As anyone who has ever been married will tell you, sometimes, no matter how supportive your partner can be, you just need to say, “Fine, I’ll do it myself.” And it turns out Bertha Benz knew exactly what I’m talking about. 

Bertha Benz’s name likely sounds a little familiar. And really, it should. Her husband, Carl Benz, was the German car engineer who created what would one day become Mercedes-Benz. 

According to that very same car company, Bertha, born in 1849, married Carl when she was 23. “Without her strong will and unshakeable belief in her husband’s success, the company Benz & Co. would probably never have existed,” reps for the company say. It was Bertha who encouraged her husband and kept “unshakeable optimism” for his inventions, they added. She even used her entire dowry to pay off Carl’s debts and pay off his business partner so they could make the final decisions alone.

Still, even after Carl applied for his patent and perfected his three-wheeled “vehicle powered by a gas engine,” the public didn’t seem to quite get it. So, Bertha did what any good wife would do: She stole the car and went on a road trip to prove just how great it really was. 

“Bertha Benz resolutely took the driving seat of the Patent Motor Car herself. She was convinced that the day-to-day reliability of the new vehicle needed to be physically demonstrated to the public,” the company explained in its blog post. “Without her husband’s knowledge, Bertha Benz therefore embarked on a publicity tour in the early hours of an August day in 1888.”

She was joined by their two teenage sons, Eugen and Richard, who all drove from Mannheim to Pforzheim, which is now about an hour’s drive, but back then would most certainly qualify as a treacherous journey. Once they arrived, they sent off a telegram to Carl saying, “BRB, lasagna in the fridge.” 

Just kidding. She really just informed him that the “first long-distance journey with his Patent Motor Car had been a success.” And news quickly spread of the trip thanks to “two young boys and a woman on a hissing, thumping horseless carriage,” Mercedes-Benz said, adding that some said “this could only be the work of the devil himself.”

But no, this pioneering road trip was, naturally, all thanks to a badass woman.

“Without the commitment and resolution of Bertha Benz, the automobile would undoubtedly have had a slightly more difficult journey into the future,” the car company noted, citing Karl Benz’s memoir, where he wrote, “Only one person remained with me in the small ship of life when it seemed destined to sink. That was my wife. Bravely and resolutely she set the new sails of hope.”