German cars are our passion- we can’t get enough of classic household names- and the quality craftsmanship that comes with them. While Germany has long been an industrial powerhouse, for us there’s nothing that speaks to the workmanship and timelessness of German engineering like their cars. Here’s a short examination of how our cousins east of the Rhine become the engineering superpower that we know today.
Any nation that has rich deposits of timber, iron, and coal is set to be a strong industrial nation that is able to produce such products that qualify a country to be a hub for engineering.
Britain was fortunate for the same reason in their own industrial revolution, however you don’t tend to hear the phrase “British Engineering” on the same pedestal as “German engineering”, there’s maybe a few reasons for that.
One rather indirect answer is simply because Germany have a better tradition of education. Schools such as Leipzig and Vienna were two of the most renowned institutions of their type at the time. This system of education fostered thinkers such as Gutrenburg and Farenheit. Naturally Britain can boats its own intellectuals but the progressive work of Shakespeare is difficult to identify when looking at a 3 series BMW for example…
Germany is said to be the home of automotive engineering with Benz and Otto respectively pioneering the first four-stroke engines in the 1870s. Benz was the first to put one of these engines into use by placing it into his coach in 1887. These men went on to form and help companies such as Mercedes-Benz and BMW, names that we still trust to today and look on as hallmarks of German engineering.
Even though BMW was founded in 1916, it didn’t begin to produce automobiles until 1928. Volks2wagen had grown to such an extent that by 1945, the new town of Wolfsburg had been founded around the factory. By 1955, VW had produced 1million Beetles, thus demonstrating the demand for straightforward German engineering. The first car made available from Audi was produced in 1910, known as the Audi Type A and boated a bHP of 10, quite different to the modern day R8 where you might expect somewhere in the region of 560bhp, this is just one example of the huge leap that Audi took as Germany and the rest f the world grew and expected more.
As many will realise, German engineering went beyond, and does still exceed just cars alone. Take for example the beginnings of the company Siemens. This was founded in 1847 by Werner von Siemens and laid the first long distance telephone line in Europe, stretching from Berlin to Frankfurt.
It’s true though that without the fortunate foundations of Germany and the traditional Rhine states, these men probably wouldn’t have even known where to start.