Who invented the first car? The commonly accepted answer is Karl Benz, of Germany, and it is one that people who work at the company that grew from his name, Mercedes-Benz, never tire of telling you.
Standing in the Mercedes-Benz museum in Stuttgart, however, it is both a moment of awe and underwhelming surprise to see the world’s first car in the see-through flesh. Truly, the term used at the time, “horseless carriage” seems more apt, yet it is Benz’s vehicle, patented in 1886, that gets the credit for being the first car ever made, even though other road vehicles preceded his work by many years.