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50 free Classic Car trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Any color so long as it's black. This old car trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers about the classic, vintage and antique automobiles that still stop traffic: the Benz Patent-Motorwagen and Curved Dash Oldsmobile, the Model T and Model A, Duesenbergs and Bugatti Royales, the '57 Bel Air, the first Corvette and Thunderbird, Citroën's hydropneumatic DS, the Mini, the E-Type and the gullwing 300 SL, the Tucker, the Edsel, the Corvair, the DeLorean and the Trabant. The early questions are the ones any car-show regular can field: what the Tin Lizzie was, where the Beetle came from, which car Bond drove. Then it gets tougher, with production numbers, engineers and designers, record-setting launches, famous failures and the club definitions that decide what counts as an antique. Bring it to a cruise night, a garage quiz or a long drive. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on each car and topic, and each question links to the page and sentence that supports it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Antique Automobile Club of America defines an antique car as being at least how old?
25 years
The Classic Car Club of America is stricter, reserving 'classic' for fine or distinctive cars built between 1915 and 1948.
Q 02The Classic Car Club of America's list of 'classics' covers cars built between which years?
1915 and 1948
Only 'fine' or 'distinctive' unmodified American or foreign cars qualify.
Q 03To collectors, a 'vintage' car dates from which period?
1919 to 1930
The era began with cars still a rarity and ended with them well on the way to ubiquity, despite the 1929 crash.
Q 04What was the nickname of the Ford Model T?
Tin Lizzie
Produced from 1908 to 1927, it was named the most influential car of the 20th century in the 1999 Car of the Century vote.
Q 05In what colors was the Model T actually offered from 1908 to 1913, before the all-black years?
Gray, green, blue and red
Ford's famous 'any color so long as it is black' line dates from 1909, but black was not even available at first.
Q 06How many Model Ts had been built when the last one rolled off the line in May 1927?
15 million
It was the best-selling car in history until the Volkswagen Beetle overtook it in 1972.
Q 07The Ford Model A of 1927 was among the first production cars fitted with what?
Safety glass in the windshield
It was also the first Ford with a conventional clutch, brake and gearshift layout, though the brake and throttle pedals were reversed from today's.
Q 08Which car is credited as the first mass-produced automobile built on an assembly line?
Curved Dash Oldsmobile
Introduced in 1901, it owed its success partly to a fire that destroyed the company's other prototypes.
Q 09How many wheels did the original Benz Patent-Motorwagen have?
Three
Carl Benz's single-cylinder, belt-driven machine of 1885-86 is widely regarded as the first practical automobile and the first put into production.
Q 10Bertha Benz's pioneering 1888 drive in a Patent-Motorwagen went to which town?
Pforzheim
The trip revealed the car's trouble on hills; she reportedly had to get out and push when the belt slipped.
Q 11Which magazine coined the phrase 'the best car in the world' for the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost in 1907?
Autocar
The chassis was officially the 40/50 h.p.; only one car, AX 201, was originally named Silver Ghost, but the press applied it to all of them.
Q 12How many Bugatti Royales were built?
Seven
Ettore Bugatti planned 25 for royalty, but the Depression intervened and only three were sold. Spare engines ended up in French railcars.
Q 13Which brothers founded Duesenberg in Indianapolis in 1920?
Fred and August
Duesenbergs won the Indy 500 four times in the 1920s; in 1922 eight of the top ten finishers were Duesenbergs.
Q 21The Volkswagen bus was inspired by a request from which Dutch importer?
Ben Pon
Introduced in 1950, it was known as the Transporter, Kombi or Microbus, and as the Bulli in Germany.
Q 22Where was the Porsche 356, the first production Porsche, initially built in 1948?
Gmünd, Austria
About 50 cars were built there before production moved to Germany; roughly half of the 76,000 made survive.
Q 23What made the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL of 1954 instantly recognizable?
Gullwing doors
US importer Max Hoffman pushed for a road version of the 1952 racer. At up to 162 mph it was the fastest production car of its time.
Q 14Studebaker started in 1852 making what?
Wagons and carriages
The South Bend firm entered the car business with electric vehicles in 1902; the last Studebaker was built in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1966.
Q 15In which city was the first Packard built in 1899?
Warren, Ohio
The luxury marque merged with Studebaker in 1953 and was phased out after the 1958 model year.
Q 16The 1934 Chrysler Airflow was the first full-size American production car designed around what?
Streamlining
Engineers tested at least 50 scale models in a wind tunnel with help from Orville Wright, but buyers rejected the look.
Q 17The Lincoln Continental began as a one-off vacation car built for whom in 1939?
Edsel Ford
Ford's president commissioned a coachbuilt Lincoln-Zephyr convertible to attract potential buyers.
Q 18How many Willys MB and Ford GPW jeeps were built during World War II?
About 626,000
It was the world's first mass-produced four-wheel-drive car and about a quarter of all US military support vehicles built in the war.
Q 19How many Volkswagen Beetles were produced between 1938 and 2003?
21.5 million
Its 65-year production run is the longest for any single generation of automobile.
Q 20Which engineer led the design of the Volkswagen Beetle in the 1930s?
Ferdinand Porsche
The basic concept is credited to Béla Barényi as early as 1925. Hitler wanted a car for two adults and three children using no more than seven liters per 100 km.
Q 24Which two features debuted on the Citroën DS in 1955 as firsts for a mass-production car?
Hydropneumatic suspension and disc brakes
Orders hit 12,000 on the first day of the Paris Motor Show and 80,000 over ten days, a record until the Tesla Model 3.
Q 25How many deposits did the Citroën DS take during the ten days of the 1955 Paris Motor Show?
80,000
The record stood for over 60 years until the Tesla Model 3 collected 180,000 first-day deposits in 2016.
Q 26The original Issigonis-designed BMC small car of 1959 had its gearbox uniquely built into what?
The engine's sump
Engine and gearbox shared the same oil, a space-saving design born of the 1956 Suez Crisis and fears of fuel shortages.
Q 27Under which two names was BMC's ADO15 small car first sold in Britain in 1959?
Austin Seven and Morris Mini-Minor
Alec Issigonis's project ADO15 rode on 10-inch wheels and rubber-cone springs devised by Alex Moulton.
Q 28The Jaguar XK-E, as Americans knew it, was based on which of the marque's Le Mans-winning racers?
The D-Type
The D-Type won Le Mans three years running from 1955. Enzo Ferrari is rumored to have called the E-Type the most beautiful car ever made.
Q 29What was the Aston Martin DB5's first James Bond film?
Goldfinger
The DB initials honor David Brown, who built up the company from 1947. Touring Superleggera designed the body.
Q 30The MG MGB, MGC and MGB GT V8 together sold how many cars between 1962 and 1980?
About 524,000
The roadster replaced the MGA; fixed-roof GT models stopped being exported to the US in 1974.