Put a Brompton in your Benz

My folding bike Brompton just taken out of the car`s trunk

Hans Eberhard Lessing, historian of technology, points out in his article "The Car Used to be a Bicycle" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Nr. 15, January 18, 2011, page N 4) that the bicycle and the tricycle were at the origin of the design of the first motor cars.  He reports that when Karl Benz had presented his first motor driven three wheeler in 1886, the press wrote about a motorized velociped.  A photo of the first Benz, a patented motor vehicle, shows much resemblance to tricycles that were popular at that time.

Source of picture: Wikipedia (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benz_Patent-Motorwagen_Nummer_1 )

Lessing rejects the common idea that horse pulled coaches were the design models to give inspiration to the first car makers.
To put it in a nutshell:  first came the bicycle, then the automobile. And as the number of traffic jams is increasing, the air is getting polluted and gas prices are going up, ever more people are turning back to the original form of individual vehicle mobility: cycling. A good way of starting to contribute to this trend is to always carry the folding bike along when using the car, as does the owner of this vintage Mercedes Benz:

The Brompton is well hidden in front of the back seat.

Vintage Mercedes Benz at the annually held Rheinbach vintage care show.