His company, named the New Zealand Motor Car Company, was the first to import and sell cars in this country.
Nicholas Oates of Christchurch brought the first motor car that he imported, also a Benz, to Napier in January 1901, driving it up from Wellington – the first to travel this route.
Horses in Napier were said "to have a very strong dislike to the newcomer, and there have been several bolts, happily attended to with no serious injury".
It would be Bernard Chambers in 1902 who was the first to own a motor car – an Oldsmobile - in Hawke's Bay.
The Hastings Standard was not overly impressed "with its quivering vibration and trail of evil smelling petrol …" However, it conceded that it would soon be "superseding the horse in the colony, wherever the roads will admit of its running."
By 1903, a year after Bernard Chambers' Oldsmobile had arrived, others in Hawke's Bay had imported cars, and there would be a growing need for a supply of benzine for them.
The supply of benzine for these motor vehicles was imported from Australia, and at times it was hard to get.
Benzine was at first shipped to New Zealand in drums and tins, put on the railway, and transferred to horse and cart to deliver to warehouses. It was sold in four-gallon tins (with two tins to a wooden case), and larger 44-gallon drums by blacksmiths, grocers, country stores, and stock and station agents.
Motorists would carry cases of four-gallon benzine tins with them and stop at the side of the road to fill up ‒sometimes with disastrous results. In 1907, a motorist was doing this in Heretaunga St East, Hastings, when he dropped his pipe into some spilled benzine, and set the car alight.
In a modern-day version of plastic waste, the tins were very often discarded on the side of the road, and much was said about the cans' pollution.
The cost of benzine was therefore very expensive compared to overseas – even in today's terms. (In 1914, 36 litres of benzine was sold at the equivalent of $3.40 per litre but rose to $4.35 per litre in 1922.)
There was also the risk of the bulk-stored, highly-inflammable benzine exploding. At the breakwater port (now Port of Napier) in 1917, a leaky benzine can was set alight on a wagon by a spark from the steam locomotive.
This destroyed three wagons of benzine. The engine driver and locomotive firemen managed to detach the wagons and "convey them off the wharf". So fierce was the fire, it destroyed the wharf's wooden sleepers and rails.
This meant the rest of the benzine could not be unloaded, and because the crew refused to sail any further with the inflammable cargo, a lighter (small cargo barge) was hired and the benzine loaded for removal when the rail line was repaired.
With an ever-increasing uptake of motor cars, the Napier Harbour Board leased land in the mid-1910s to store tins and drums of benzine on Hardinge Rd near Te Karaka, Ahuriri (many locals affectionately call this area "Perfume Point" due to the past Napier sewer works there), to the Vacuum Oil Company, British and Imperial Oil and Big Tree.
Shipping drums and four-gallon tins of benzine to New Zealand was seen as no longer economical in the mid-1920s by the British and Imperial Oil Company and the Vacuum Oil Company, who began shipping bulk oil in tankers. The first delivery was made in January 1926 to the British and Imperial Oil Company's bulk storage depot in Miramar, Wellington. Other sites, including Napier, were to be added.
The Miramar site made the tins to be filled with the benzine at a rate of 1000 an hour. They had storage for 2 million tins and case wood storage for a million cases.
Bulk storage and its distribution allowed the creation of underground tanks at garages, which were connected to bowsers (named after the inventor, American Sylvanus Freelove Bowser), which pumped the benzine into the vehicle.
As bowsers would not be installed in country areas for many years, the four-gallon tin of benzine would stay around for a few decades yet.
When delivery was made to a garage's underground tank by a "motor tank wagon", the proprietor used a supplied "calibrated dip stick" to check the supply received from the wagon.
There, however, was mistrust among motorists of the bowsers. At least with the four-gallon tin they could be assured of a correct measure – but with a bowser delivery they weren't so sure.
In 1926, the British and Imperial Oil Company and Vacuum Oil Company built storage tanks by extending their Hardinge Rd land, with pipelines leading to them from the Iron Pot at Port Ahuriri, where the oil was discharged. It appears an inland depot was also established near Hastings.
The Hawke's Bay Farmers' Co-operative Association garage in Queen St West, Hastings, who opened in July 1926, was one of the first or possibly the first Hawke's Bay garage to have an underground tank and bowsers. As was common then, they supplied benzine from different companies: Shell, Voco and Big Tree.
The bulk petrol tanks on Hardinge Rd were dismantled by the early 1990s, being operated by Shell and Mobil by then.
Petrol is now unloaded into bulk storage tanks at Napier Port.
• Michael Fowler (mfhistory@gmail.com) is a contract researcher and commercial business writer of Hawke's Bay history. Follow him on facebook.com/michaelfowlerhistory
