up into a driving seat which resembles a button-down chesterfield, Balle and his boss, Marcus Breitschwerdt, head of Mercedes-Benz Heritage explain the significance of this old car.
Mercedes Simplex were a series of luxury motor cars built by Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG) between 1902 and 1909. Designed by chief engineer Wilhelm Maybach the Simplex name denoted ‘comfort by means of simplicity’.
The company was advised by Emil Jellinek, overseas agent for Daimler and a keen race driver, who also supported other racers such as William K Vanderbilt in the United States. In 1900, Jellinek commissioned the first motor car from Daimler and created the Mercedes trademark which he named after his daughter, Mercedes.
“Thank goodness she wasn’t called Brünnhilde,” says Breitschwerdt, quickly adding, “not that Brünnhilde is a bad name of course.”
The significance though is that Jellinek was a customer rather than an employee. “Jellinek, a racing driver, came to the factory to tell the chief engineer how to build a car,” says Breitschwerdt. “And Maybach listened and learned lessons and built this car.”
Breitschwerdt says he’s accepted the job at the museum to remind the company and the public of Mercedes’s past building excellence based on the best technology of the time and the company’s home in Stuttgart Southern Germany, meant in the early years, everything had to be engineered from scratch and in the process rethought for reliability and refinement.
“Mercedes,” he says, “represents the best achievable at the time.”
![Andrew test drives the Mercedes Simplex 28-32 1904](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/images/2023/12/16/TELEMMGLPICT000359652033_17027306961830_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=350)
For all its modern layout, there’s quite a bit to do up in the driving seat. The water-cooled engine has a forced lubrication total-loss system controlled by the driver. You need to juggle the ignition timing and mixture strength to suit the engine’s speed and load. And then there’s the gearbox, a four-speed with a conventional H pattern, but with no synchromesh so you have to double declutch up and down the ratios.
Balle advises a sharp crunch into first gear, which elicits only a little gnash and then it’s a case of easing up the clutch and watching the Tarmac start to gently move under the wheels. You’re sitting high with a view over the Brooklands track as young drivers take their first time behind the wheel. In the Simplex, it’s hard not to think of just how far we have come in 120 years, until it’s time to change into second gear…
Changing up on a ‘crash’ gearbox like this is always easier than coming down, but the old car leaps forward in second gear and again when I shift (almost silently) into third. The chill wind blasts you from the knees up, so this feels a lot faster than it actually is.
![The car really gets into its stride in fourth gear](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/images/2023/12/16/TELEMMGLPICT000359652071_17027307388040_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=350)
In fourth gear, the Simplex is into its stride and getting close to its 40mph top speed which must have been quite something on the unmade roads of Germany before the First World War. Corners load up the suspension, so you have to turn quickly and accurately; there’s no room for adjustment once the car is leaning. The brakes are surprisingly good compared to contemporaries but even so, you need to have sorted out your speed and gear before the corner or hill, as things are apt to run away with you.
Round and round we go, my confidence and faith in this old car building. You begin to see how this car must have felt in its time: advanced, lighter, faster and more controllable than anything that had gone before.
The whole experience is vivid and involving as much as it is inefficient, slow and difficult. Compared to a modern car which is the acme of convenience, you would have to prepare yourself for a drive in the Mercedes Simplex, with knowledge, warm coats, gauntlets and goggles, perhaps even the odd hairpin.
Is modern motoring too easy? Discuss, but it’s fair to say that of all the cars I’ve driven this year, this wonderful old machine has stayed in my mind as a high point. Thanks to the Mercedes-Benz museum for allowing us the privilege and a Merry Christmas to you all.