173 Fun Facts About Cars

What does 'SUV' stand for?

Sport Utility Vehicle: in the US most were long classed as light trucks, which let them meet looser fuel-economy rules than ordinary cars.

The Tesla Model S, produced from 2012, won which magazine's Car of the Year award for 2013?

Motor Trend's judges voted unanimously for the Tesla Model S, the first winner in the award's 64 years without an internal-combustion engine.

Which Italian designer, also behind the first Volkswagen Golf, styled the gull-winged DMC DeLorean?

Giorgetto Giugiaro of Italdesign drew the DeLorean; its maker went bankrupt in 1982 after about 9,000 cars, and Back to the Future made it a star three years later.

Which Swedish carmaker, born from an aircraft manufacturer, went bankrupt in 2011?

Saab began as a warplane maker, and its first car, the 92, showed it: the whole teardrop body was stamped from one sheet of metal and had a drag coefficient of just 0.30.

Ford's moving assembly line for complete cars began running in 1913 at which Michigan plant?

Highland Park's moving line cut the time to build a Model T from more than 12 hours to about 93 minutes.

Which film franchise features Dominic Toretto and street racing culture?

Fast & Furious grew out of a 1998 Vibe magazine article, 'Racer X', about New York's illegal street-racing scene, which inspired the first film in 2001.

Which race has been run since 1911 on the 2.5-mile oval nicknamed the Brickyard?

The Indianapolis 500 was first run in 1911 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, whose original brick surface earned it the Brickyard nickname; it has been skipped only during the two World Wars.

What color was the Ford Model T exclusively available in from 1914 to 1925?

Black was not always the rule: Henry Ford wrote that buyers could have any colour 'so long as it is black', yet the earliest Model Ts came only in red, green, grey and blue.

Which Japanese carmaker's name means 'three diamonds', the shape of its badge?

Mitsubishi joins mitsu, 'three', and hishi, a water chestnut, the Japanese word for a diamond shape; the badge echoes the crests of the founder's family and of his first employers.

What does the badge 'GT' stand for on a car?

Grand Touring renders the Italian 'gran turismo', literally 'great touring': the badge marked cars built to cover long distances fast and in comfort.

Which dashboard gauge shows engine speed in revolutions per minute?

The tachometer counts how often the engine turns over each minute; speeds above the safe limit are marked in red, which is where 'redlining' an engine comes from.

Which luxury car brand uses a 'Spirit of Ecstasy' hood ornament?

Rolls-Royce commissioned the Spirit of Ecstasy from sculptor Charles Sykes because owners had begun fitting 'inappropriate' mascots of their own; it has topped the radiator since 1911.

As of 2024, which country builds the most motor vehicles each year?

China built over 31 million vehicles in 2024, about three times the US total, and in 2023 it also overtook Japan to become the world's biggest car exporter.

Which car nameplate passed 50 million sales in 2021, more than any other in history?

Toyota Corolla is a name more than a single car: the 50 million are really twelve successive designs sold under it since 1966.

In a car's braking system, what do the letters ABS stand for?

Anti-lock Braking System keeps the wheels from locking in a hard stop so the driver can still steer; the same anti-skid idea is used on aircraft.

Which car, launched in April 1964, sold over 400,000 in its first year and spawned a new class of affordable sporty coupes?

The Ford Mustang gave the 'pony car' class its name: sporty styling wrapped around the parts of Ford's existing family cars, so it looked fast but cost little.

What is a 'turbocharger' in a car engine?

A device that compresses intake air, forcing more air into the engine for more power from the same displacement; unlike a belt-driven supercharger, a turbo is spun by the exhaust gases.

What was the first mass-produced petrol-electric hybrid car, launched in Japan in December 1997?

The Prius reached Japanese showrooms in December 1997, yet the first hybrid sold in North America was a rival two-seater, the Insight, which beat it there by seven months.

Which rear-engined Porsche sports car made its debut at the 1963 Frankfurt Motor Show?

The 911 was unveiled as the 901, but a rival carmaker claimed the rights to three-digit names with a zero in the middle, so Porsche swapped the 0 for a 1.

Which NASCAR race is considered the 'Super Bowl of Stock Car Racing'?

The Daytona 500 is NASCAR's richest and most prestigious race; it has opened the Cup Series season every year since 1982, so the sport's biggest event comes first.

Before Schumacher, which driver held the record with five Formula One titles (1951-57)?

Juan Manuel Fangio sealed his fifth title at the Nürburgring in 1957: a slow pit stop left him 48 seconds behind, and he broke the lap record again and again to win.

What 1885 vehicle is widely considered the first true internal-combustion automobile?

The Benz Patent-Motorwagen had three wheels, one cylinder and less than one horsepower, yet Carl Benz's 1885 machine is regarded as the first practical automobile.

Which Italian supercar maker was founded in 1963 by a successful tractor manufacturer?

Lamborghini's founder Ferruccio built his first tractors from surplus military vehicles; by his own account he turned to cars after complaining in vain about the clutch of his own sports car.

What does the 'C8' in the Chevrolet Corvette's production code refer to?

C8 marks the eighth generation of the Corvette, launched for 2020; it is the first with a mid-mounted engine after seven front-engined generations dating back to 1953.

Swedish engineer Nils Bohlin gave the world which safety device in 1959?

The three-point belt came from a man who had worked on ejector seats for warplanes; his employer let rivals use the patent free, and the design is credited with saving a million lives.

Which 1968 film is famed for its car chase over the hills of San Francisco?

Bullitt's chase lasts about ten minutes; one of the two hero cars took the stunt jumps while the other was kept for the star's own close-up driving.

Which was the first car Tesla delivered to customers, starting in February 2008?

The Roadster sold about 2,450 cars; a decade later Elon Musk's own was bolted to SpaceX's first Falcon Heavy rocket and launched into orbit around the Sun.

Which Japanese manufacturer developed the 'VTEC' engine system?

Honda's VTEC switches to a wilder valve profile at high revs, so one engine can be frugal in town and fierce flat out; the first, in the 1989 Integra, made 100 horsepower per litre unassisted.

In the name of the Bugatti Veyron 16.4, what does the '4' stand for?

Four turbochargers feed its sixteen cylinders, hence 16.4; the car is named after Pierre Veyron, the Bugatti test driver who won the 1939 Le Mans 24 Hours.

Which car brand's name comes from the Latin word for 'I roll'?

Volvo is Latin for 'I roll': bearing maker SKF first registered the name for a line of ball bearings, then revived it for the car company it launched in Gothenburg in 1927.

The unpainted body panels of the DeLorean DMC-12 were made of which material?

Stainless steel skins meant DeLoreans left the factory in the same bare metal finish; the exceptions were a handful gold-plated for an American Express Christmas promotion.

Which car is known as 'Godzilla' in automotive culture?

Australian magazine Wheels nicknamed the Nissan Skyline GT-R R32 'Godzilla' in 1989, a nod to its monster performance and Japanese origin; the name has followed every GT-R since.

Jackie Stewart gave which nickname to the Nürburgring's fearsome Nordschleife circuit?

The Green Hell climbs and falls about 300 metres through the Eifel forest; Stewart won there in 1968 by four minutes in rain and fog, driving with a broken wrist.

What does the Mazda 'Wankel' engine use instead of conventional pistons?

Triangular rotors spin inside an oval-like housing instead of pistons pumping up and down; a Mazda rotary won Le Mans in 1991, and as of 2026 no other car without a piston engine has.

What is the cylinder layout of a 'boxer' engine?

Cylinders horizontally opposed lie flat on either side of the engine, and each pair of pistons moves in and out together, like boxers touching gloves before a fight.

Which innovation did Cadillac introduce in 1912, earning its second Dewar Trophy and sparing drivers a dangerous chore?

Electric self-starter motors ended the risky job of swinging a starting handle, and by making petrol cars easy for anyone to start they helped finish off the early electric car.

Which car company pioneered the use of crumple zones for crash safety in the 1950s?

Mercedes-Benz engineer Béla Barényi patented the idea in 1952, overturning the belief that a safe car had to be rigid; the 1959 'tail fin' saloon was the first built with ends designed to crumple.

Which Hollywood star played driver Michael Delaney in the 1971 racing film 'Le Mans'?

Steve McQueen had hoped to drive in the real 1970 race alongside Jackie Stewart; instead his company entered a car rigged to shoot footage during the race itself.

Which Bugatti was the first production-based car to pass 300 mph, in August 2019?

The Chiron reached 304.77 mph at the Ehra-Lessien test track with Andy Wallace driving, and Bugatti promptly announced it was bowing out of the race for speed records.

What distinction does the 1901 Oldsmobile Curved Dash hold in automotive history?

First mass-produced American car: as the story goes, a 1901 factory fire spared only the Curved Dash prototype and so settled which model Ransom Olds would build.

Which rally class of 1982–86 was scrapped by the sport's governing body after a string of fatal crashes?

Group B let makers build ferociously powerful lightweight specials; within hours of Henri Toivonen's fatal crash in Corsica in May 1986, the cars were banned from the following season.

Which exhaust device, on most new US cars from 1975, forced a switch to unleaded fuel?

The catalytic converter is poisoned by lead, which stops the catalyst working, so leaded petrol had to be phased out once the converters arrived.

The most recognisable feature of the 1948 Tucker 48 was a third, centrally mounted what?

The Tucker 48's central 'Cyclops' headlamp swivelled with the steering to light the way round corners at angles above 10 degrees; only 51 cars were built before the company collapsed in 1949.

A Latin American president famously had a 1963 Chrysler Turbine Car run on which national spirit?

Tequila worked because the turbine would burn almost anything: Mexico's president tried it after Chrysler's engineers checked. Leaded petrol, the everyday fuel of the time, was what damaged it.

Which Citroën, unveiled at the 1955 Paris Motor Show, took 12,000 orders on its first day?

The DS rode on self-levelling hydropneumatic suspension; in 1962 one carried President de Gaulle out of an assassins' ambush even with its tyres shot out.

Which Italian automaker's 1922 Lambda was the first production car with a load-bearing unitary body?

Lancia did away with the separate chassis so the body itself carried the loads, which made the Lambda both stiffer and lower than its rivals.

Paul Jaray, who shaped the streamlined 1934 Tatra T77, had learned aerodynamics designing what?

Zeppelin airships taught Jaray to cut drag; the rear-engined Tatras that followed were close enough to the later Beetle that Volkswagen eventually paid a settlement over Tatra's patents.

Which 1961 British sports car topped The Daily Telegraph's 2008 list of the 100 most beautiful cars?

The E-Type, unveiled at Geneva in March 1961, is the car a famous Italian rival is widely, if unverifiably, said to have called the most beautiful ever made.

Which car part keeps the battery charged by converting engine motion into electricity?

The alternator replaced the old DC dynamo from the 1960s: it is lighter and more rugged, and unlike a dynamo it still gives a useful charge with the engine idling.

Sitting behind the grille, a car's radiator is essentially what kind of device?

A heat exchanger is all it is, and the cabin heater is a second, smaller one: turning the heater on full can help cool an engine that is starting to overheat.

Which engine part converts the pistons' up-and-down motion into rotation?

The crankshaft turns the pistons' reciprocating motion into rotation: each connecting rod pushes on an offset crankpin, and the spinning shaft drives the flywheel and gearbox.

A timing belt keeps which part in step with the pistons so the valves open on time?

The camshaft must turn at exactly half engine speed for the valves to open on time; if the belt snaps on many engines, the pistons smash into open valves.

Which drivetrain component lets the two wheels on an axle turn at unequal speeds in a corner?

The differential lets the outside wheel, which travels farther round a bend, spin faster than the inside one; without it a tyre would have to skid on every turn.

Since the 1990s, carburetors in cars have been largely replaced by what?

Fuel injection replaced carburettors because it meters fuel precisely enough to meet tightening emissions rules; carburettors live on in lawnmowers and many piston aircraft.

Which company's engineer Gottlob Honold produced the first commercially viable high-voltage spark plug in 1902?

Bosch's plug came as part of a high-voltage magneto ignition system; engines had used electric sparks since Étienne Lenoir's gas engine of 1860, but this was the first plug good enough to sell widely.

Which brewing dynasty's son set a land speed record in 1922 and founded a famous spark-plug company?

Guinness heir Kenelm Lee Guinness, a Sunbeam racing driver, developed his own KLG plugs after trouble in a 1912 race convinced him he needed a more reliable one.

The device British drivers call a 'silencer' is known in North America as what?

A muffler, in British English, is also an old-fashioned word for a thick scarf, so the American name for an exhaust silencer can sound like something to wear.

In a disc brake, what squeezes the pads against the spinning rotor?

The caliper straddles the rotor and uses hydraulic pistons to squeeze the pads against both faces; a disc also recovers from a soaking faster than a drum, where water lingers inside.

Which car maker's C-Type won the 1953 Le Mans 24 Hours as the only entry using disc brakes?

Jaguar's C-Type, driven by Tony Rolt and Duncan Hamilton, won the 1953 race on Dunlop disc brakes that resisted fade lap after lap; it was the first Le Mans winner to average over 100 mph.

Which driver aid has been compulsory on all new cars sold in the US since May 2018?

A backup camera became mandatory under a 2008 law named after Cameron Gulbransen, passed to stop drivers reversing over small children they could not see.

Most shock absorbers force oil through small internal valves, turning bump energy into what?

Heat is where the bounce ends up: the springs soak up the bump, and the damper's main job is to stop them bouncing on, churning oil until that energy has turned to warmth.

Who made the first long-distance drive in an internal-combustion car, in August 1888?

Bertha Benz took her husband's car without telling him and drove about 106 km from Mannheim to Pforzheim, having a cobbler nail leather onto the worn brake blocks: the first brake linings.

By what nickname was the Ford Model T colloquially known?

Tin Lizzie outstayed its welcome: after 19 years and 15 million cars, demand dried up, and in 1927 Henry Ford stopped the line and shut his factories for months to retool for the Model A.

Which car overtook the Ford Model T's production record in February 1972?

The Volkswagen Beetle took the record with car number 15,007,034, a sweet turn: in 1948 Ford had been offered the whole Volkswagen works for nothing and walked away.

Which Japanese carmaker was spun off in 1937 from a maker of automatic looms?

Toyota grew out of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works: when Kiichiro Toyoda travelled in 1929 to sign its loom patent over to Britain's Platt Brothers, he used the journey to study the car industry.

Honda has been the world's largest manufacturer of which vehicles since 1959?

Motorcycles such as the 1958 Super Cub made Honda's name: its automatic clutch, the story goes, was meant to let noodle-shop riders steer one-handed with a delivery tray in the other.

Which Japanese carmaker began in Hiroshima in 1920 as a maker of cork?

Mazda started as Toyo Cork Kogyo, making cork board; under Jujiro Matsuda it moved into machinery and then, in 1931, launched a three-wheeled truck called the Mazda-Go.

Subaru's name and six-star logo refer to which star cluster?

Subaru is the Japanese name for the Pleiades, and the badge marks the 1953 merger of five companies into Fuji Heavy Industries, Subaru's parent; only six or so of the cluster's stars stand out to the naked eye.

British Army major Ivan Hirst restarted the bombed Volkswagen factory in 1945 in which German town?

Wolfsburg's wrecked plant was scheduled for dismantling until Hirst sent a sample car, sprayed army green, to British headquarters and won an order for 20,000; the works went back to German control in 1949.

The letters BMW stand for a German name that translates into English as what?

Bavarian Motor Works, or Bayerische Motoren Werke, was the 1917 new name of Munich aero-engine maker Rapp; the roundel's blue and white are Bavaria's colours, not the spinning propeller a 1929 advert made famous.

The Mercedes-Benz brand was born in 1926 when Karl Benz's firm merged with whose company?

Gottlieb Daimler's firm supplied the Mercedes half of the name: Emil Jellinek, a dealer who raced as 'Monsieur Mercédès', had its 1901 cars named after his young daughter.

Lamborghini has been controlled by which Volkswagen Group division since 1998?

Audi took charge when the Volkswagen Group bought Lamborghini from its Malaysian and Indonesian owners in 1998, and the deal paid off both ways: the Gallardo's platform later carried the Audi R8.

Maserati's trident logo is based on a statue of Neptune in which Italian city?

Bologna's Fountain of Neptune gave Mario Maserati, the one brother who became an artist rather than an engineer, his trident; the badge stayed even after new owners moved the firm to Modena.

A.L.F.A., the 1910 firm that became Alfa Romeo, carried which Italian region in its name?

Lombardy: A.L.F.A. stood for Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili, the Lombard car-making company of Milan; the Romeo was added for Neapolitan industrialist Nicola Romeo, who took control in 1915.

Which carmaker's Uno, Punto and Panda helped it win European Car of the Year nine times by 2008?

Fiat's nine wins began with the 124 in 1967, a car that found a second life: built under licence in the Soviet Union, it became the Lada.

Which carmaker traces its roots to a family steel business founded in 1810, long before the car existed?

Peugeot made saws, coffee grinders and crinoline hoops long before cars; its lion badge began in the 1850s as a mark on saw blades, promising tough teeth, a flexible blade and a fast cut.

Which carmaker's double-chevron badge copies the herringbone gears its founder made before building cars?

Citroën's chevrons are gear teeth: André Citroën bought a patent for quiet V-toothed gears on a trip to Poland in 1900 and made them for years before launching his first car in 1919.

Ford sold Volvo Cars in 2010 to which Chinese group?

Geely's parent agreed to pay $1.8 billion for Volvo Cars, far less than the $6.45 billion Ford had paid in 1999; Ford had been trying to sell since 2008 to concentrate on its own brands.

Jaguar's founders started out in 1922 building which add-on for motorcycles?

Sidecars were the trade of the Swallow company of Blackpool, which moved on to car bodies as SS Cars; in 1945 it took the Jaguar name, which chairman William Lyons said could not be confused with any foreign one.

What do the letters DB stand for in Aston Martin model names?

David Brown, an English industrialist, answered a 1946 newspaper advert offering a 'High Class Motor Business' and bought Aston Martin for £20,500; his initials went on its cars for decades.

Which British marque won Le Mans in 2003, its first victory there since 1930?

Bentley's two Speed 8s finished first and second in 2003, 73 years after the marque's last win, and within months the company announced it would not be back to defend the title.

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, owned by BMW, has built its cars since 2003 at which English site?

Goodwood exists because of a 1998 split: Volkswagen bought the old Crewe factory, but BMW secured the Rolls-Royce name, so it had to build a new plant from scratch, which opened on 1 January 2003.

Louis Chevrolet, co-founder of Chevrolet in 1911, was born in which country?

Switzerland: born in the watchmaking town of La Chaux-de-Fonds, Louis Chevrolet fell out with partner William Durant within a few years and sold his stake, so he never shared in the fortune his name made.

Cadillac is named after the French explorer who founded which city?

Detroit's founder, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, lent his name in 1902 to a company salvaged from the failed Henry Ford Company, after Ford himself had walked out on his backers.

Which name, used on Dodge pickups since 1981, did Chrysler later spin off as a truck brand of its own?

Ram took its name from the ram's-head hood ornament of older Dodges; after its bankruptcy, Chrysler split trucks from cars so that each brand could keep a sharper focus.

Engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning incorporated which electric carmaker in July 2003?

Tesla was Eberhard and Tarpenning's company; Elon Musk arrived in 2004 as lead investor and chairman, later saw Eberhard pushed out, and under a 2009 settlement may also call himself a co-founder.

Which Chinese carmaker began in 1995 as a maker of rechargeable batteries?

BYD started in Shenzhen making rechargeable batteries, bought a small carmaker in Xi'an to get into cars in 2003, and five years later drew a $230 million investment from Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.

Before its famous V8 arrived for 1955, the Chevrolet Corvette launched with what kind of engine?

An inline-six from Chevrolet's family cars, tuned to 150 hp and sold only with a two-speed automatic, left the first Corvettes so short of buyers that GM nearly cancelled the car before the V8 arrived.

Under what name was the first-generation Volkswagen Golf sold in the United States and Canada?

Rabbit was the Golf's North American name from 1975; Volkswagen switched to Golf in 1985, brought the Rabbit badge back for the fifth generation in 2006, then dropped it again three years later.

The Mercedes-Benz 300 SL of 1954 was famous for what type of doors?

The 300 SL's gullwing doors were a workaround: its racing-style tubular frame ran so high and wide along the sills that ordinary doors would not fit, so the engineers hinged them at the roof.

Which Lamborghini of 1966 mounted its V12 sideways behind the seats, a layout borrowed from racing cars?

The Miura began as a pet project of Lamborghini's young engineers, which a sceptical Ferruccio let them pursue; its bare chassis went on show in Turin in 1965 before a body had even been designed.

Which Ferrari, launched in 1987, was the last model personally approved by Enzo Ferrari?

The F40 was named for Ferrari's 40th anniversary as a carmaker; the firm planned to build about 400, but demand pushed the run to 1,311 by 1992.

James Bond first drove which Aston Martin on screen, in 1964's Goldfinger?

The DB5, styled by Carrozzeria Touring of Milan, was Aston Martin's newest model when the film was shot; in Ian Fleming's novel Bond drives an older DB Mark III, and the film-makers upgraded him.

Which Italian city car of 1957 won its designer, Dante Giacosa, the Compasso d'Oro design prize?

The Fiat 500 was Giacosa's second go at a car for everyone: he had also engineered its pre-war namesake, the Topolino, before shrinking the idea to under three metres with the engine in the tail.

Which Citroën was designed to carry farmers and a basket of eggs across a ploughed field unbroken?

The 2CV was conceived in the 1930s by Citroën executive Pierre Boulanger for rural France; its prototypes were hidden from the occupying Germans during the war, and it was finally unveiled in 1948.

The East German Trabant had body panels made of what material?

Duroplast, a resin reinforced with cotton waste, was East Germany's answer to chronic steel shortages: the Trabant's body panels were pressed from it and hung on a steel frame.

Ralph Nader's 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed focused especially on which car?

Nader's opening chapter attacked the Chevrolet Corvair's swing-axle rear suspension, which could tuck under in hard cornering; the book helped bring about the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966.

Which car did Ford build to beat Ferrari at Le Mans, winning four years running from 1966?

The GT40 was born of a grudge: Enzo Ferrari broke off talks to sell his firm to Ford in 1963, so Henry Ford II ordered a car to beat him; the 40 is its height in inches.

Until 1969, how did drivers begin the 24 Hours of Le Mans?

Running to cars waiting on the far side of the track was the Le Mans start; in 1969 Jacky Ickx walked to his in protest at a dash that sent drivers off unbelted, and still won, and the run was dropped the next year.

Motorsport's Triple Crown joins wins at Indianapolis and Le Mans with victory in which Grand Prix?

Monaco completes the set, and by 2025 only Graham Hill had won all three; Fernando Alonso even skipped the 2017 Monaco race to try Indianapolis, where he led 27 laps before retiring.

Dale Earnhardt famously drove which car number for Richard Childress Racing?

No. 3 left the track with him: after Earnhardt's fatal crash in 2001, Richard Childress renumbered the car 29 and gave it to rookie Kevin Harvick.

Which driver, nicknamed 'The King', holds NASCAR's record of 200 Cup Series race wins?

Richard Petty took his 200th and last win on 4 July 1984, after Ronald Reagan gave the command to start engines by phone from Air Force One and then flew in to watch.

Mario Andretti won the 1978 Formula One World Championship driving for which British team?

Lotus gave Andretti the 79, the first car to exploit ground effect fully, its shaped underside sucking it to the track; the title was settled at Monza, where his teammate and last rival Ronnie Peterson was fatally injured.

Blind engineer Ralph Teetor invented which driving aid, first sold by Chrysler in 1958 as 'Auto-Pilot'?

Cruise control was Teetor's answer, by family lore, to a driver who sped up and slowed down as he talked; blind since early childhood, he patented it in 1950, and Cadillac later gave it the name that stuck.

Around 1950, Nash became the first US carmaker to offer which safety feature as a factory option?

Seat belts took decades to catch on: US law put them in every new car from 1968, yet in the early 1980s only about 14% of Americans regularly wore them.

Hydra-Matic, offered on 1940 Oldsmobiles, was the first mass-produced version of which car feature?

Automatic transmission arrived as a $57 option with four forward speeds and no clutch pedal; it soon went to war in American light tanks, and GM later advertised it as battle-tested.

Which engineer, whose surname is now an ultra-luxury car badge, co-built the 1885 Reitwagen?

Maybach built the wooden Reitwagen, or 'riding car', with his long-time partner as a test bed for their new engine; often called the first motorcycle, it was a stepping stone, and a year later the engine was driving a coach and a boat.

Which piece of street furniture made its world debut in Oklahoma City in July 1935?

The parking meter was newspaperman Carl Magee's cure for downtown cars that never moved: 175 went in on 16 July 1935 at a nickel an hour, over protests that the charge was unlawful.

Herbie the Love Bug carries which racing number?

No. 53 is said to be producer Bill Walsh's nod to Dodgers pitcher Don Drysdale, who wore it; in Herbie Goes Bananas a boy nicknames the car Ocho, because five plus three makes eight.

What did Doc Brown take from Libyan terrorists to power the DeLorean time machine?

Plutonium, swindled from Libyan terrorists, fuelled the reactor that gave the DeLorean the 1.21 gigawatts a time jump needed; with Marty stranded in 1955 and none to be had, Doc harnessed a lightning bolt instead.

George Barris turned the 1955 Lincoln Futura concept into which 1966 TV car?

The Batmobile began as a $250,000 show car that Ford sold to Barris for $1; asked for a Batman car with filming only weeks away, he reworked the Futura, and it fetched $4.62 million at auction in 2013.

Which toy-car brand launched in 1968 with the 'Sweet 16'?

Hot Wheels' Sweet 16 were its first sixteen cars. Mattel co-founder Elliot Handler wanted a boys' line to match Barbie: models styled like California customs, on low-friction axles built for speed.

The British die-caster Lesney Products, founded in 1947, went on to launch which toy-car brand?

Matchbox took its name from the boxes the toys were sold in; partner Jack Odell is said to have shrunk a road roller for his daughter, whose school allowed only toys small enough to fit in a matchbox.

Roughly how many cars worldwide carried Volkswagen's Dieselgate 'defeat device' software?

Volkswagen admitted that about 11 million diesel cars worldwide carried the cheat software, roughly 500,000 of them in the United States; chief executive Martin Winterkorn resigned within days.

John DeLorean's factory was built in Dunmurry, a suburb of which city?

The Dunmurry plant, in south-west Belfast, was funded by the British government to create jobs in Northern Ireland; it built about 9,000 DMC-12s before collapsing in 1982, the year DeLorean was charged with cocaine trafficking.

Bruce McLaren, founder of the McLaren racing team, was born in which country?

New Zealand's Bruce McLaren spent years of his childhood in hospital with a hip disease, yet won a Grand Prix at 22, then the youngest ever to do so; he was killed testing one of his own cars in 1970, aged 32.

Which vet made the first practical pneumatic tyre in the 1880s for his son's tricycle?

John Boyd Dunlop, a Scot working as a vet in Ireland, fitted air-filled tyres to the tricycle; his 1888 patent was later ruled invalid, because another Scot, Robert Thomson, had patented the idea some 40 years earlier.

Michelin is based in which French city?

Clermont-Ferrand is where brothers Édouard and André Michelin took over a rubber works in 1889; their 1900 guide for motorists was meant to boost demand for cars, and so for tyres.

Goodyear, founded in Akron in 1898, is named after the inventor of what?

Vulcanized rubber made Charles Goodyear famous but not rich: he died in 1860 deep in debt, and the tyre company, founded 38 years later by Frank Seiberling, simply took his name in tribute.

Which country was the first to introduce vehicle registration plates, in 1893?

France led the way when a Paris police order required plates in 1893; when New York began registering cars in 1901, owners had to make their own plates, bearing their initials.

Yorkshire road contractor Percy Shaw patented which road-safety device in 1934?

Cat's eyes sit in a rubber dome that squashes under a tyre and wipes the glass clean; the wartime blackout, with car lights shuttered, proved their worth and spread them across British roads.

Why was Hyundai's Pony sold in Canada but never in the United States?

It failed US emissions standards, so Canada came first: the cheap Pony sold far beyond Hyundai's forecasts there, and the US market had to wait until 1986 and the Excel.

Which 1959 British car turned its engine sideways and drove the front wheels?

The Mini seated four in just ten feet of car. It was BMC's answer to the fuel rationing that followed the 1956 Suez crisis: Alec Issigonis was told to get a thrifty small car into production fast.

Which Paris landmark served as a giant advertising sign for carmaker Citroën from 1925 to 1934?

The Eiffel Tower wore the Citroën name through the Jazz Age, a display Guinness World Records lists as the world's largest advertising sign.

Lamborghini models such as the Diablo and Murciélago take their names from famous examples of what?

Fighting bulls became the theme after Ferruccio Lamborghini visited a renowned Seville breeding ranch in 1962. The Countach broke the rule: its name is a Piedmontese expletive.

Which luxury car brand launched in the United States in 1989 with the LS 400 sedan?

Lexus recalled all 8,000 LS 400s within months over just two customer complaints, a response that helped establish its early reputation for service.

Which highway from Chicago to Santa Monica, established in 1926, did Steinbeck call the Mother Road?

Route 66 got the nickname in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, where Dust Bowl families drive it west to California. It ran 2,448 miles across eight states.

Which actor died in 1955 at the wheel of a Porsche 550 Spyder nicknamed 'Little Bastard'?

James Dean was driving the new car to a road race in Salinas, California, when he crashed on September 30, 1955. He had traded in a Speedster for the faster Spyder to go racing.

Which BBC motoring show features the Stig, an anonymous racing driver hidden behind a helmet?

Top Gear's producers first wanted to call the driver 'The Gimp'. The original Stig, Perry McCarthy, was unmasked by a Sunday newspaper.

Which Scottish engineer adopted the term 'horsepower' to rate steam engines against draft horses?

James Watt was later honoured with a unit of his own: one imperial horsepower equals about 746 watts.

Which engine inventor vanished from the steamer Dresden while crossing to England in September 1913?

Rudolf Diesel boarded in Antwerp on his way to a business meeting and was never seen alive again. The engine that bears his name ignites its fuel by compression alone.

Which spy novelist wrote Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang, a 1964 children's story about a magical car?

Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, invented the tale as a bedtime story for his son Caspar. Roald Dahl co-wrote the screenplay of the film version.

Which actor lobbied AM General for a civilian Humvee, then bought the first two Hummer H1s sold?

Arnold Schwarzenegger saw an Army convoy of the trucks while filming Kindergarten Cop in Oregon and campaigned until a civilian model went on sale in 1992.

Which Nordic country switched from driving on the left to the right in September 1967, on 'Dagen H'?

Sweden made any vehicle on the road stop at 4:50 on a Sunday morning, cross to the other side and wait until 5:00. The H stood for Högertrafik, right-hand traffic.

Which city got the world's first traffic lights in 1868, a signal that exploded only weeks later?

London put the signal outside the Houses of Parliament years before the motor car existed; a police constable worked its semaphore arms and night lamps by hand.

The word 'dashboard' first meant a panel on horse-drawn carriages that shielded riders from what?

Splashed mud was 'dashed' up by the horses, so carriages carried a board or leather apron to stop it. When engines moved up front, the same panel kept their oil off the occupants.

Which American electronics brand was coined in 1930 as the name of a car radio?

Motorola joined 'motor' to the 'ola' of Victrola. Founder Paul Galvin's firm sold its first set in June 1930 and was soon supplying police departments.

Mitsubishi, founded as a shipping firm in 1870, has a name commonly translated as three what?

Diamonds is the usual translation, matching the badge, though 'hishi' literally means water caltrop, a plant whose shape gave Japanese its word for a rhombus.

Which abbreviation names a car's unique 17-character code, standardised in the US in 1981?

VIN stands for vehicle identification number. The code never uses the letters I, O or Q, which are too easily confused with the digits 1 and 0.

Which actor voices Lightning McQueen, the race car stranded in Radiator Springs in Pixar's Cars?

Owen Wilson's co-stars included Paul Newman as Doc Hudson, a 1951 Hudson Hornet hiding a past as a racing legend.

NASCAR traces its roots to Southern drivers who outran the police while hauling which illegal cargo?

Moonshine runners of the Prohibition years used small, fast cars to evade the police, then raced each other for pride. Junior Johnson went from bootlegging driver to NASCAR star.

Which Brazilian three-time Formula One champion was killed while leading the 1994 race at Imola?

Ayrton Senna won all three of his titles with McLaren and held the record for pole positions, 65, when he died. The crash pushed Formula One into a wave of safety improvements.

Which dashboard gauge, named from the Greek word for 'path', records a car's total distance?

Odometer joins the Greek hodós, 'path', to métron, 'measure'. Hero of Alexandria described a mechanical one in the 1st century AD, long before any car needed it.

Which jet car, driven by an RAF fighter pilot in Nevada, first broke the sound barrier on land?

ThrustSSC reached 763 mph in October 1997, fifty years and one day after Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier in the air.

The Bonneville Salt Flats, a home of land speed record attempts since 1914, lie in which US state?

Utah's flats are the bed of a vanished Ice Age lake, a crust so level that Teddy Tetzlaff set the first speed record there in 1914.

Which 1958 model is the possessed red car in Christine, the horror film of Stephen King's novel?

Plymouth Fury is the model named on screen, but two other Plymouths, the Belvedere and the Savoy, also played Christine during filming.

Which Pontiac does Burt Reynolds drive as a decoy for a truck in Smokey and the Bandit?

Trans Am sales almost doubled within two years of the 1977 film, in which the car runs interference for 400 cases of bootleg Coors beer.

Which rocket carried Elon Musk's own Tesla Roadster into space on a test flight in February 2018?

Falcon Heavy sent the car into an orbit around the Sun that crosses the path of Mars, with a spacesuited mannequin called Starman in the driver's seat.

La Jamais Contente, the first road vehicle to exceed 100 km/h in 1899, was powered by what?

Electricity drove the torpedo-shaped Belgian racer, whose name means 'The Never Contented'. Its builder, Camille Jenatzy, was an engineer hoping to sell carriages in Paris.

Which 1971 NASA mission was the first to drive a car, the Lunar Roving Vehicle, on the Moon?

Apollo 15 commander David Scott took the rover out on 31 July 1971. All three rovers that flew are still parked on the Moon.

Which colour became Britain's motor-racing livery after the 1903 running of the Gordon Bennett Cup?

Green was a tribute to the Irish hosts: road racing was illegal in Great Britain, so the race was held in Ireland and the British Napiers were painted shamrock.

Which car brand of 1958, named after Henry Ford's son, became a byword for commercial failure?

Edsel honoured Edsel Ford over the objections of his own son, Henry Ford II. The brand lasted just three model years and lost more than $250 million.

Which fibreglass British car, built in Tamworth from 1973, is famous for having only three wheels?

Reliant Robin owners could register and tax the car at motorcycle rates, because it had three wheels and weighed under 450 kg.

Which pickup became America's best-selling vehicle in the early 1980s and kept the title for over four decades?

Ford's F-Series trucks first topped US pickup sales in 1977 and within five years were outselling every car too. The line has been on sale since the 1948 model year.

Which 1970s Ford subcompact drew government scrutiny after fuel-tank fires in rear-end collisions?

Pinto fuel tanks sat between the rear axle and the bumper. In June 1978 Ford recalled 1.5 million cars, the largest recall in automotive history at the time.

Which executive saved Chrysler with a 1979 federal loan guarantee, then starred in its TV adverts?

Lee Iacocca fronted the commercials through the 1980s with the campaign line 'The pride is back', after Congress agreed to guarantee the loans that kept the firm alive.

Which hydrocarbon gives its name to the rating of how well petrol resists engine knocking?

Octane ratings compare a fuel with a blend of iso-octane and heptane that knocks in the same way, so a higher number means the fuel withstands more compression.

The 'T' in Fiat, an acronym coined in 1899, stands for which Italian city?

Turin is the Torino in Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino, the 'Italian Automobiles Factory' that Giovanni Agnelli helped to found on 11 July 1899.

Holden, which began as a saddlery in 1856, built its last car in 2017 in which country?

Australia's last Holden Commodore left the Elizabeth plant on 20 October 2017; the General Motors subsidiary blamed a strong currency, high costs and a small home market.

Which Texan racing driver had Britain's AC Cars fit a Ford V8, creating the Cobra sports car?

Carroll Shelby received two of Ford's new small-block V8s in September 1961 and had one shipped to AC in England; Americans bought the result as the Shelby Cobra.

Which designer created the original Mini for BMC, mounting its engine sideways to save space?

Alec Issigonis also tucked the gearbox into the engine's sump and drove the front wheels, a layout that influenced a generation of small cars.

Which American car brand is named after a Scottish-born inventor who perfected enamelled bathtubs?

Buick founder David Dunbar Buick found a way to coat cast iron with enamel, making white baths cheaper, and invented a lawn sprinkler before he turned to engines.

Which tyre maker's name is a flipped translation of its Japanese founder's surname, Ishibashi?

Bridgestone flips the two halves of Shojiro Ishibashi's surname, which literally means 'stone bridge'. The firm went on to buy America's Firestone.

Which circuit, built in 1922 and home of the Italian Grand Prix, is called the Temple of Speed?

Monza earned the nickname with its long straights and high-speed corners. In the Formula One era the race has gone elsewhere only once, in 1980.

Dutch rally driver Maurice Gatsonides, winner of the 1953 Monte Carlo Rally, invented which roadside device?

Speed camera inventor Gatsonides built it to measure his own cornering speed and improve his driving. Police forces later adopted the 'Gatso' to catch speeding drivers.

Which 1960s microcar from the Isle of Man is listed as the smallest production car ever made?

Peel P50 owners get no reverse gear: a handle at the rear lets them haul the 59 kg car around by hand. It is 54 inches long and has three wheels.

Which city was founded in 1938 purely to house the workers of the first Volkswagen factory?

Wolfsburg began life as the 'city of the Strength Through Joy car at Fallersleben' and took its present name only in May 1945. Volkswagen's headquarters are there.

Which Michigan island banned motor vehicles in 1898 after early cars startled the carriage horses?

Mackinac makes exceptions only for emergency and service vehicles and for winter snowmobiles; everyone else travels on foot, by horse or by carriage.

Which future car-rental tycoon founded Chicago's Yellow Cab Company in 1915, offering modest fares?

John Hertz went on to buy a car-rental business and rename it Hertz Drive-Ur-Self. By then his distinctive yellow taxis had been franchised across the United States.

Which British sports-car maker, founded in Malvern in 1910, frames its bodies in ash wood?

Morgan has built with ash for a century; even the Aero 8, launched in 2000, kept the wooden body substructure.

Which 1960s Formula One champion is the only driver to have completed motorsport's Triple Crown?

Graham Hill did not pass his driving test until he was 24. His son Damon won the title in 1996, making them the first father-and-son world champions.

Which Colorado mountain has hosted the 'Race to the Clouds' motor hillclimb since 1916?

Pikes Peak crowned its first winner, Rea Lentz, in 1916 with a climb of just under 21 minutes; the course finishes at the summit.

The Michelin Man, a mascot built from stacked white tyres, goes by which proper name?

Bibendum comes from Horace's Latin toast 'Nunc est bibendum', now is the time to drink, which an 1898 poster showed the tyre man raising with a glass full of road hazards.