Oldest road-legal car in the world is 1894 Benz Victoria from Germany

The oldest road-legal car still cruising today isn’t tucked away in a vault; it’s the 1894 Benz Victoria, and it still occasionally hits the streets of Germany.

More than a century after automotive legend Karl Benz built it, this Victorian-era machine continues to roll under its own power.

Its current caretaker, collector Karl-Heinz Rehkopf, even takes it out for the occasional spin.

And unlike most museum pieces, this one has something special: a perfectly valid German license plate.

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The 1894 Benz Victoria normally spends its time in a museum

Rehkopf bought the car in 2009 from the well-known Gütermann family, who had owned it for four generations.

One of them even earned what might be history’s most adorable speeding ticket: blasting through town at a blistering 29 kilometers (18 miles) per hour.

The car itself is a charming bundle of quirks.

There’s no steering wheel.

Instead, there is a steering arm that looks closer to something you would find on a boat.

The tiny indicator on the dash shows which direction the car will turn, and acceleration comes from a small hand lever.

With only two gears, braking is a dance of slipping into neutral, then choosing between a foot brake or a hand brake mounted to the left.

And the horns? There are two: one you squeeze, and a foot-operated klaxon for when you really need to be noticed.

Driving the Benz Victoria can feel like piloting a mechanical antique on the edge of its comfort zone.

“Whenever the car struggles, you struggle with it,” Rehkopf admits.

There’s no shelter when it rains, and when the car shakes, you shake with it.

Its tiny tank runs dry quickly, and even filling it isn’t straightforward; the car runs on petroleum ether, now sold only in pharmacies.

Most days, the Victoria rests safely at a transport museum near Göttingen, where mechanic Michael Marx keeps its 3-liter single-cylinder engine humming.

Starting it is an art: adjusting levers for temperature, humidity, and air pressure before the engine settles into a steady rhythm.

Several conditions required to drive the world’s oldest road-legal car

In 2019, the car underwent a full technical inspection to remain street-legal.

It passed, but with caveats: it has no lights, no electrics, no blinkers, and therefore may only be driven in daylight and good weather.

The driver must also carry a manual signaling disc, typically handled by Rehkopf’s wife.

Driving the oldest road-legal car in the world is a pretty slow process, and you won’t be winning many races with it.

However, this isn’t a problem for Rehkopf.

As he puts it, driving the 1894 Benz Victoria is ‘about embracing slowness’: less about the destination, and entirely about the joy of the journey.

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