What Year Was The First Car Made?

I was just thinking about when was the first car made? After some research I was able to gather some data:

1672 – First internal combustion engine which was fueled by a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen and develop the world’s first vehicle to run on such an engine.

Where Was The First Car Made?

=> 1770 – The Cugnot steam traction engine was built this year. This is considered as the year when the first car was made.

=> Around 1860 – The first powerful car dream came true around 1860 with the invention of the internal combustion engine by the Belgian Etienne Lenoir.

=> 1885 – Karl Benz built an automobile powered by an Otto gasoline engine. He received a patent in the 1886 for the same. Mr. Benz is generally credited with the invention of the modern automobile.

=> Around 1890 – Companies or group of people started to building cars for public. For example, Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler in Germany, and Albert de Dion and Armand Peugeot in France were busy building cars.

By todays standard almost all early cars considered as primitive and expensive. These early cars produced in limited numbers. The first cars were hand assembled and required skilled engineers or mechanics to build cars. So cars were very expensive as compare to todays technology and standards.

Mass production of cars credit goes to Henry ford in America. In 1908 the first mass-produced car was introduced – the Ford Model T. By 1920, 50-60% care in the world were Model T from Fords. However these days the design of modern cars is handled by a large team of designers, scientists and engineers.

Author: admin

I like chocolate, gadgets, open source software, photography, traveling and all shades of green colors. I love spending time with fun loving friends and family members. This is my own online journal.

60 thoughts on “What Year Was The First Car Made?”

  1. Wow!!!! That is the earliest date I have heard of for a car!!! Where did you find the reference for that humdinger!

  2. cheers for that but i just want to know when the first steering system was installed into automobiles?????

  3. The first automobiles were steered with a tiller, but Packard introduced the steering wheel on the second car they built, in 1899. Within a decade, the steering wheel had entirely replaced the tiller in automobiles.

    C S Rolls introduced the first car in Britain fitted with wheel steering as he imported a 6 hp Panhard & Levassor from France in 1898. Arthur Constantin KREBS replaced the tiller with an inclined steering wheel for the Panhard car he designed for the Paris-Amsterdam race which ran from the 7th to 13rd of July 1898.

    In 1894 Alfred Vacheron took part in the famous Paris-Rouen-Race. He called his vehicle like his name “Vacheron”. But in fact it was a 1893 Panhard 4hp model which he had fitted with a “wheel steering”! That is believed to be one of the earliest employments of this principle. In the race which was won by a De Dion-Bouton Steam-mobile, Vacheron became 11th. (Source: the book “The World on Wheels – Volume I” by H.O.Duncan, printed in Paris 1927, page 456-457)

  4. Salam , Thank you < I had a homework for car history , I learnt a lot and helped my home work.
    Nima age 14, Iran

  5. Internal Combustion Engine – The Heart of the Automobile
    An internal combustion engine is any engine that uses the explosive combustion of fuel to push a piston within a cylinder – the piston’s movement turns a crankshaft that then turns the car wheels via a chain or a drive shaft. The different types of fuel commonly used for car combustion engines are gasoline (or petrol), diesel, and kerosene.

    A brief outline of the history of the internal combustion engine includes the following highlights:

    1680 – Dutch physicist, Christian Huygens designed (but never built) an internal combustion engine that was to be fueled with gunpowder.
    1807 – Francois Isaac de Rivaz of Switzerland invented an internal combustion engine that used a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen for fuel. Rivaz designed a car for his engine – the first internal combustion powered automobile. However, his was a very unsuccessful design.
    1824 – English engineer, Samuel Brown adapted an old Newcomen steam engine to burn gas, and he used it to briefly power a vehicle up Shooter’s Hill in London.
    1858 – Belgian-born engineer, Jean Joseph Étienne Lenoir invented and patented (1860) a double-acting, electric spark-ignition internal combustion engine fueled by coal gas. In 1863, Lenoir attached an improved engine (using petroleum and a primitive carburetor) to a three-wheeled wagon that managed to complete an historic fifty-mile road trip. (See image at top)
    1862 – Alphonse Beau de Rochas, a French civil engineer, patented but did not build a four-stroke engine (French patent #52,593, January 16, 1862).
    1864 – Austrian engineer, Siegfried Marcus*, built a one-cylinder engine with a crude carburetor, and attached his engine to a cart for a rocky 500-foot drive. Several years later, Marcus designed a vehicle that briefly ran at 10 mph that a few historians have considered as the forerunner of the modern automobile by being the world’s first gasoline-powered vehicle (however, read conflicting notes below).
    1873 – George Brayton, an American engineer, developed an unsuccessful two-stroke kerosene engine (it used two external pumping cylinders). However, it was considered the first safe and practical oil engine.
    1866 – German engineers, Eugen Langen and Nikolaus August Otto improved on Lenoir’s and de Rochas’ designs and invented a more efficient gas engine.
    1876 – Nikolaus August Otto invented and later patented a successful four-stroke engine, known as the “Otto cycle”.
    1876 – The first successful two-stroke engine was invented by Sir Dougald Clerk.
    1883 – French engineer, Edouard Delamare-Debouteville, built a single-cylinder four-stroke engine that ran on stove gas. It is not certain if he did indeed build a car, however, Delamare-Debouteville’s designs were very advanced for the time – ahead of both Daimler and Benz in some ways at least on paper.
    1885 – Gottlieb Daimler invented what is often recognized as the prototype of the modern gas engine – with a vertical cylinder, and with gasoline injected through a carburetor (patented in 1887). Daimler first built a two-wheeled vehicle the “Reitwagen” (Riding Carriage) with this engine and a year later built the world’s first four-wheeled motor vehicle.
    1886 – On January 29, Karl Benz received the first patent (DRP No. 37435) for a gas-fueled car.
    1889 – Daimler built an improved four-stroke engine with mushroom-shaped valves and two V-slant cylinders.
    1890 – Wilhelm Maybach built the first four-cylinder, four-stroke engine.
    Further Reading – The Mechanics of Internal Combustion Engines – What is a 2-stroke? 4-stroke?

  6. Can you tell me if Benz used the style from the Rockaway Carriage for his body style on his first car? I saw at an old car show–a very old car that had the same body as our six passenger Rockaway carriage.
    I thought that I had read some place that they used the body style, but can’t remember what vehicle it was.

  7. hi, it really helped me with my homework. i have an assignment and this website totally help me!!
    THNX!!!!!!!!

  8. its not really that early! maybe if you paid attention in school, you’d be able to no that, now wouldnt you? u should study and then you might get a certificate for least improved. and that will be a huge step 4 u, i just know it!!

  9. lol anonymous 2 and 3 (which I assume to be the same entity) owned you all with his literary adroitness

  10. You would be able to “know” that, too, now wouldn’t You?

    Don’t you just hate when you are so eager to post and put someone else down that you forget to edit your own sarcastic BS. I just hate when that happens. I call it karma- it finds me quite expeditiously. Cheers!

  11. I think the answer yet isnt very clearly after blogging for over 2 yrs on this page – Do u credit the ‘car discovery’ to jus the ‘heart’ of the car i.e. the IC engine being developed? cuz that’d be like a torso with no limbs or any support organs. then if u credit the completeness of the car as a discovery, do u giv it to diamler or benz or who all in the 1850 – 1900 era cuz there wer a lot of those people runnin around in the bid to make the first car.. THINK!!

  12. who cares about spelling im the worst at it but all that pettie shit ur donig no one needs to read about it, it was always about the car not ur crap

  13. the first creator or inventor of the automobile was Brian Gray(18 years old) in munich germany in 1884, 4 months before karl benz. he helped design and make an inline 6 cylinder combustable engine. He actually first used a wheel for his steering mechanism in his car. The name of his automible carried the name brian motor wagen, later changed to bmw and it was remade to bavarian motor werks. baveria replaced brian since at the time bavarian was still the provence in germany and funded by the bavarian royals.

  14. Dear John,

    I thought this too, itsn’t it the earliest date that we’ve both seen!

    Hope you get my reply
    Yours sinserly
    Lukie 2013

  15. Thank’s a lot it realy does help with the homework had to do a report aboute the first car in the world

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