This wonderful car is one of several similar ones produced by the Nuremberg-based tin toy company Günthermann in the early 1900s. Here is a different example with more accessories, including headlights and a horn.

Siegfried Günthermann started producing mechanical tin toys in 1877, initially hand-painted, and later lithographed, which would mostly be exported to the USA. After he died and his widow remarried, the company was managed by her new husband Adolf Weigel, who was in charge when these racing cars were produced. 

I came across one of the patents Weigel filed in the US in 1911, relating to steering mechanisms for toy vehicles – I always find it interesting to see a toy referred to in contexts other than children playing, at a stage where they are objects designed with a purpose, requiring paperwork and procedures.

I knew nothing about cars, so when I looked into their history, I was surprised to find out that what many consider to be the earliest precursor to the automobile was created in the 1670s by a Flemish missionary and astronomer called Ferdinand Verbiest, who designed a steam-turbine powered vehicle as a toy for the Chinese Emperor Kangxi (1662-1722). Verbiest was a remarkable figure who also produced a wonderful Map of the Whole World or Kunyu quantu, a large woodblock printed on silk – you can see an original print at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow)– and  translated the first six books of Euclid into the Manchu language.

A full two centuries later, a significant number of people around the world were working on designs and patents for automobiles. It seems that the Benz Patent Motorwagen, a vehicle designed in 1885 by Carl Benz with significant contributions from his wife Bertha Benz, is widely considered to be the world’s first self-propelled vehicle designed to carry people (you can watch footage of one in action here). Bertha Benz invested in her future husband’s construction company and her dowry provided the financial support needed to set up his subsequent manufacturing company. She acted as a field tester for this ‘horseless carriage’, added wire insulation and invented leather brake pads as improvements, and was the first person in history to drive an automobile over a long distance (you can watch a video made by the company recently to commemorate this feat).

Car racing came very soon after this. Only ten years later, there was a motor car race from Paris to Bordeaux and back. In the US, there was a race from Chicago to Evanston, Illinois (see here for a picture of the winner and further information) also in 1895, to test the viability of these automobiles.  

Both of these races were sponsored by newspapers, which played a significant role in these first races, using them as a way of increasing their circulation. In fact, international car racing as we know it started when James Gordon Bennett Jr. (generally referred to as Gordon Bennett — yes, the expression does seem to refer to him!), owner of the New York Herald, organised an annual trophy in which three cars built of parts made in three different countries would represent each of their national automobile clubs. The first Bennett Trophy races that took place in 1901, 1902 and 1903 were organised by the Automobile Club de France.

The Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris says that Günthermann created these miniature cars using the automobiles of the Gordon Bennett Cup as inspiration. The cars are adorned with a four-leaf clover, which was the logo of the car manufacturer Richard-Brasier and you can partly see in ours.

The shape of this toy racing car might be similar to the model that took part in the 1903 Paris-Madrid race; you can see original footage of the 1903 Gordon Bennett Cup here. Interestingly I noticed that all of the Günthermann racing cars from this time have ‘Coupe Gordon Bennet’ written on the side, spelling Bennet rather than Bennett. I have not been able to find out whether this is simply a mistake, or deliberate.

The car also bears the number 5, which was immortalised by the Brasier 11.2 I-96 HP model driven in 1904 in Germany by the French pilot Léon Théry, who became something of a hero by beating Camille Jenatzy, who was representing Germany. Théry was known as Le Chronomètre, on account of his reliable lap times, whereas Jenatzy was known as Le Diable Rouge (The Red Devil), on account of his red hair and his daredevil style (in his obituary, The New York Times described his driving style as being ‘characterized by demonical fury and stark determination’).  

A few years earlier in 1899 Camille Jenatzy had broken the land speed record three times, the last of which on his wonderful purpose-built electric vehicle known as La Jamais Contente (The Never Satisfied) which you can view at the Chateau de Compiegne today. It was the first vehicle in history to reach 100 km/h.

In fact, when I first came across this toy car, a children’s book sprang to mind – The Mighty Lalouche by Matthew Olshan and Sophie Blackhall (2013), which I have read many times to my kids over the years. Then, after doing some brief research and coming across pictures of Camille Jenatzy and La Jamais Contente, I remembered I had seen it before pictured at the back of The Mighty Lalouche, where it was referenced as a source of inspiration.

In the story, Lalouche is a sweet, weedy-looking moustached postman who loses his job because the postal service has just bought a fleet of electric autocars that look just like La Jamais Contente. Lalouche’s solution to his joblessness is to become… a boxer! For, weedy-looking as he is, he is also mighty and perseverant. His boxing contenders all have great nicknames in the vein of Théry’s Le Chronomètre and Jenatzy’s Le Diable Rouge (e.g. Ampère, The Misanthrope or The Pointillist), and it made me smile to think that a few expertly used visual elements had served as a shorthand for a whole universe that we had so easily understood.

Perhaps what I realised is that this period and the topic of early racing seems to evoke a well-defined world in our imaginary – clipped tones reporting on early sporting events, crowds frantically cheering, possibly sped up a little in our minds like early films; the spectacle and awe provided by these early human-made machines that were manufactured not to make things but to take us somewhere, and by the people who were brave (or reckless!) enough to master them.

It is hard to conceive of a car with a greater vroom! factor than this one – the moustaches and goggles are perfect, but I think one of the details that gives it life and movement is the way the drivers are all curled up. We can feel the tension in their shoulders and legs, squashed in the cramped seats; we can feel the other cars swishing past them, hear the loud motor sounds all around, smell the dust and the burning rubber tyres. 

I wonder if we might all find life a little more exciting if we choose our own 1900s-style racing nicknames — I am thinking about mine as I write this.