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40 free Car Brands trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Every badge on the road hides a story: a watchmaker, a plumber, a sewing-machine shop or a wartime aircraft works that ended up building cars. Names were borrowed from chiefs, gods, rivers and winds, and ownership has changed hands so often that the country on the badge is rarely the country that signs the cheques. This quiz covers more than 40 marques from Europe, Asia, the Americas and Australia: founders and founding years, home cities, parent groups, what the logos mean, where the names came from, and the brands that were killed off or brought back from the dead. It suits pub-quiz hosts, petrolheads and anyone who has ever argued about who really owns whom. Every answer is cited to its source.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which carmaker's name blazed in lights on the Eiffel Tower from 1925 to 1934, then the world's biggest advert?
Citroën
Citroën turned the Eiffel Tower into what Guinness World Records logged as the world's largest advertising sign. Founder André Citroën also sponsored motor expeditions across the Sahara, Asia and Africa to show off his cars.
Q 02The circle-and-arrow badge on Volvo cars is the ancient alchemical symbol for which metal?
Iron
Iron's ancient alchemical sign, a circle with an arrow, is what Volvo calls its 'iron mark', paired with the diagonal slash across the grille. A separate Volvo Trademark Holding company exists just to own and police the badge.
Q 03The Smart city car began as a 1990s joint venture between Mercedes-Benz and which Swiss watch company?
Swatch
Swatch even gave the car its name: Smart stands for 'Swatch Mercedes ART'. Swatch boss Nicolas Hayek wanted a car built and personalised the way his colourful cheap watches were.
Q 04Henry Leland named his 1917 luxury marque after which US president, the first he had ever voted for?
Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln got its name because Abraham Lincoln was the first president Leland ever voted for, in 1864. The new company was financed by a $10 million contract to build Liberty V12 aircraft engines.
Q 05Which American marque, the oldest still active, was founded in 1899 by a Scottish-born inventor of enamelled bathtubs?
Buick
Buick became the oldest surviving American car brand in 2004, when GM closed its older Lansing-born sibling. David Dunbar Buick's method of coating cast bathtubs with vitreous enamel is still in use today.
Q 06The name of Hyundai, founded in 1967 by Chung Ju-yung, translates from Korean as what?
Modernity
Modernity is what Hyundai means, a fitting name for the company whose Ulsan complex is the world's largest single integrated car plant, with capacity for more than 1.5 million vehicles a year.
Q 07Which GM brand, named for an Odawa chief who led a 1763 uprising near Detroit, was shut after GM's 2009 bankruptcy?
Pontiac
Pontiac's first logo of 1926 showed the chief himself, and the cars were built in Pontiac, Michigan, a city also named after him. The division died in GM's Chapter 11 reorganisation.
Q 08The name of the East German Trabant, a two-stroke people's car built from 1957, is the German word for what?
Satellite
Satellite, or companion, is what Trabant means, an astronomical term for a moon orbiting a planet. The car itself grew out of a planning process meant to design a three-wheeled motorcycle.
Q 09The budget brand Dacia, founded in 1966, takes its name from a Roman province covering much of which modern country?
Romania
Romania's state carmaker kept the ancient name of its homeland, and after 33 years in government hands it was sold to a French group in 1999. Today the no-frills brand sells in more than 40 markets.
Q 10Which German marque, a GM subsidiary from 1929 until its 2017 sale to PSA, began in 1862 making sewing machines?
Opel
Opel traces its roots to Adam Opel's 1862 sewing-machine workshop in Rüsselsheim am Main, and the firm was still advertising its Perfecta sewing machines in 1901. Its 88 years under GM ended with the sale to PSA.
Q 11Brothers John and Horace Dodge built chassis for, and held 10% of, which carmaker before their own 1914 car?
Ford
Ford's original 1903 Model A used an entire Dodge-built chassis, and the brothers took a 10% stake in return for $10,000 of parts. Their own 1914 Model 30-35 was pitched as a slightly upmarket rival to the Model T.
Q 12Which 4x4 brand's name is often traced to Eugene, a magical 'jungle pet' in the Popeye comic strip?
Jeep
Jeep, by one popular account, was what impressed soldiers nicknamed their new vehicle after Eugene the Jeep, a creature able to move between dimensions and solve impossible problems. Eugene debuted in E. C. Segar's Thimble Theatre strip.
Q 13Which Volkswagen Group marque from Mladá Boleslav began in the 1890s as Laurin & Klement, a maker of bicycles?
Škoda
Q 21Which British marque, badged with a griffin, moved its works from London to Luton in 1905?
Vauxhall
Vauxhall began in 1857 as Alexander Wilson's pump and marine-engine works, and the move to Luton coincidentally returned its griffin emblem to the creature's ancestral home. The modern name arrived in 1907.
Q 22MG, whose initials stand for Morris Garages, has been owned since 2007 by which Chinese state-owned carmaker?
SAIC
SAIC Motor inherited MG by absorbing Nanjing Automobile, which had bought the marque's assets after its British parent collapsed in 2005. The brand keeps a European office in Birmingham.
Q 23Which British marque, maker of the XK120 and XK140, traded as SS Cars until a name change in 1945?
Jaguar
Škoda's founders turned to making bicycles after bookseller Václav Klement was snubbed by a German bicycle firm that refused to answer a repair letter written in Czech. Volkswagen took full ownership in 2000.
Q 14The name FIAT is an acronym whose final word names which city, home of Fiat's five-storey Lingotto factory?
Turin
Turin, or Torino, completes 'Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino', founded on 11 July 1899 by a group including Giovanni Agnelli. The Lingotto plant, built from 1915, was then Europe's largest car factory.
Q 15Which marque, maker of the rally-winning Stratos and Delta, was founded in 1906 by two Fiat racing drivers?
Lancia
Lancia left the World Rally Championship in the early 1990s holding ten manufacturers' titles, a record still unmatched three decades later. Vincenzo Lancia and Claudio Fogolin set it up on 27 November 1906, and Fiat took it over in 1969.
Q 16Which performance marque wears a scorpion badge because its Italo-Austrian founder Carlo was born under Scorpio?
Abarth
Abarth & C. was founded in Bologna on 31 March 1949 from the assets of Cisitalia, and Carlo's star sign became the logo. Carlo sold the firm to Fiat on 31 July 1971.
Q 17Maserati, founded in Bologna in 1914 by a family of brothers, has been headquartered since 1940 in which city?
Modena
Modena became home when the Orsi family, who bought out the remaining brothers in 1937, moved the firm next to their steelworks and spark-plug factory in 1940. The company remains there to this day.
Q 18Which Swedish hypercar maker, founded in 1994, builds its cars on a former air-force base at Ängelholm?
Koenigsegg
Koenigsegg develops its own engines, gearboxes and even software in-house, with about 850 staff on the old Swedish Air Force site. Founder Christian von Koenigsegg set out to build a 'world-class' sports car.
Q 19Which Dieppe sports-car marque, dormant after 1995, was relaunched in 2017 with a new mid-engined A110?
Alpine
Alpine's comeback car revived the name of its classic 1960s A110 and was unveiled at the 2017 Geneva Motor Show. Jean Rédélé had founded the Dieppe firm in 1955.
Q 20Which French carmaker formed an alliance with Nissan on 27 March 1999, later expanded to include Mitsubishi?
Renault
Renault's Boulogne-Billancourt headquarters and Nissan's in Yokohama anchor a cross-shareholding alliance whose chairman, Carlos Ghosn, was arrested in Tokyo in November 2018. The partners restructured the tie-up in January 2023.
Jaguar Cars was the new name adopted in 1945, taken from the firm's pre-war SS Jaguar models. It merged with the British Motor Corporation in 1966 and ended up inside nationalised British Leyland.
Q 24Charles Rolls and Henry Royce began their car partnership in 1904 in which city, where Royce already built cranes?
Manchester
Manchester was where Rolls-Royce Limited was established in 1904, building on the reputation of Royce's cranes. The first assembled car was finished by 1 April 1904 and driven by Royce to his home in Knutsford and back.
Q 25Which small Dutch sports-car maker bought Saab Automobile from General Motors in 2010, a year before Saab's bankruptcy?
Spyker
Spyker Cars N.V. could not save Saab: GM blocked every rescue involving a Chinese partner, and the Trollhättan firm filed for bankruptcy on 19 December 2011. Chinese-backed NEVS later bought the remains.
Q 26Which electric brand, spun out of Volvo in 2017, began as a Swedish touring-car racing team founded in 1996?
Polestar
Polestar started life as Flash Engineering in the Scandinavian Touring Car Championship, was renamed in 2005 and became Volvo's tuning arm before Volvo bought the brand outright in July 2015. It is based at Torslanda near Gothenburg.
Q 27Which name, first borne by a 1909 Zeppelin engine maker, did Mercedes-Benz revive in 2002 as an ultra-luxury marque?
Maybach
Maybach sold just 157 cars worldwide in 2010 against 2,711 similarly priced Rolls-Royces, and the standalone brand was laid to rest before returning as a Mercedes sub-brand in 2015. Wilhelm and Karl Maybach had founded the original firm.
Q 28Lada's home city on the Volga was renamed in 1964 after Palmiro Togliatti, a communist leader from which country?
Italy
Italy's longest-serving Communist Party secretary got the honour because he had helped set up the Fiat-backed venture that built the plant, and he died in Yalta that August. The city is now spelled Tolyatti.
Q 29Which Lotus founder, whose engineering creed was 'adding lightness', died of a heart attack in 1982, aged 54?
Colin Chapman
Colin Chapman died on the very day Team Lotus tested the first active-suspension Formula One car, 16 December 1982. 'Adding lightness makes you faster everywhere' was his maxim.
Q 30Which Malvern firm built only three-wheelers until its first four-wheeled car in 1936, then kept the trikes until 1952?
Morgan
Morgan's three-wheeler output was nearing 1,000 cars by the First World War, and the family firm still builds cars on Pickersleigh Road in Malvern. Racing and touring versions of the trike resumed after 1918.