One of Western Australia’s oldest cars was moved from its Welshpool storage warehouse to its original home in York last week.
The 1902 Benz was imported at the start of the last century long before cars had become commonplace in the state.
The car had a single cylinder rear-mounted engine, solid wheels with wooden spokes and would have cost about ten years of wages for the average WA worker at the time.
It was made more than two decades before the merger of Benz and Daimler, which created the first Mercedes Benz cars.
It does not currently run but earnt notoriety with the police and media in its heyday.
Original owner William De Lisle was lucky anti-hoon laws had not been imagined when he was caught tearing across the Victoria Park Causeway at 30km/h in it in the early 1900s.
Newspapers at the time described him as a ‘furious driver’, a ‘plutocratic motor-hog’ and a ‘bloated motor-car owning gold bug’.
Mr De Lisle was fined more than $6000 in today’s money for his vehicular indiscretions.
West Australian Museum chief executive Alec Coles said the car was a rare glimpse into the state’s motoring history.
“It’s important that it gets seen and I think it’ll be very appropriate in the collection (in York),” he said.
Working out the car’s true history had challenged the museum for years.
Few documents had been kept since the car was donated to the museum in the 1950s.
It was repaired over the years using modern techniques and parts so its exact history was hard to determine.
Part of the challenge with identification was the way Benz cars were manufactured at the start of the 20th century.
At the time some car owners would purchase car parts from manufacturers and piece together a car by themselves.
This meant few cars were identical and their exact histories have become hard to define.
York Motor Museum curator Graham Cox said the museum would give the car the respect it deserved.
“They’re fascinating machines,” he said.
“We get a lot of school kids through (who) will get to see what cars used to look like, helpers at the museum will show the history of motoring and it doesn’t get more historic than this one.”
Mr Cox said the museum had set up a veteran car display and the Benz would take centre stage.
“We’ve got an 1898 tandem motor car tricycle and a range of classic cars,” he said.
“This one is of great significance because it’s…an original Avon Valley car.”
The car will be on loan to the York Motor Museum for two years.
