"The four-stroke engine is a burning motor, a heat-power machine realizised as a piston machine, in which there is production of warmth through the periodical burning of a petrol and air mixture inside a cylinder, this warmth is then exchanged into mechanical power through the movements of  the pistons".1 This exchange process happens in its periodically repeated four-stroke procedure of "sucking - condense - kindling/burning - exhaust", in which the 3rd tact is the working step. An energetic process of metabolism leads to a process of transformation, which then is transferred into movement and speed in a car. Besides within this technical aspect the principle of viertakt can as an universal scheme and elemtary way of thinking also be found in many other areas, like chemistry, biology, philosophy, religions and so forth. 

Just on this existential border on which we are in these times of change from the industrial age to the digital information age creative reflection within art is ever more asked for. 
Alone the ethymology of the word "motor"2is telling. Derived from the latin word  motusit means mover (powermachine also in use for impulse power) or 'movere' meaning move, drive. 
The greek-latin word 'auto-mobil'3, 'selfmoving', is only used for  vehicles without pulling animals and without muscle power and had been used only 10 years after the arrival of the first vehicles, 1895. 

Drivable vehicles were first named motor carriadges or power wagon. Elke Suhr, the founder of EINSTELLUNGSRAUM titled one of her works "what did Carl Benz intend?". 
I would word this questions on a more general level "what was the force behind humanity when dreaming of the automobile, of the auto-mobility?" 

Jörg Jochen Berns sees the automobility as the reason for the human wish for selfdestined movement  in his cultural-historical essay "the arrival of the automobile from himmelstrionfo and hell machine"4. 
Like the gods in an everpresent manner suddenly appeared and disappeard into the heavens, without animals pulling neither muscle power, everywhere and at any time - living forever. Allover movability is seen as an element of applying power and speed is seen as a means for being everywhere at any time. 
This age-old longing of humans to follow like gods through space, time and speed

1 Brockhaus, 1999
2 Duden-Etymologie l963 S.45
3 MERKI, Christoph Maria: Der holprige Siegeszug des Automobiles 1895-1930.  Zur Motorisierung des Straßenverkehrs
   in Frankreich, Deutschland und der Schweiz. Wien, Köln, Weimar 2002, S. 20.
4 BERNS, Jörg Jochen: Die Herkunft des Automobils aus Himmelstrionfo und Höllenmaschine. Berlin 1996.

 
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