Cars
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This car trivia quiz runs from Henry Ford's assembly line to the electric revolution in 173 free questions with answers: the badges and brands, the models everyone recognises, the engineers and racers who made them famous, and the odd facts about speed records, safety and design along the way. About half of the questions are easy enough to work as car trivia for kids, so it suits a family road trip or a classroom, and the rest climb to the sort of thing only a real gearhead knows. Every answer has been checked against a reliable source and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 173 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does 'SUV' stand for?
Sport Utility Vehicle
Sport Utility Vehicle: in the US most were long classed as light trucks, which let them meet looser fuel-economy rules than ordinary cars.
Q 02The Tesla Model S, produced from 2012, won which magazine's Car of the Year award for 2013?
Motor Trend
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.
Q 03Which Italian designer, also behind the first Volkswagen Golf, styled the gull-winged DMC DeLorean?
Giorgetto Giugiaro
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.
Q 04Which Swedish carmaker, born from an aircraft manufacturer, went bankrupt in 2011?
Saab
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.
Q 05Ford's moving assembly line for complete cars began running in 1913 at which Michigan plant?
Highland Park
Highland Park's moving line cut the time to build a Model T from more than 12 hours to about 93 minutes.
Q 06Which film franchise features Dominic Toretto and street racing culture?
Fast & Furious
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.
Q 07Which race has been run since 1911 on the 2.5-mile oval nicknamed the Brickyard?
Indianapolis 500
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.
Q 08What color was the Ford Model T exclusively available in from 1914 to 1925?
Black
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.
Q 09Which Japanese carmaker's name means 'three diamonds', the shape of its badge?
Mitsubishi
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.
Q 10What does the badge 'GT' stand for on a car?
Grand Touring
Grand Touring renders the Italian 'gran turismo', literally 'great touring': the badge marked cars built to cover long distances fast and in comfort.
Q 11Which dashboard gauge shows engine speed in revolutions per minute?
The tachometer
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.
Q 12Which luxury car brand uses a 'Spirit of Ecstasy' hood ornament?
Rolls-Royce
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.
Q 13As of 2024, which country builds the most motor vehicles each year?
China
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.
Q 21Before Schumacher, which driver held the record with five Formula One titles (1951-57)?
Juan Manuel Fangio
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.
Q 22What 1885 vehicle is widely considered the first true internal-combustion automobile?
Benz Patent-Motorwagen
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.
Q 23Which Italian supercar maker was founded in 1963 by a successful tractor manufacturer?
Lamborghini
Q 14Which car nameplate passed 50 million sales in 2021, more than any other in history?
Toyota Corolla
Toyota Corolla is a name more than a single car: the 50 million are really twelve successive designs sold under it since 1966.
Q 15In a car's braking system, what do the letters ABS stand for?
Anti-lock Braking System
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.
Q 16Which car, launched in April 1964, sold over 400,000 in its first year and spawned a new class of affordable sporty coupes?
Ford Mustang
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.
Q 17What is a 'turbocharger' in a car engine?
A device that compresses intake air
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.
Q 18What was the first mass-produced petrol-electric hybrid car, launched in Japan in December 1997?
Prius
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.
Q 19Which rear-engined Porsche sports car made its debut at the 1963 Frankfurt Motor Show?
911
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.
Q 20Which NASCAR race is considered the 'Super Bowl of Stock Car Racing'?
Daytona 500
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.
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.
Q 24What does the 'C8' in the Chevrolet Corvette's production code refer to?
The eighth generation
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.
Q 25Swedish engineer Nils Bohlin gave the world which safety device in 1959?
Three-point belt
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.
Q 26Which 1968 film is famed for its car chase over the hills of San Francisco?
Bullitt
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.
Q 27Which was the first car Tesla delivered to customers, starting in February 2008?
Roadster
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.
Q 28Which Japanese manufacturer developed the 'VTEC' engine system?
Honda
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.
Q 29In the name of the Bugatti Veyron 16.4, what does the '4' stand for?
Four turbochargers
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.
Q 30Which car brand's name comes from the Latin word for 'I roll'?
Volvo
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.