First Cars in Istanbul

First Cars in Istanbul
Mavi Boncuk

1895 Basra Deputy Zahirzade Ahmet Paşa [1] drives through Fenerbahçe with the first car in town.

(a 1895 Daimler shown on the left)

Sultan Abdulhamid II (1842-1918) received two vehicles as a gift, a Hotchkiss [2] and a Mercedes-Benz but he seems to prefer royal horse carriages. Sultan Mehmet Reşad V becomes the first ottoman Sultan to use a car regularly and the number of vehicles reach 150 in Istanbul by 1914. By 1919 about a thousand vehicles can be found in the Empire with 800 alone on the roads of the capital.

In 1912 İstanbul's first vehicular accident happened in Şişli when the Italian Embassy driver hit (of all people) an Albanian. Police managed to apprehend the culprit in Pangalti a few kilometers away.

[1] Zahirzade Ahmet Paşa belonged to a well established Basra family. Zahirzade Yusuf Paşa and his wife donated 6480 kurus to a fund in 1890 established to help the survivors and the families of the sailors who perished at the Turkish Frigate Ertugrul tragedy near Kushimoto, Japan.

1904 Hotchkiss Roi-Des-Belges

[2] Founded by an American, the Hotchkiss cars were made between 1903 and 1955 by Hotchkiss et Cie of Saint-Denis, Paris. The firm initially produced arms for the American Civil War and the governments of Napoleon II and the Third French Republic.

The badge for the marque showed a pair of crossed cannons, evoking the company's earlier history as an arms manufacturer. The first Hotchkiss car, a 17 CV (13 kW) four-cylinder model, appeared in 1903 the 20CV Type C with engine based heavily on the Mercedes Simplex. Six-cylinder models, the Types L and O followed in 1907.