Benz "Parsifal" 60 hp racing car, 1903

Benz "Parsifal" 60 hp racing car, 1903

Even the considerable slump in sales in his own company and the growing sales success of Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG), the rival from Cannstatt in Württemberg, could not persuade Carl Benz to revise his extremely critical attitude towards motorsport activities - although the many victories that the modern Mercedes cars had achieved in various types of races since 1901 had made a major contribution to the great reputation that DMG's automobiles now enjoyed. Inevitably, this reputation was also reflected in the production figures: while Benz & Cie. only achieved a third of the production volume of 1900 with 198 cars in 1903, DMG was able to produce 181 cars instead of 133 in the same period. These two fiercest of rivals thus had virtually equal market shares.

Julius Ganss, who had been a partner in Benz & Cie. since 1890 and had been a member of the management board and commercial director since 1899 following the company's transformation into a stock corporation, felt compelled by this dangerous development to create new facts. In order to resolve the modernisation backlog caused primarily by Benz himself, he hired the 25-year-old Marius Barbarou as a designer on his own authority in 1903. The Frenchman was to develop a series of new, modern Benz cars - also with a view to increasing the company's involvement in motorsport. Carl Benz regarded this measure by Julius Ganss as an affront and subsequently left the company he had founded himself, only to return the following year, following Barbarou's early departure, as a member of the supervisory board in an advisory capacity.

Barbarou's design work culminated in 1903 in a racing car which, with its pronouncedly low silhouette, took up the concept of the latest Benz passenger cars and, like these, was given the name "Parsifal". The Parsifal racing car had a newly developed four-cylinder inline engine with two grey cast iron cylinders cast together in pairs and bolted-on light-alloy cooling jackets. From a displacement of 11,260 cc, this short-stroke and comparatively lightweight engine, which even had dual ignition, produced an output of 60 hp/44 kW. Other technical features of the Parsifal racing car included a 3-speed gearbox and power transmission via cardan shaft - while the most powerful Benz Parsifal production cars were still chain-driven.

Barbarou's racing car unfortunately turned out to be considerably heavier than was permitted for the weight class in which it was supposed to be categorised. After its first, less successful outing in the Paris-Madrid city race, which was abandoned in Bordeaux in May 1903 due to a series of accidents, the car went on to compete in a weight-reduced version: without bonnet panels, panelling or mudguards, and with holes punched, for example, in the front wheel suspension. In this form and always with Barbarou himself at the wheel, the first successes then came later that year - hardly at events that made the headlines, but a start had been made. In June 1903, for example, he won a kilometre race and a hill climb in Huy, Belgium, and also took a victory in the racing car class in the Spa Cup race in September. Barbarou placed second in the Frankfurt track race in August 1903. A second place in his class in the fifth iteration of the renowned Semmering hill climb near Vienna in September 1903 was of international significance.

After the end of the 1903 racing season, Barbarou moved back to France and a trio consisting of Fritz Erle, Louis de Groulart and Hans Nibel - all motorsport enthusiasts - continued the development work for road and racing vehicles at Benz & Cie.

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