Empire Rising: Spain

While Carlo was inspecting the drought situation, the car company was also urgently expanding its workforce to prepare for the automobile exhibition.

Spain’s automobile exhibition is expected to take place three months later, in early December 1881.

Before this, the car company needs to produce at least 1,000 cars as reserves to be delivered when orders come in.

If assembly line production techniques are not adopted, it is simply impossible to produce 1,000 cars in just three months.

However, with the help of assembly line production, the car company could consider trying.

Meanwhile, major newspapers were heavily promoting news about the automobile exhibition.

Thanks to the notoriety brought by Madrid’s Nocturnal City and the electric tram exhibition, when Spain announced its year-end automobile exhibition, it immediately drew the attention of many foreign investors.

The automobile industry, like the electric industry, is a field that countries are exploring but have not achieved significant success in.

Spain has established itself as a powerhouse in the electric industry through Madrid’s Nocturnal City and the electric tram exhibition. If Spain also achieves notable accomplishments in the automobile industry, wouldn’t that mean that European powers are lagging behind Spain in these two major industrial fields?

Regardless of how other countries perceive it, Spain is methodically preparing for its automobile exhibition.

No major events occurred during this period except for the assassination of President Garfield. Due to incompetent medical treatment, he succumbed to his severe injuries, and Vice President Chester Alan Arthur took over the presidency.

As the time reached December 1881, Spain’s automobile exhibition in Madrid smoothly commenced.

The exhibition took place on a large open space in the outskirts of Madrid. After some basic renovations, it was able to accommodate tens of thousands of participants.

Of course, to ensure the smooth progress of the exhibition, not too many visitors were allowed in during the event.

Aside from well-known media outlets from various countries, only a few distinguished guests invited and a limited number of individuals who obtained entry through ticket purchases were allowed to enter.

In the center of the exhibition venue, five cars of different colors were parked. Notably, prominently unique car emblems were displayed on both the front and back of the cars.

The emblem came from the manufacturing company, the Spanish Royal Mercedes-Benz Company. On Carlo’s suggestion, the emblem of Mercedes-Benz adopted the famous three-pointed star of later generations, but its meaning was entirely different at the time.

The three-pointed star of later Mercedes-Benz represented mechanization on the sea, sky, and land, while the current symbol represented the company’s philosophy, quality, integrity, and service.

Carlo had high expectations for the Mercedes-Benz Company. In the future, the company would create more sub-brands, striving to cover all types of automobiles.

At the automobile exhibition, the cameras from major newspapers were almost continuously snapping. Magnesium lights flashed intermittently, the emitted smoke hanging in the air, hardly dispersing in a short amount of time.

This was evidence of how novel the automobiles from Spain were to others. While prototypes of cars existed in other European countries, such prototypes were vastly different from the completed cars Spain had introduced.

But this was not the climax of the exhibition. A temporary straight road over a kilometer long had been built at the venue, designed to showcase the speed of the cars.

When two Mercedes-Benz cars drove side by side from a distance, passing like the wind at nearly 36 kilometers per hour, the media present were exhilarated.

They could not believe that the speed of such a thing, which they had never seen before, could compare to that of a train.

More importantly, this mode of transport did not require tracks; it could travel on relatively flat roads.

Seeing the amazed faces of the crowd, Benz and a few technical experts stepped out of the cars with smiles, beginning to introduce Mercedes-Benz’s automobiles to the onlookers.

When hearing that such automobiles could run at speeds exceeding 36 kilometers per hour, the crowd was elated.

The magnesium lights flashed incessantly; some newspapers were already contemplating the titles and content for the next day’s news, while others posed their questions.

"Mr. Benz, as I know, some companies in the German Empire are also conducting engine research. The engines they developed cannot run continuously for long and certainly cannot provide enough horsepower to sustain a speed of 36 kilometers per hour for mechanical equipment.

Are you sure that the data you provided is accurate? If what you said is true, then this thing in front of us could replace the function of the carriage, and it would be another means of transport, after the train, to change human history," a German journalist stood up and asked his question.

As a superpower among the five major powers, Germany had gradually been surpassed by Spain in both the electric and automobile industries, which left the German reporter somewhat incredulous.

Research on engines and automobiles was also being conducted domestically in Germany, but the progress made so far was negligible.

If things were indeed as Benz claimed, then Spain’s automobile industry not only led Germany but utterly outclassed it, having already created a significant gap.