Things are thus really spinning on the steering wheel. Motorists in the first years after 1894 couldn't even dream of it. But for them, the steering wheel itself was a major invention and a big step forward. Before then, cars only had a steering lever that looked like an upside-down tiller from a boat, and it also worked in a similar fashion.
The steering wheel offered a host of advantages in comparison: it was much easier to grip and hold. Most importantly, the steering motion of the wheels from dead-centre position to full lock was now spread out over several revolutions of the steering column. This made steering much more precise overnight and permitted accordingly higher driving speeds.
When Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft additionally tilted the steering column significantly more than ever before in the first Mercedes in 1900, the 'volant', as the steering wheel was called in the early years of the automobile days, once and for all became arguably the most important link between the driver and that vehicle that is generally considered the first modern automobile. This made controlling the car very simple and resulted in the early Mercedes models even officially being called "Simplex" – taken from the Latin word for "simple".