As his name suggests, Béla Viktor Karl Barényi, born on March 1, 1907 at Hirtenberg near Vienna, was a product of the dual monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His parents were Eugen Barényi, a military officer, and his wife Maria, daughter of the industrialist Fridolin Keller. The young Béla was raised in an upper-class home with four siblings. While cars were not widely used for private transport purposes before the First World War, the automobile was part of the young boy’s environment, since his grandfather owned a luxury Austro-Daimler.

But this cosseted existence was destroyed by the First World War. The boy’s father died at the front in 1917, and the years after 1918 saw the collapse of his grandfather’s business empire. This affected the situation of his widowed daughter, Béla’s mother, and all his grandchildren. Before the war the Kellers had been one of the richest families in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but in 1927 Béla had to seek state support for one of his patents. The Vienna municipal authorities accordingly issued him with a “certificate of indigence”.

The young Barényi became interested in improving the passive safety of motor vehicles at a very early stage. Even though this term did not exist at the time, he recognized the potential hazards from vehicle components, e.g. a pointed steering wheel hub. So on a home-made racing sleigh he fitted a steering wheel with a padded hub, displaying some of the features of the safety steering wheel he would later develop.

Barényi was fascinated by engineering achievements even as a child. This was partly attributable to his grandfather’s factories, but he was also growing up in an age of great enthusiasm for technology. In his adolescent years he decided to turn his hobby into a career, commencing the mechanical engineering course at the Vienna College of Technology in 1924. For his graduation assignment in 1926 he designed a six-cylinder engine developing 50 hp (37 kW) at 3600 rpm. He was awarded a degree with distinction on graduating.

While still a student, Barényi had been working on the concept of a modern automobile with a central tubular frame and air-cooled horizontally-opposed engine. This “people’s car of the future” (“Volkswagen” in German) even featured on the cover of the “Motor-Kritik” magazine in 1934. However, the visionary design, for which he produced the plans between 1925 and 1931, never made it through to the production stage.

After completing his degree, in 1928 Barényi took up a position as designer at Steyr, where he became acquainted with Karl Wilfert, who was the same age. In 1929 Wilfert left to become manager of the body repair department of the Mercedes-Benz branch in Vienna, and in that same year was transferred to the Mercedes-Benz research department at Sindelfingen, as assistant to chief designer Hans Nibel. This contact would prove crucial for Barényi’s career.

After his years at Steyr, the young engineer first worked for Österreichische Automobil-Fabrik AG (formerly Austro-Fiat), and then, after a brief period of unemployment, moved in 1934 to a position at the Adler plant in Frankfurt am Main. In the same year he was hired by the Technical Progress Society (Gesellschaft für technischen Fortschritt, or GETEFO), where, among other assignments, he was part of a team developing a silent block for engine bearings. In October 1935, GETEFO sent their young employee to Paris, where he transferred to the Société de Progrès Technique (SOPROTEC) in 1936. It was in Paris that he met his future wife, Maria Kilian, and he also gained his driver’s license at this time, while working on a SOPROTEC contract for Norton, the British motorcycle manufacturer.

In 1937 Barényi moved back to Berlin, where he worked on his idea of a “cell-based” vehicle design, comprising sections that would react differently to mechanical stress: the structure would be rigid in the middle, but plastically deformable at the front and rear. This is already the basis of the car body with safety cell and crumple zone, completely contrary to the standard approach at the time, which aimed for a body of uniform rigidity. He filed a patent for this “motor vehicle with body divided into three sections” as early as January 1937, and additions and further refinements followed over the following years.

But which automobile maker should he approach to implement these visionary new inventions? There was no doubt in Barényi’s mind: he would take the idea to Mercedes-Benz. He applied for a position in Stuttgart in 1938. Initially he was rejected by Daimler-Benz AG, but in 1939 his former colleague Karl Wilfert helped to arrange a meeting with one of the directors, Wilhelm Haspel, subsequently Chairman of the Board of Management.

The 32-year-old engineer confidently presented his visions: “In the cars of the future, the axles, body, frame and steering are going to be different from what they are now,” he told the Mercedes director sitting opposite. As well as being faster, he said, automobiles would above all have to be safer. Wilhelm Haspel was convinced by the unusual ideas of the young lateral thinker, and hired him. He was given his own workshop at Sindelfingen, where he was able to research and build the future of the automobile, largely independently of the development work being conducted for current vehicles. This permanent appointment put him on a secure financial footing, and in 1940 he married Maria Kilian.

From his very first project, it was quite clear that the young engineer’s appointment marked the beginning of the passive safety era at Mercedes-Benz: He developed a new platform frame for the Mercedes-Benz 170 V convertible (model series W 136). The new floor assembly was less subject to vibration than the X-type oval frame then used in series production vehicles, and also provided better protection for the occupants in the event of a lateral impact. The design was patented in 1941, but never went into production.

The effects of a hip disease in childhood meant that Barényi was never drafted for military service. He did join the NSDAP in Austria as a young man, however, and was therefore dismissed from Daimler-Benz after the war, under the regulations imposed by the Allies. He was initially assigned to a job as a street sweeper, but then worked at home as a self-employed engineer, developing vehicle components, and also toys and household appliances.

In 1948 Barényi actually registered a commercial engineering business, but in October that year he was again employed by Mercedes-Benz, and returned to Sindelfingen. With him he brought two visionary designs, produced mainly in 1945 and 1946: the “Terracruiser” and “Concadoro”. These combined his visions of passive safety with revolutionary new body designs. The six-seater Terracruiser had a very rigid passenger cell in the middle, elastically connected to plastically deformable crash cells at the front and rear, designed to absorb kinetic energy in the event of an accident. This was the first realization of Barényi’s idea of a non-deformable safety cell with crumple zones. Another measure to improve passenger safety was the centrally placed driver’s seat.

The design of the three-seater Concadoro had similar features. The driver was again placed safely in the middle, an idea taken up many years later by Mercedes-Benz in the F 100 research vehicle (1991). The bodywork of the Concadoro was a three-part cell structure, with a pivoting cockpit over the single row of seats. The design already featured a safety steering column with an impact plate, and the windshield wipers retracted into recesses when not in use. The engineering details of this design in particular anticipated development innovations in Mercedes-Benz models many years into the future.

Barényi urged his employers to implement his ideas in production vehicles. Accordingly, the W 120 model (“Ponton”) of 1953 was built with a floor structure offering a high level of protection against lateral impacts. Barényi had finally succeeded in getting his platform frame design into production.

At this time he was also working on developing his visionary ideas into a safety cell for passenger cars to the stage of readiness for serial production. The first step in this process was a patent application for a “motor vehicle, in particular for the transport of persons” filed in 1951 and granted in January 1952. This patent, No. 854157, was for nothing less than a production-ready car body with a rigid passenger cell and crumple zones. The first Mercedes-Benz vehicle with a body based on the patent was the W 111 model series of 1959. Barényi achieved the required variation in plastic characteristics at different points of the body structure mainly through the design of the longitudinal members. Linear members in the middle section the car combined with the panel structures to create a stable safety cell, as opposed to the curved members at the front and rear. In the event of an accident, these curved members would deform, thereby absorbing some of the collision energy and protecting the occupants from the full effect of the impact. And so the Mercedes-Benz “fintail” model becomes the first passenger car with a modern-style safety body.

While he was working on this model, Barényi continued to rise through the ranks within the company. In 1953 he was transferred to the Development department, and in 1955 he was appointed head of the new Advance Development department for the then Daimler-Benz AG. In this role he was again given plenty of freedom to continue working on his passive safety designs for Mercedes-Benz automobiles. He and his team often worked on the basis of the new concept designs developed in the Research department, headed by Rudolf Uhlenhaut.

The safety body for the W 111 “fintail” car was not his only development contribution to that model series, since the safety steering wheel also made its debut in the vehicle. The combination of these innovations made the “fintail” car a true milestone in the story of passive safety. Another feature was the interior design eliminating all dangerous edges.

The safety steering wheel design, patented in 1954, incorporated a steering wheel with a large impact plate and a steering column with a plastically deformable element between the “impact cup” and the actual steering column. These impact-absorbing components were designed to protect the driver in an accident. Barényi realized that the rigid steering column structures then in use, with a solid hub without any form of cushion or padding, regularly caused severe injuries through the “lance effect.” This situation occurs in a frontal impact, when the steering column is projected towards the driver. The further the steering is placed to the front, the greater is the risk.

Barényi took the first step towards reducing the hazard represented by the steering system as early as 1947, with a steering wheel featuring a deformable “impact absorber,” designed to yield under stress. Then in 1959 he divided the steering column into sections, which was a major advance towards the steering systems in use today. But the designer was not fully convinced by the merits of a telescopic steering shaft on its own. While such a structure might collapse in an ideal frontal impact scenario, it would rapidly lose its flexibility on a lateral impact.

So as an alternative, he invented a “safety steering shaft for motor vehicles,” patented in 1963. This design featured a non-rotatable tubular shaft with low buckling resistance as the link between the steering column components. In the event of an accident, this component was designed to yield in several directions, thereby preventing the projection of the steering column into the passenger compartment like some sort of deadly lance. The complete safety steering system was first used in 1976, in the W 123 model series.

Béla Barényi received more than 2,500 patents for his inventions, most of which related to automotive innovations and enhancements. It often took several years for his outstanding designs to get to the production stage. For example, he developed a recessed windshield wiper design in 1951, to protect pedestrians from injury in a car accident, but the system only came into use in 1979, in the W 126 S-Class.

On the other hand, the extremely strong, stable roof structure he developed for a test car for the Mercury-Benz W 111 model series (the “fintail”), was implemented without delay, as the hardtop version of the new Mercedes-Benz SL 230 (model series W 113). The characteristic roof combines outstanding strength with attractive esthetics, and led to this Mercedes-Benz sports car becoming known as the “pagoda” model.

Along with his commitment to passive safety, Barényi also developed other pioneering automobile design concepts such as the Mercedes-Benz large touring car camper, and the K 55 compact. As a dedicated camper himself, he planned add-on tent structures for Mercedes-Benz sedan cars, and tested his prototypes on trips as far away as Italy. And since he was also an opera connoisseur, he and his wife took the opportunity to buy a plot of land at Terracina, for use as a private camping site.

Barényi’s inventions from his time at Mercedes-Benz were recognized internationally for the great achievements they were, but during the 1950s he had nothing but problems from the design he produced during his student days. His plan for the “people’s car of the future”, produced at the end of the 1920s, anticipated numerous features that Ferdinand Porsche subsequently introduced in his Volkswagen (or “people’s car”). Yet in 1951, when he sought recognition as the originator of the Volkswagen concept, this claim was repudiated by many publications, and he was even accused of plagiarism! To protect his reputation, Barényi brought a legal action against his detractors. The issue was eventually settled out of court.