Bertha Benz made the first long-distance automobile trip, driving 106 km (66 mi) from Mannheim to Pforzheim, Germany, in a Benz Patent-Motorwagen.

Bertha Benz was a German automotive pioneer. She was the business partner, investor and wife of automobile inventor Carl Benz. On 5 August 1888, she was the first person to drive an internal-combustion-engined automobile over a long distance, field testing the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, inventing brake lining and solving several practical issues during the journey of 105 km. In doing so, she brought the Patent-Motorwagen worldwide attention and got their company its first sales. Bertha Benz was not allowed to study in the Grand Duchy of Baden, and her financial and practical engineering contributions have long been overlooked until the 21st century.

Mannheim, officially the University City of Mannheim, is the second-largest city in Baden-Württemberg after Stuttgart, the state capital, and Germany's 21st-largest city, with a population of over 315,000. It is located at the border with Rhineland-Palatinate. The city is the cultural and economic centre of the Rhine-Neckar, Germany's seventh-largest metropolitan region, with nearly 2.4 million inhabitants.

Pforzheim is a city of over 125,000 inhabitants in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg, in the southwest of Germany.

The Benz Patent-Motorwagen, built in 1885 by the German engineer Karl Benz, is widely regarded as the first practical automobile and was the first car put into production. It was patented in January 1886 and unveiled in public later that year. The original cost of the vehicle was 600 imperial German marks, approximately 150 US dollars.