99 Fun Facts About Automobile

Which German engineer is widely credited with patenting the first gasoline-powered automobile in 1886?

Karl Benz filed for German patent DRP 37435, a 'vehicle powered by a gas engine', on 29 January 1886; that patent is widely called the birth certificate of the automobile.

Which automotive pioneer made cars affordable by implementing the moving assembly line?

Henry Ford's moving assembly line began at the Highland Park plant on 7 October 1913, cutting the time to build a Model T chassis from over 12 hours to about 93 minutes.

What ignites the air-fuel mixture in a gasoline engine but is missing from a diesel?

Spark plugs deliver an electric current from the ignition system to the combustion chamber, creating a spark that ignites the compressed fuel/air mixture.

What does the acronym ABS stand for in the context of automotive safety systems?

An Anti-lock Braking System stops the wheels locking under hard braking so the driver keeps steering control; it is fitted to cars, motorcycles, trucks and aircraft.

What exhaust-system device converts toxic pollutants into less harmful substances?

A catalytic converter uses platinum, palladium and rhodium catalysts to turn carbon monoxide, unburned hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides into carbon dioxide, water and nitrogen.

Which luxury car brand put a chrome leaping cat on its radiator cap?

Jaguar's chrome 'Leaper' mascot, a leaping cat designed by artist F. Gordon Crosby, crowned the radiator cap and bonnet from the late 1930s until European pedestrian-safety rules ended its use.

Which car body style has a three-box layout with separate engine, passenger and cargo compartments?

A sedan is a saloon in British English: a closed body, usually four doors, with separate boxes for the engine, the passengers and the luggage.

What type of internal combustion engine uses an eccentric rotary design with a triangular rotor instead of traditional reciprocating pistons?

The Wankel engine, invented by Felix Wankel, is a unique type of internal combustion engine that utilizes a rotor, often triangular, spinning within an epitrochoidal housing, eliminating the need for pistons.

Which Swedish manufacturer made the modern three-point seat belt standard equipment in 1959?

Volvo engineer Nils Bohlin patented the three-point belt in 1959, and Volvo fitted it as standard on the Amazon and PV544 that year, then opened the patent to other carmakers.

Which German engineer, born in 1858, gave his name to the compression-ignition engine?

Rudolf Diesel invented the compression-ignition engine that burns the fuel named after him; at fourteen he had written to his parents announcing he meant to become an engineer.

Which component lets a car's driven wheels on one axle turn at different speeds when cornering?

The differential splits engine torque between the two driven wheels while letting them rotate at different speeds; the outer wheel covers a longer arc in every corner.

What distinguishes a turbocharger from a supercharger?

A supercharger is the one turned mechanically, usually by a belt from the crankshaft. Both are forced induction devices that push more air into the engine.

Which engineer led the design team behind the Volkswagen Type 1 in the 1930s?

Ferdinand Porsche's design office took the commission in 1934 and built the first Beetle prototypes by 1936; the rear-mounted, air-cooled flat-four became the car's signature.

Which French inventor built the first steam-powered vehicle capable of carrying people, in 1769?

Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot's fardier à vapeur of 1769 was a three-wheeled steam tractor built to haul artillery for the French army; it proved too slow and unwieldy to develop further.

Ferdinand Verbiest built the 1672 miniature steam 'auto-mobile' as a toy for whom?

The Kangxi Emperor: Ferdinand Verbiest, a Flemish Jesuit at the Qing court in Beijing, described the 65-centimetre steam-turbine cart in his 1687 book Astronomia Europaea.

Which 1901 vehicle is generally regarded as the first mass-produced automobile?

The Oldsmobile Curved Dash came off Ransom Olds's assembly line with interchangeable parts, thousands of them by 1903.

What was the Ford Model T's popular nickname?

Americans nicknamed the Model T the Tin Lizzie; over 15 million were sold between 1908 and 1927.

Despite Ford's famous line, what colours was the Model T actually sold in from 1908 to 1913?

Early Model Ts came in grey, green, blue and red; black-only production ran from 1914 to 1925, when the fast-drying black enamel suited the moving assembly line.

The Model T's price fell from $780 in 1910 to roughly what by 1924?

About $290 for a 1924 touring car; moving assembly lines from 1913 let Ford cut the price year after year, down to $260 for the 1925 runabout.

How much power did the Ford Model T's 2.9-litre four-cylinder engine produce?

About 20 hp from the 177-cubic-inch (2.9-litre) side-valve four, good for roughly 45 mph; its two-speed planetary gearbox was worked by foot pedals.

By 1918, roughly what fraction of all cars in the United States were Model Ts?

About half: by 1918 one car in two on American roads was a Model T, and the 15 millionth rolled off the Highland Park line on 26 May 1927.

The word 'automobile' combines Latin 'mobilis' with 'autós', meaning 'self', from which language?

Ancient Greek: autós means 'self' and Latin mobilis 'movable', making an automobile literally a self-moving vehicle; the same Greek root gives 'autograph' and 'autonomy'.

Which Swiss inventor built the first internal-combustion-powered vehicle around 1807–08?

François Isaac de Rivaz patented a hydrogen-fuelled internal-combustion engine in 1807 and fitted it to a crude carriage in 1808, while the Niépce brothers put their Pyréolophore in a boat.

How many Volkswagen Beetles were produced between 1938 and 2003?

It was the first car to pass 20 million units and overtook the Model T's record in 1972.

In which year was the Volkswagen Type 1 officially given the name 'Beetle'?

1968: Volkswagen's English-language advertising first used 'Beetle' officially that year; before then the car was sold simply as the Volkswagen, or by engine size as the 1200 or 1300.

According to Hitler, why did the Volkswagen 'people's car' need an air-cooled engine?

Hitler's specification noted that not every country doctor had a garage, so the car had to sit outdoors in winter; an air-cooled engine had no radiator to freeze.

Which was the first American carmaker to offer seat belts as a factory option, in its 1949 models?

Nash fitted lap belts as an option on its 1949 Airflyte models, but buyers disliked them so much that many had dealers remove them; Ford followed with optional belts in 1955.

Which Japanese carmaker's name is the Japanese word for the Pleiades star cluster?

Subaru is Japanese for the Pleiades; its six-star badge stands for the five companies that merged in 1953 to form Fuji Heavy Industries, plus the parent.

The world's first compulsory seat belt law was passed in 1970 in which place?

Victoria, Australia made belt-wearing compulsory for drivers and front-seat passengers from 22 December 1970, the first such law anywhere; the other Australian states followed within two years.

Which was the first U.S. production car to include a passenger airbag, in 1973?

The 1973 Oldsmobile Toronado was the first car sold to the public with a passenger-side airbag, under GM's 'Air Cushion Restraint System' option.

Which chemical, detonated in a small explosion, replaced compressed air to inflate modern airbags?

Sodium azide pellets, ignited electrically, decompose within about 30 milliseconds into nitrogen gas that fills the bag; the 1950s Hetrick and Linderer patents had relied on compressed air.

In 1981, which carmaker introduced the airbag in West Germany as an option on its flagship S-Class?

Mercedes-Benz offered a driver's airbag on the W126 S-Class from 1981, the first production car in Europe with one; American cars did not get airbags widely until the early 1990s.

In August 1888, Bertha Benz made the first long-distance car journey from Mannheim to where?

Pforzheim, her home town, about 100 km from Mannheim; on the way she cleared a blocked fuel line with a hatpin and had a cobbler nail leather onto the brake blocks.

On her 1888 drive, Bertha Benz bought fuel in Wiesloch because the solvent her car burned was sold only where?

At apothecary shops: ligroin, the petroleum solvent the Patent-Motorwagen burned, was sold as a cleaning fluid by chemists, so Wiesloch's Stadt-Apotheke became the world's first filling station.

Which nameplate has been the best-selling automobile of all time since 1997?

Toyota Corolla: it overtook the Volkswagen Beetle as the best-selling nameplate in 1997, and cumulative Corolla sales passed 50 million across twelve generations in 2021.

From 1985, rebadged Toyota Sprinters were sold in the US under which Chevrolet name?

The Chevrolet Nova name was revived in 1985 for a Toyota Sprinter twin built at NUMMI, the GM-Toyota joint venture in Fremont, California; the Geo Prizm replaced it for 1990.

Modern cruise control was invented in 1948 by Ralph Teetor, an engineer notable for what?

He was reportedly irritated by his lawyer's habit of speeding up and slowing down while talking.

The first production car with Teetor's 'auto-pilot' cruise control was the 1958 model of which car?

Chrysler's 1958 Imperial offered 'Auto-Pilot', with a dashboard dial to set the speed; Cadillac followed for 1959 under the name 'Cruise Control', which stuck.

Which American is credited with the first working windscreen wiper, patented in 1903?

Mary Anderson, of Birmingham, Alabama, patented a hand-operated swinging-arm wiper in November 1903 after watching a New York streetcar driver lean out to clear sleet.

Which carmaker's trident badge was taken from the Fountain of Neptune in Bologna?

Maserati's trident was drawn by Mario Maserati from Bologna's Fountain of Neptune, the city where his brothers founded the firm in 1914.

Which French carmaker's badge is a pair of chevrons recalling the gears its founder made?

Citroën's double-chevron badge recalls the herringbone (double-helical) gears that André Citroën manufactured before he founded his car company in 1919.

In which year did Gustave Trouvé demonstrate a working three-wheeled electric car in Paris?

1881: Gustave Trouvé fitted an electric motor and batteries to a Starley tricycle and drove it along the Rue de Valois in Paris that April; cheap gasoline cars and the electric starter later eclipsed electrics.

Which brothers built and road-tested the first running petrol-driven American car in 1893?

Charles and Frank Duryea's Motor Wagon made its first public run on Taylor Street in Springfield, Massachusetts, on 21 September 1893.

Maybach's Daimler-Mercedes engine of 1900 was built to the specifications of which businessman, whose daughter gave the marque its name?

Emil Jellinek ordered a limited run of the cars to race and sell, and the 35 hp Mercedes engine soon gave its name to the whole marque.

Which engineer gave Cadillac electric ignition and the electric self-starter in 1910-11?

Charles Kettering's Delco supplied Cadillac's electric ignition in 1910 and the electric self-starter launched on the 1912 Cadillac, ending the hand crank that could break an arm on kickback.

Which country's automotive industry produced by far the most cars in 2020, at around 20 million?

China built around 20 million cars in 2020; Japan was a distant second at seven million, followed by Germany, South Korea and India.

Which pair of Peugeot engineers drove 2,100 km from Valentigney to Paris, Brest and back in 1891?

Auguste Doriot and Louis Rigoulot drove a Daimler-engined Peugeot Type 3 from Valentigney to Paris, followed the Paris–Brest–Paris cycle race and returned, 2,100 km, in September 1891.

Which New York lawyer's 1895 patent on a car engine hindered rather than helped US car development?

George Selden filed in 1879 for a car he never built, delayed the application until it was granted in 1895, then collected royalties until Henry Ford beat the patent in court in 1911.

Which fast-drying paint let Ford offer Model T colours other than black again in 1926?

Duco, DuPont's nitrocellulose lacquer of 1923, dried in hours instead of days; such pyroxylin lacquers let Ford offer the 1926 Model T in colours again after a decade of black.

In which German town did Daimler and Maybach found Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft in 1890?

Cannstatt, then a town outside Stuttgart (absorbed in 1905); Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft was registered there on 28 November 1890 and had built about 30 vehicles by 1895.

Which designer drew up the original 1959 Mini for BMC?

Issigonis's transverse-engine, front-wheel-drive layout left about 80% of the floorpan free for people and luggage.

A fuel shortage caused by which 1956 event led directly to the creation of the Mini?

The Suez Crisis of late 1956 brought petrol rationing to Britain, and BMC chairman Leonard Lord ordered a tiny, frugal four-seater; the Mini went on sale in August 1959.

Said aloud in French, the name of the 1955 Citroën DS sounds like which word?

Déesse means goddess, while the cheaper ID model sounded like idée, or idea.

How many orders did Citroën take for the DS on its first day at the 1955 Paris Motor Show?

12,000 orders on the opening day, 743 of them in the first 15 minutes; by the end of the ten-day show Citroën held 80,000 deposits.

Partly chosen for luck, 'Toyota' takes how many brush strokes to write in Japanese?

The spelling also dropped the voiced consonant of the founding family's name, Toyoda, for a cleaner sound.

Before founding his car company in 1963, Ferruccio Lamborghini made his fortune building what?

Tractors: Ferruccio Lamborghini founded Lamborghini Trattori at Cento in 1948, at first building them from surplus military engines, and sold the tractor firm to SAME in 1973.

Ferrari's prancing-horse emblem was originally painted on the aircraft of which flying ace?

Francesco Baracca, Italy's top World War I ace, flew with the black horse on his aircraft; his mother, Countess Paolina, urged Ferrari to adopt it after his 1923 win at the Circuito del Savio in Ravenna.

The Porsche 911 was first marketed as the 901 until which carmaker protested over the name?

Peugeot claimed exclusive French rights to three-digit names with a zero in the middle; only 82 cars wore the 901 badge.

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars was created in 1998 as a wholly owned subsidiary of which company?

BMW paid £40 million for the Rolls-Royce name and logo when Vickers sold the carmaker in 1998; Volkswagen got the Crewe factory and the Bentley marque and held the Spirit of Ecstasy rights until 2003.

What was the top speed of the original Bugatti Veyron?

407 km/h (253 mph) was the Veyron 16.4's official top speed, unlocked with a second key that lowered the car and rear wing; James May matched it at Ehra-Lessien for Top Gear in 2006.

Which two engineers incorporated Tesla Motors in July 2003?

Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning incorporated Tesla Motors on 1 July 2003; Elon Musk joined in 2004 as chairman after leading the Series A round.

Tesla's first car, the 2008 Roadster, was built on the chassis of which British sports car?

The Lotus Elise: Tesla's contract with Lotus covered 2,500 partly assembled 'gliders' built at Hethel, and Roadster production ended in January 2012 when the supply ran out.

The name Prius comes from a Latin word meaning what?

'First': prius is Latin for 'before' or 'first', chosen because the car came ahead of the shift to hybrids; the Prius sold in Japan from December 1997 and worldwide from 2000.

'LEAF', the name of Nissan's electric hatchback, is a backronym whose first word is what?

The full phrase is 'leading environmentally-friendly affordable family car', and Norway became its biggest European market.

In the designation of the wartime Ford GPW jeep, what did the letter 'P' indicate?

'P' was Ford's code for an 80-inch-wheelbase reconnaissance car; 'G' meant a government contract and 'W' the Willys-Overland engine design Ford built under licence.

Chevrolet's 1953 two-seater sports car was named after what kind of vessel?

A corvette is a small, fast warship; Chevrolet PR man Myron Scott proposed the name, and the Corvette went on sale in 1953 with a fibreglass body.

Because a moped maker owned the name, the Mustang was sold in Germany until 1978 under which name?

T-5, the Mustang's internal project code; Kreidler held the Mustang name for mopeds and Ford refused its asking price, so German-market cars were badged T-5 until December 1978.

The gull-winged DeLorean was built at a factory in Dunmurry, on the edge of which city?

Belfast: the Dunmurry plant in the city's western suburbs, Northern Ireland, was financed largely by the British government, and the first DMC-12 left the line on 21 January 1981.

Which Italian designer styled the stainless-steel DeLorean DMC-12?

Giorgetto Giugiaro of Italdesign styled it, first shown as the 1976 DMC-12 prototype; Colin Chapman's Lotus later re-engineered the chassis with a fibreglass underbody beneath the stainless panels.

The East German Trabant's body panels were made of what material?

Duroplast, a hard thermoset of phenolic resin reinforced with recycled cotton waste, was pressed into panels for the Trabant because East Germany was short of sheet steel.

The Citroën 2CV was designed to cross a ploughed field without breaking what on the seat?

A basket of eggs: Pierre-Jules Boulanger's 1936 brief asked for a car that could carry two farmers and 50 kg of goods across a ploughed field without breaking eggs, hence the long-travel interconnected suspension.

Its full-length roll-back canvas roof earned the 2CV which nickname?

An umbrella on wheels: Boulanger's brief asked for 'four wheels under an umbrella', and the roll-back canvas roof stretched right over the boot until 1955.

Which rival is rumoured to have called the 1961 Jaguar E-Type 'the most beautiful car ever made'?

Enzo Ferrari is widely quoted as calling it 'the most beautiful car ever made', though the line is unconfirmed; the E-Type topped The Daily Telegraph's 100 most beautiful cars list in 2008.

The 'DB' in Aston Martin DB5 stands for the initials of which man?

David Brown, the Yorkshire tractor and gear industrialist, bought Aston Martin in 1947; the DB5 of 1963 gained a 4.0-litre all-aluminium engine and a ZF five-speed gearbox.

In 2000, Guinness named which car the best-selling two-seat sports car in history?

The Mazda MX-5 (Miata) had sold 531,890 units when Guinness certified it in May 2000; the millionth was built in 2016, and the Fiat 124 Spider of 2016 shared its platform.

In what year did the Ford F-Series first become the best-selling vehicle in the US?

1981: the F-Series had been America's best-selling pickup since 1977, and from 1981 it was the best-selling vehicle of any kind, a run that passed four decades in 2021.

How many Tucker 48 cars were built, including the prototype, before the company folded in 1949?

51, counting the 'Tin Goose' prototype; the SEC-driven stock-fraud trial that helped sink Preston Tucker ended in January 1950 with a full acquittal.

The Tucker 48's third, steering headlight fell foul of laws in how many US states at the time?

17 states then banned more than two headlights, so some Tucker owners fitted covers over the centre 'Cyclops eye', which swivelled with the steering at angles over 10 degrees.

Which Ford subcompact became notorious for fuel-tank fires after rear-end collisions?

The Ford Pinto, sold from 1971 to 1980, carried its fuel tank behind the rear axle; a 1978 recall of 1.5 million cars followed lawsuits over rear-impact fires.

Which consumer advocate wrote the 1965 book 'Unsafe at Any Speed'?

Ralph Nader's 'Unsafe at Any Speed' (1965) opened with 'The Sporty Corvair: The One-Car Accident'; GM's surveillance of him led to a public apology and the 1966 federal auto-safety act.

Which company designed and patented the radial tyre, with its first car version developed in 1946?

Michelin: researcher Marius Mignol developed the steel-belted Michelin X, patented in 1946, and Michelin-owned Citroën was the first to fit radials, on the 2CV and the Traction Avant.

Disc brakes famously proved their superiority at which race in 1953?

Jaguar's C-Types, with Dunlop disc brakes, won the 1953 24 Hours of Le Mans, braking hard from 150 mph into Mulsanne corner lap after lap without the fade that crippled drum-braked rivals.

GM's Hydra-Matic, the first mass-produced automatic transmission, debuted on which brand for 1940?

Oldsmobile offered Hydra-Matic, a four-speed automatic with a fluid coupling, as a $57 option on its 1940 models; Cadillac added it for 1941.

Chrysler sold the first production-car power steering in 1951 under what name?

Hydraguide debuted on the 1951 Chrysler Imperial, built on Francis W. Davis's hydraulic power-steering patents of the 1920s, which had expired; GM followed on the 1952 Cadillac.

How much did Galvin Manufacturing charge for its Motorola-branded car radio in 1930?

About $130 for the 5T71 radio, roughly a quarter of the price of a new car in 1930; the name combined 'motor' with 'Victrola', and Galvin later built Ford's 8-track players for 1966.

Which Austrian Mercedes-Benz engineer invented and patented the crumple zone?

Béla Barényi's 1952 German patent 854157 described a rigid passenger cell with deformable front and rear sections; Mercedes-Benz first applied it on the 1959 W111 'Fintail'.

Where were the electric motors mounted on the 1900 Lohner-Porsche 'Mixte' hybrid?

A petrol engine drove a generator feeding four hub motors, making it both the first hybrid and the first commercial hub-motor car.

Which RAF pilot drove ThrustSSC through the sound barrier on land in October 1997?

Andy Green, an RAF fighter pilot, drove ThrustSSC through Mach 1 in Nevada's Black Rock Desert on 15 October 1997, fifty years and a day after Chuck Yeager's first supersonic flight.

What speed did ThrustSSC reach to set the 1997 world land speed record?

763 mph (1,228 km/h), Mach 1.016, on 15 October 1997; project director Richard Noble had himself held the record with Thrust2 from 1983 until ThrustSSC's first run a month earlier.

What material lines the engine bay of the McLaren F1 as a heat reflector?

Gordon Murray needed to shield the carbon-fibre monocoque from engine heat, and gold happens to be a superb reflector.

Which name did Rapp Motorenwerke of Munich adopt in 1917?

Bayerische Motoren Werke: Rapp's engine works was renamed on 21 July 1917 under managing director Franz Josef Popp; in 1922 the name passed to aircraft maker Bayerische Flugzeugwerke, the legal ancestor of BMW AG.

'Volvo' is Latin for what?

'I roll', from the Latin volvere; bearing maker SKF registered Volvo in 1915 for ball bearings aimed at the American market, and the car company's first model, the ÖV 4, followed in 1927.

Which 1975 model was the first car developed in South Korea?

The Hyundai Pony, styled by Italdesign in Turin with Mitsubishi engines and gearboxes, went on sale in 1976; Hyundai's earlier Cortina had been a Ford kit assembly.

The first Lada, the 1970 VAZ-2101, was a ruggedised version of which Italian car?

The Fiat 124, 1967's European Car of the Year; under a 1966 agreement Fiat helped build the AvtoVAZ plant at Tolyatti on the Volga, and the 2101 gained a stronger body and higher ground clearance.

Which designer won a 1959 Compasso d'Oro prize for the Nuova Fiat 500?

Dante Giacosa, Fiat's chief engineer, designed the Nuova 500 launched in July 1957 as successor to the 'Topolino'; it ran until 1975 with a rear-mounted air-cooled twin.

Cadillac is named after a French explorer who founded which American city?

Detroit: Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founded Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit in 1701, and the car brand created in Detroit in 1902 from Henry Ford's second company took his name.

Audi's name is the Latin translation of founder August Horch's surname, which means what?

'Listen': horch is the German imperative 'hark', and audi its Latin equivalent, suggested in 1910 by the Latin-student son of Horch's partner Fikentscher; the four rings mark the Auto Union partners.

In which year did the companies of Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler merge to form Daimler-Benz?

1926: Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft and Benz & Cie. merged on 28 June 1926, and the first cars badged Mercedes-Benz appeared that same year.

Which Honda model of 1990 was the first production car with an all-aluminium monocoque?

The Honda NSX of 1990 had the first all-aluminium monocoque body in a production car, with a mid-mounted 3.0-litre V6 and VTEC valve timing.