The first mass-produced V8 engine Cadillac is one of America’s oldest makes, and it has been mass-producing cars of quality ever since the company was founded in Detroit by Henry Leland in 1902. For more than 90 years, Cadillac has been at the core of General Motors (GM), and it remains the aspirational luxury brand …
Asteam-powered car seems anachronistic today, but when identical twins F. E. and F. O. Stanley began making them in 1897, it was the most proven motive technology around. Early Stanley cars featured a tubular chassis frame with a light, wooden buggy body. The vertical boiler, under the double seat, at first featured copper fire tubes, …
Strictly speaking, only one Rolls-Royce is named Silver Ghost: the unique, silver-painted, 40/50 hp open tourer with silver trim that was used in 1907 for a 15,000-mile (24,000-km) reliability trial. The title has, however, been retrospectively applied to all examples of the 40/50 hp made between 1906 and 1925-the model that established Rolls-Royce as the …
The history of Mercedes is also the history of the car itself. The companies founded by the two German pioneers of the internal combustion engine and the automobile – Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz – came together to form a marque that now makes some of the world’s most advanced and desirable cars. Many Automotive …
The Model T led an industrial and social revolution, introducing massproduction techniques to car manufacturing and motorizing the United States. Thanks to Henry Ford’s 1913 introduction of a moving assembly line, production hit 1,000 per day in 1914, and U.S. output peaked in 1923, when two million “Tin Lizzies” were made. More than 15 million …
The neighbors might not have realized it, but there was something of a “Eureka!” moment at 58 Bagley Avenue, Detroit in the early hours of June 4, 1896. At about 4am, Henry Ford’s first car clattered into life and set off on its maiden journey along the city’s dark and deserted streets. He was led …
You can probably blame the French count Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat for our global obsession with covering ground as quickly as possible. In 1898, he drove his rickety Jeantaud electric car on a stretch of road near Paris, and was thrilled when timekeepers confirmed that he had reached a speed of 39.24mph (63.15kph). As no one …
The Porsche name first hit the headlines in 1900, when a groundbreaking new vehicle was unveiled at the World Exhibition in Paris. The 24-year-old Austrian-born engineer Ferdinand Porsche was already showing his brilliance, in this case with electric power. At the time, electric cars were just as popular as gas-fueled vehicles. The Lohner coachbuilding company …
The Italian count Mario Ricotti turned out to be quite a visionary. His idea that popular cars of the future would be highly aerodynamic “one box” people carriers was extraordinarily prescient. When Count Ricotti commissioned this stunning machine from the Italian coachbuilder Carrozzeria Castagna, he was said to be in awe of the fashionable airships …