Benz 150 hp racing car, 1908
Even when designing the 12-litre four-cylinder engine that helped the Benz 120 hp Grand Prix racing car to a series of remarkable successes in 1908, Belgian designer Louis de Groulart, who was in the service of Benz & Cie., had already been envisaging a more powerful variant. By extending the stroke by 40 mm to 200 mm, the displacement was increased to 15,100 cc and the peak output of the engine rose by 30 hp/22 kW to 150 hp/110 kW.
The racing car, which was otherwise virtually unchanged from the Grand Prix model, probably first competed at the Semmering hill climb near Vienna at the end of September 1908 - even though some sources claim that Erle had already used this car at the Grand Prix in Dieppe. At the renowned hill climb, which was organised for the tenth time in 1908, René Hanriot came third behind Mercedes drivers Otto Salzer and Willy Pöge with the car entered by Erle in the free class "without bore and weight limits". The new 150 hp racing car made a bigger impression in the USA when Benz entered three vehicles in the American Grand Prix held in Savannah/Georgia at the end of November 1908. While Fritz Erle had to retire on the 11th of 16 laps of 25.13 miles (total distance 647 km) after a minor accident, his two French team-mates Victor Hémery and René Hanriot were able to achieve a magnificent success for the Mannheim factory with 2nd and 4th place in the final classification.
The performance and reliability of the Benz 150 hp racing cars demonstrated in this highly prestigious race had lasting consequences: in the same year as well as the following year, a series of predominantly local drivers drove these cars to numerous further successes in a wide variety of racing events and record attempts, gaining Benz vehicles a great deal of attention on the rapidly developing motorsport scene in the USA.
The US-American star driver Barney Oldfield was one who stood out in particular. In August 1909, he reached a top speed of 183.4 km/h with one of the 150 hp racing cars on the recently completed Indianapolis track, which did not yet at that point have a brick surface. His average speed over one mile from a standing start was 134.4 km/h.
On 22 August 1909, just a few days after Oldfield's record, Fritz Erle in a streamlined Benz 150 hp achieved 152.542 km/h over a flying kilometre in the Frankfurt kilometre race. Some publications attribute this drive to the Benz 200 hp, especially as the vehicle actually looks very similar to the "Blitzen-Benz" - contemporary sources, however, state 57.66 tax horsepower, which corresponds to an engine capacity of 15.1 litres and thus clearly describes the Benz 150 hp.
In November 1910, the Benz 150 hp racing cars were able to clinch their first race victory: at the American Grand Prize, which was once again held in Savannah/Georgia, David Bruce Brown and Victor Hémery drove their Benz racing cars over the 668-kilometre race distance to the finish line as winner and runner-up with just one second between them. Their average speed was an impressive 113.5 km/h. One year later, the American Eddie Hearne also achieved second place with an average speed of 118.9 km/h - ahead of Ralph DePalma in a Mercedes.