Daimler Reitwagen
The first motorcycle: a wooden frame with a petrol engine between the wheels.
Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach built a small, fast-running petrol engine and tried it in 1885 in a riding carriage – Reitwagen – with a wooden frame. Maybach rode it for a few kilometres.
Daimler imagined the engine in all kinds of vehicles, and the Reitwagen was a test vehicle rather than a product. But it counts as the first motorcycle, being the first two-wheeled vehicle driven by an internal combustion engine.
Materials: Wood, iron, single-cylinder petrol engine
Manufacture: Built in 1885 in Gottlieb Daimler’s workshop in Cannstatt; the original burned in 1903 and survives as replicas.
The wooden frame and wheels with iron tyres.
The engine standing right under the saddle.
The small outrigger wheels at the sides.