Who brought the first automobile to Hungary?

For decades it was thought that Béla Hatschek, an optician brought the first car to Hungary in 1895. But the picture is not so clear

While more developed European countries had a thriving local automobile industry and a colorful market, Hungary was slow to catch up. As part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy the main focus was on agriculture. It was said that Hungary was the main food supplier to Austria - a kind of food chamber, but I am not sure this expression means the same in Hungarian and English :)

During the second half of the 19th century, there were some ingenious innovators, who like Andras Mechwart made a lot of improvements on the field of milling industry. But Hungary had a distorted political and economical situation, with most of the population just getting by on a very low level. Even in the 1930s cars were a rare sight outside Budapest.

There were some attempts to produce cars, motorcycles in Hungary, but that's not the focus of this article. If you're interested, in late 2007, early 2008 a second, much revised edition of a Hungarian-language book will be out on Hungarian cars.

In order to have a complete view on the history of Hungarian automobile traffic, it'd be nice to have a firm and established opinion on who and when brought the first car into Hungary. The popular answer: Bela Hatschek, an optician, later director of the First Hungarian Artificial Eye Factory, who supposedly brought a Benz Velo to Hungary in 1895. But upon scraping the surface, I found no evidence to this claim.

Let's go back to 1930. After five years of financial problems, the Royal Automobile Club of Hungary published its Golden Anniversary Yearbook. Y' know, the Golden Anniversary was in 1925, but Club did not have enough money to publish the book then. References, like 25-year-ago, 10-year-ago were hardly corrected. Factual errors, misguided captions abound. But all this did not stop journalists, researchers and so on to use it as THE reference book.

The 1967 article claimed that in 1895 a Hungarian daily, Pesti Hirlap featured lengthy descriptions on Hatschek and his car. This turned out to be a false claim. Neither Pesti Hirlap, nor other dailies (I browsed through about 80 per cent of all dailies published in Budapest at that time) wrote a thing on Hungarian cars in 1895.

Malcolm Jeal, Motor Historian and Historic Car Consultant was kind enough to provide me photocopies of original Benz order books. The first car, a Benz Velo was officially dispatched to Hungary on 20 July, 1896. It was chassis Number 375, which was followed by No 447 in 2 April, 1897 and No 553 at the end of June, 1897. All of these were Velo models. This was the first sign that the date - 1895 may be wrong. On the other hand Hatschek may have bought the car from Emile Roger, the biggest Benz dealer in France.

It is here that I have to mention that most of the newspaper articles which I quoted above, say that Hatschek learnt to drive a bit in Mannheim, Germany and Benz dispatched a "driver" to Budapest, in order to help Hatschek learning how to properly drive and maintain his car. Well, if the car arrived from Germany, then it was not in 1895, but in 1896.

I have to throw in a couple more facts:
• at the end of 1895 a retired army general tried to import a car into Austria. As there was no "automobile" category in the official customs' chart, local officials dismantled the car. The engine-less car was then treated as a "normal carriage", while its engine was categorized as "misc. iron goods". Naturally the general appealed and his case was took to the Ministry of Finances. In Spring, 1896 Austrian officials asked all member states of the Monarchy, how they handled similar cases. In its reply on 18 August, 1896 the Hungarian Ministry of Finance said: "We can't help you as we never had such a case before. We only had to handle a motorvelociped" (motorcycle).
• I have browsed through over 80 per cent of all dailies published in 1896 as well but without luck. However in February, 1897 there's a very cryptic news piece about an event - probably an accident - which prompted the Ministry of Commerce to say that "the police is responsible to properly oversee automobile traffic". Unfortunately most of the archive papers of the Ministry of Commerce were destroyed during the 2nd World War.
• In March, 1897 the first proper description on cars in Budapest were published in a sports magazine, where it was claimed that a champagne manufacturer uses a delivery van to advertise his drinks, and his example was followed by a fashion store owner. The champagne manufacturer was Jozsef Torley, a well-known figure in Hungary but I have no clue on the fashion store owner's identity.

Conclusion:
• - It is highly unlikely that anyone brought a car to Hungary in 1895
• - I suspect that in Fall, 1896 the first car arrived to Hungary. Maybe it was imported by Hatschek and it was No 375 - but there's no firm evidence yet.