How to get to 100 mph at 2500 revs.
"The first person to achieve 100 miles in an hour was Percy Lambert, on 15 February 1913, driving a 4.5 liter sidevalve Talbot reportedly producing 105 bhp at 2,500 rpm"
On a bit different topic.
I like the story of the 1914 Grand Prix winner, and what happened to the car when war broke out.
"Three weeks after the event, the winner, still sporting the number 28 painted on its bodywork, was shipped to London. Just days after Lautcnschlager’s battle-scarred beauty - bedecked in laurel wreaths - went on display in the Mercedes showroom, war was declared, and the famous racer was stuck in the UK.
As the grim conflict developed in September, with the battle of Marne and the sinking of
Royal Navy cruisers in the North Sea, two young volunteers -
WO Bentley and
Leonard Geach - advised the Admiralty about the German GP car. The white two-seater was quickly commandeered from the London depot and sent to Rolls-Royce at Derby where it was closely inspected, but with strict instructions that no patents were to be infringed and only the power- plant should be studied. Colourful stories that Bentley drove the Mercedes to Derby - or that Roy Feddon towed it the 200 miles - arc not true. Story has it that the chassis was wrapped in brown paper so that it couldn’t be copied, but the design influence is obvious in Rolls-Royce’s engines, which later powered aerial combat against enemy planes with Mercedes motors.
After the war, the
1914 French GP winner was acquired by
Count Zborowski and was still a front-runner in the early ’20s at Brooklands, where it regularly posted 100mph-plus laps." ... Later he was responsible for the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang name.
https://drive-my.com/en/retro-carss/item/1725-1914-mercedes-grand-prix-car.html
