Car History

This site will give you a look into the car history from the first engine powered vehicles to the modern mass produced cars. Take a ride through our car history time line.

Here you can find a shorter extract of the time line, for more car history also read other articles:

1672 Ferdinand Verbiest builds the first steam powered car (not confirmed).

1769 Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot builds the first self-propelled wheeled automobile and drives around (not confirmed if the vehicle actually worked and he really drove around).

1806 François Isaac de Rivaz (from Switzerland) makes the first internal combustion engine. The engine runs on mixture of hydrogen and oxygen.

1877 George Selden from USA makes first American internal combustion engine car.

1881 Gustave Trouvé from France demonstrated a working automobile with three wheels.

1885 Karl Benz builds an automobile powered by an Otto gasoline engine and patents it.

1890 Daimler and Maybach found Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft.

1890 Emile Levassor and Armand Peugeot (France) begin making vehicles with Daimler engines.

- 1893 25 Benz vehicles are built and sold.

1893 Karl Benz introduces first four wheeled vehicle powered by four-stroke engines of his own design.

1895 About 30 vehicles had been built by Daimler and Maybach.

1896 Karl Benz designs first internal combustion flat engine.

1897 Rudolf Diesel builds the first Diesel Engine.

1902 New model DMG automobile is produced and named Mercedes.

1902 Ransom Olds starts production-line manufacturing of more affordable cars in his Oldsmobile factory.

1910 Internal combustion engines achieve dominance over steam powered vehicles.

1914 Henry Ford expands and improves the Ransom Olds production-line manufacturing. Ford car comes off the line every three minutes.

1921 Citroen was the first European manufacturer to adopt production-line manufacturing.

1930 250 car companies that did not have production-line manufacturing disappeared by this year.

For more detailed car history check the rest of the site.