146 Fun Facts About Cars & Automotive

Which German engineer patented his three-wheeled Motorwagen in 1886, widely regarded as the first practical automobile?

Karl Benz's invention was proved by his wife: in 1888 Bertha Benz drove a Motorwagen about 100 km to her mother's in Pforzheim without telling him, the first long-distance car journey.

What is the best-selling car nameplate of all time, with over 50 million units sold worldwide?

The Toyota Corolla passed 50 million sales in 2021, twelve generations after its 1966 launch; its name is Latin for a little crown or garland, a nod to the bigger Toyota Crown.

What was the nickname commonly given to the Ford Model T?

Tin Lizzie kept getting cheaper: the Model T cost $825 at its 1908 launch and $260 by 1925, and some 15 million had been built when production ended in 1927.

Ferrari's prancing-horse emblem came from the plane of which Italian WWI flying ace?

Francesco Baracca was killed in 1918; after Enzo won at Ravenna in 1923 he met the ace's parents, and Countess Paolina urged him to carry her son's horse on his cars for luck.

Which sports car maker was founded in 1963 by a man who had made his fortune building tractors?

Lamborghini's founder, Ferruccio, began in 1948 by building tractors from discarded war material, fitting them with engines and differentials from surplus military trucks.

Which safety device did Swedish engineer Nils Bohlin invent in 1959?

The three-point seatbelt came naturally to Nils Bohlin, who had developed ejector seats for aircraft; his employer made it standard in 1959 and later let every carmaker use the design free.

Which dashboard instrument shows how fast the engine is turning, in revolutions per minute?

The tachometer lets a driver change gear at the right moment, and the red zone at the top of its dial marks engine speeds high enough to do damage.

Which US state is home to the Bonneville Salt Flats, where land speed records fell for decades?

Utah's salt flats are the bed of an Ice Age lake, so hard and level that Malcolm Campbell became the first driver to pass 300 mph there in 1935.

Which measure of a petrol's quality describes its resistance to engine knock?

Octane rating shows how much squeezing a petrol can take before it ignites by itself and knocks, which is why high-compression performance engines are built to run on premium fuel.

Which car brand's logo features four interlocking rings?

Audi's logo of four interlocking rings represents the four companies that merged in 1932 to form Auto Union: Audi, DKW, Horch, and Wanderer.

Which car, unveiled at the 1964 New York World's Fair, launched a new class of affordable sporty coupés?

The Ford Mustang was forecast to sell 100,000 a year; 22,000 were ordered on the first day and over 400,000 went in twelve months, and its imitators became known as pony cars.

Which car, launched in 1997, was the world's first mass-produced petrol-electric hybrid?

The Toyota Prius became a hybrid because of a target: its engineers had planned a 50% gain in fuel economy from a better petrol engine, then management demanded double.

What does ABS stand for on a car?

Anti-lock Braking System: by stopping the wheels from locking under hard braking, it keeps the tyres gripping the road, so the driver can still steer while stopping.

Which rear-engined Stuttgart sports car has been built continuously since 1964?

The 911 was launched as the 901, but a French carmaker claimed the rights to three-digit names with a zero in the middle, so the 0 became a 1 after only 82 cars had been built.

Which car brand's hood ornament is called the "Spirit of Ecstasy"?

Rolls-Royce commissioned the figure from sculptor Charles Sykes in 1911 because owners had begun fitting 'inappropriate' mascots of their own to its radiators.

Which military vehicle, mass-produced during World War II, became the ancestor of the modern Jeep brand?

The Willys MB, built alongside Ford's near-identical GPW from 1941 to 1945, was the wartime jeep; Willys turned it into the civilian CJ-2A in 1945, the first of the Jeep line.

Which Volkswagen was the most-produced single-platform car ever, at over 21.5 million units?

The Beetle owes its long life to a British Army officer: Major Ivan Hirst restarted the bombed Wolfsburg factory in 1945, and 21,529,464 were built before the last left Mexico in 2003.

What do the letters GT on a sports car stand for?

Gran Turismo is Italian for grand touring: the letters first marked fast, comfortable coupés built for long journeys, but carmakers have since stuck them on hot hatchbacks and many cars that are nothing of the kind.

Which automaker holds the record for the most overall wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race?

Porsche took until 1970 to win Le Mans outright, then made up for lost time: 19 victories, including a record seven in a row from 1981 to 1987.

Which engine layout places its cylinders horizontally opposed to one another in two banks?

A boxer (flat) engine's opposed pistons move in and out together, which cancels much of the vibration, and its low, wide shape gives the car a low centre of gravity.

Which stainless-steel sports car flopped in showrooms, then found fame as a 1985 movie time machine?

The DeLorean DMC-12 was built in Northern Ireland for under two years; founder John DeLorean was arrested in a 1982 drug sting days before the firm went bankrupt, and was later acquitted.

Which Japanese automaker built rotary-engined cars from the 1967 Cosmo to the RX-8?

Mazda took up the rotary in the 1960s to stand apart from bigger rivals, once its engineers had cured the 'devil's fingernails', chatter marks the spinning rotor scratched into its housing.

Which engine device uses exhaust gases to spin a wheel that forces extra air into the cylinders?

A turbocharger recycles energy that would otherwise blow out of the exhaust pipe; the pause while the exhaust spins it up to speed is the 'turbo lag' drivers feel.

Which race, first run in 1911, is held on a 2.5-mile oval every Memorial Day weekend?

Indianapolis 500 winners swig milk in victory lane, a custom that grew from Louis Meyer asking for buttermilk after his 1936 win; Ray Harroun won the first race in 1911.

What does the term "displacement" refer to when describing a car engine?

Volume swept by all the pistons, given in litres or cc, is a rough guide to an engine's muscle: the more air and fuel its cylinders can draw in, the more power it can make.

Which luxury brand, revived by Volkswagen in 1998, built the Veyron and Chiron hypercars?

Bugatti had been revived once before: an Italian entrepreneur relaunched it in 1987, but that company folded in 1995 and Volkswagen bought the name three years later.

Which driver matched Michael Schumacher's record of seven Formula 1 world titles in 2020?

Lewis Hamilton sealed his seventh title by winning the 2020 Turkish Grand Prix; a year later he lost an eighth to Max Verstappen on the last lap of the season.

What is the main advantage of all-wheel drive over two-wheel drive?

Better grip on slippery surfaces comes from driving all four wheels: if one tyre spins on ice or mud, the others can still push the car along. The cost is extra weight and fuel.

Which European automaker began offering a driver airbag on its flagship saloon in 1981?

Mercedes-Benz succeeded where General Motors had given up: GM sold airbags in the mid-1970s, then dropped the option for lack of buyers.

Which race has opened NASCAR's Cup Series season every year since 1982?

Daytona 500 fame dates from 1979, the first shown live from start to finish: with much of the East snowed in, viewers saw the leaders crash on the last lap and brawl beside the track.

Which car component converts the pistons' reciprocating motion into rotation?

The crankshaft works like the pedal cranks on a bicycle: each piston pushes down on an offset crankpin through its connecting rod, as a rider's leg pushes a pedal, and the shaft turns.

Which English circuit hosted the first Formula 1 World Championship race in 1950?

Silverstone had been a wartime RAF bomber station; its three runways still lie inside the outline of the track, which first held a Grand Prix in 1948.

What does the abbreviation CVT stand for in a car's drivetrain?

Continuously Variable Transmission: a belt running between two pulleys that change width gives endless ratios, so the engine can sit at its most efficient speed whatever the car's speed.

Which desert raid, founded by Thierry Sabine, first set off from Paris in 1978?

The Dakar Rally was born after Thierry Sabine got lost in the Sahara on an earlier rally; security threats in Mauritania cancelled the 2008 race and drove it to South America, then Saudi Arabia.

Which term describes a car whose front wheels lose grip before the rear wheels when cornering?

Understeer means the front tyres run out of grip first, so the car ploughs on, wide of the corner; racing drivers call it 'push', and the tail-happy opposite 'loose'.

Which Crewe-based British luxury automaker has been owned by Volkswagen since 1998?

Bentley chairman Woolf Barnato bet £100 in 1930 that his Speed Six could carry him from Cannes to his London club before the Blue Train reached Calais, and won by four minutes.

What does regenerative braking do in electric and hybrid vehicles?

It recovers kinetic energy when slowing: the motor runs as a generator, turning motion into battery charge instead of wasted heat, so the brake pads last longer too.

Which Turin design house, founded in 1930, styled most Ferrari road cars from the 1950s?

Pininfarina's partnership began in 1951 at a restaurant in Tortona, halfway between Turin and Modena, because neither Pinin Farina nor Enzo would visit the other's headquarters.

Which carmaker brought turbo engines to Formula 1 in 1977 with a car rivals mocked as the 'Yellow Teapot'?

Renault's RS01 blew up so regularly, usually in a cloud of white smoke, that rival teams gave it the nickname; it failed to finish any of its first races.

Which British sports car maker, founded by Colin Chapman, built the Seven, the Elan and the Elise?

Lotus grew from a trials car Colin Chapman built in a garage in 1948; his creed that adding lightness makes a car faster everywhere helped Team Lotus to seven Formula 1 constructors' titles.

Before building cars under his own name, Enzo Ferrari ran the racing team of which carmaker?

Alfa Romeo raced through Enzo's Scuderia from 1929; when he walked out in 1939, a four-year clause kept his name off the track, so his first car was called simply the 815.

The 1924 Chrysler Six, the first car to carry the Chrysler name, came standard with which then-rare feature?

Hydraulic brakes on all four wheels were new to mass-produced cars; Walter Chrysler unveiled the Six in January 1924 at New York's Commodore Hotel, timed to the city's auto show.

The Veyron hypercar's 8.0-litre engine uses which layout, like two narrow-angle V8s joined side by side?

The W16 pairs two narrow-angle V8 banks in one engine; making 1,001 PS, it throws off so much heat that the car carries ten radiators.

Which American vehicle, on sale since the 1935 model year, is the world's longest-running nameplate?

The Chevrolet Suburban has appeared in so many films and TV shows, some 1,750 since 1952, that in 2019 it was given its own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In rallying, what is the co-driver's main job during a special stage?

Reading pacenotes aloud tells the driver what lies beyond each crest and bend, its direction and severity, so the crew can attack corners they cannot yet see.

Which carmaker's name is Latin for 'I roll'?

Volvo comes from the Latin verb volvere, to roll: the name was first registered for a line of ball bearings, then given to the bearing maker's new car in 1927.

Which law of aerodynamics says faster-moving air over a surface creates lower pressure than slower air below?

Bernoulli's principle is why racing cars wear their wings upside down: air speeds up beneath the wing, the pressure there drops, and the car is pressed onto the track.

Which carmaker beat Henry Ford to mass production with his Curved Dash runabout of 1901?

Ransom Olds built 425 Curved Dash runabouts in 1901 from interchangeable parts on an early assembly line; he said a factory fire that spared only that prototype chose the car for him.

The Mercedes three-pointed star stands for whose ambition to motorise land, water and air?

Gottlieb Daimler had sketched the star years earlier; his company registered both a three-pointed and a four-pointed version as trademarks in June 1909, nine years after he died.

Which carmaker's badge shows six stars representing the Pleiades cluster?

Subaru is the Japanese name for the Pleiades, of which six stars are visible to the naked eye; the badge's large star and five small ones also recall the five firms that merged into Fuji Heavy Industries in 1953.

The Alfa Romeo badge's red cross and serpent swallowing a person come from which city's heraldry?

Milan is where the firm was founded in 1910: the red cross is the city's emblem, and the serpent, the biscione, was the badge of the Visconti family who ruled it in the 14th century.

Which brand takes its name from a French explorer who founded Detroit, and its crest from his coat of arms?

Cadillac is named after Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, who founded Detroit in 1701, and its crest is based on his arms; the company was formed in 1902 from the remains of the Henry Ford Company.

Louis Chevrolet, who co-founded Chevrolet with William Durant in 1911, had earlier been hired by Durant for what?

Durant hired the Swiss-born racer to drive Buicks in races, then used the Chevrolet company's success to win back control of General Motors, which he had founded in 1908 and lost in 1910.

The blue and white quarters of BMW's roundel are the colours of which German state?

Bavaria's colours, not a spinning propeller: that popular reading comes from a 1929 BMW advert that drew the badge on an aircraft, a nod to the aero engines the firm began with.

Which luxury brand did Toyota launch in 1989 with the LS 400 saloon?

Lexus grew out of a 1983 challenge from Toyota chairman Eiji Toyoda to build the world's best car; the project swallowed over $1 billion and about 450 prototypes.

Which small Italian town has been home to Ferrari's factory since 1943?

Maranello became the firm's base when Enzo moved his works out of Modena in wartime; the first car to carry his name was built there four years later, in 1947.

Which 1964 Pontiac option package is often credited with starting the muscle-car era?

GTO began as an option package to get round a GM rule capping mid-size cars at 330 cubic inches; Pontiac planned 5,000 and sold 32,450 in the first year.

Which 1961 British sports car did an Italian rival's founder reputedly call 'the most beautiful car ever made'?

The Jaguar E-Type is the car Enzo Ferrari reputedly praised; in 1996 New York's Museum of Modern Art added one to its permanent design collection.

The Chevrolet Corvette, launched in 1953, was named after what?

A small warship: the corvette is a fast, lightly armed naval escort, and Chevrolet PR man Myron Scott proposed the name in 1953, the year the first cars were built.

Which car did Alec Issigonis design in response to fuel rationing after the 1956 Suez Crisis?

The Mini, launched by BMC in 1959, was Issigonis's answer to Suez-era petrol rationing: its transverse engine and front-wheel drive left about 80% of the floorpan for people and luggage, a layout most small cars later copied.

Which classic car did James Bond drive in 'Goldfinger' (1964)?

The Aston Martin DB5 was a film upgrade: in Ian Fleming's novel Bond drives an older DB Mark III. One of the film cars was stolen in Florida in 1997 and was still missing in 2021.

Since 2003, Rolls-Royce cars have been built at Goodwood by a subsidiary of which company?

BMW won the name in 1998 without buying the factory: a rival paid £430m for the old car works, but the aero-engine firm that owned the Rolls-Royce name licensed it to BMW for £40m.

Which now-defunct GM division offered Hydra-Matic, the first mass-produced fully automatic transmission, for 1940?

Oldsmobile sold Hydra-Matic as a $57 option; within a few years the same gearbox was at war, shifting gears in American M5 Stuart and M24 Chaffee light tanks.

What engine component is responsible for igniting the air-fuel mixture in a gasoline engine?

A spark plug needs help to fire: the ignition coil transforms the battery's low voltage into the far higher voltage that makes a spark jump the plug's gap and light the mixture.

Which system, mandatory on new US cars from 2012, brakes individual wheels to correct skids?

Electronic Stability Control went mainstream after a Swedish magazine rolled a new small car in its 1997 'moose test' swerve; the maker halted sales and fitted the system to cure it.

Which car body style has a three-box layout with separate engine, passenger and cargo areas?

Sedan was first applied to a car in 1912, borrowed from the sedan chair, an enclosed seat carried on poles; British drivers call the same three-box shape a saloon.

Which Swedish aircraft builder launched its first car, the 92, in 1949?

Saab's car was drawn up by sixteen aircraft engineers, only two of whom held a driving licence; their streamlined 92 had a drag coefficient of 0.30, remarkable for 1949.

Which German engineer gave his name to the compression-ignition engine he patented in the 1890s?

Rudolf Diesel vanished in 1913 from a steamer crossing from Antwerp to England, and a body carrying his belongings was found at sea days later.

Which component lets the outer driven wheel turn faster than the inner one when a car corners?

The differential splits drive between the two wheels on an axle while letting them turn at different speeds; without it both wheels would be locked together and one would scrub or hop through every turn.

What job does an intercooler do in a car engine?

It cools the compressed intake air: squeezing air heats it, and cooler air is denser, so more oxygen and fuel fit into each cylinder and the engine makes more power.

Which engineer led the design team behind the Volkswagen Type 1 in the 1930s?

Ferdinand Porsche's design sat so close to Hans Ledwinka's rear-engined Tatras that Tatra sued, and Volkswagen settled out of court after the war.

Engineer Ralph Teetor devised modern cruise control in the 1940s despite what?

He was blind from childhood. Family lore says the idea came on drives with his lawyer, who slowed down whenever he talked and sped up when he listened.

Which electric car became the world's best-selling vehicle of any kind in 2023?

The Tesla Model Y sold about 1.2 million in 2023, the first electric car to top the world's sales charts; a petrol-hybrid SUV, the Toyota RAV4, took the title back a year later.

Robert Kearns won patent suits against Ford and Chrysler over which invention?

Intermittent wipers were modelled on the eye, which blinks every few seconds: Kearns, whose own left eye had been damaged by a champagne cork, had the idea while driving in light rain.

Which exhaust device, fitted to most new US petrol cars from 1975, forced the switch to unleaded fuel?

Catalytic converter metals such as platinum are 'poisoned' by lead, which coats the catalyst and stops it working, so leaded petrol had to go.

Which car, launched in 1948, was designed to carry a basket of eggs across a ploughed field unbroken?

The Citroën 2CV's brief asked for an 'umbrella on four wheels' to take four people and 50 kg of farm goods to market at 50 km/h; its prototypes were hidden from the occupying Germans.

Which RAF pilot drove ThrustSSC through the sound barrier for the 1997 land speed record?

Andy Green drove for project leader Richard Noble, whose Thrust2 held the old record; he hit 763 mph in Nevada, 50 years and a day after Chuck Yeager first went supersonic in the air.

Which rocket carried a Tesla Roadster and its 'Starman' mannequin into orbit in 2018?

Falcon Heavy's first test flight needed a dummy payload, so Elon Musk sent his own car, its stereo set to loop David Bowie's 'Space Oddity' and 'DON'T PANIC!' on the dashboard.

Which tiny rear-engined Fiat of 1957 won designer Dante Giacosa a Compasso d'Oro prize?

The Fiat 500 was sold as the Nuova 500, new because Dante Giacosa had already engineered a front-engined 500, the 1936 Topolino, two decades earlier.

The 1954 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL coupé is best known for which type of door?

The 300 SL's gullwing doors, hinged at the roof, were a necessity: the car's lightweight tubular spaceframe ran high along the sills, leaving no room for conventional doors.

Which American racer ended Ferrari's run of six straight Le Mans wins in 1966, finishing first, second and third?

The Ford GT40 was Henry Ford II's answer to a snub: he set out to win Le Mans after talks to buy Enzo's company in 1963 came to nothing, and his cars won in 1966.

The East German Trabant's duroplast body panels were reinforced with what?

Recycled cotton waste from the Soviet Union, bound with resin from East Germany's dye industry, stood in for steel, which the country was chronically short of.

Which 1990s supercar seated its driver in the centre, with a passenger on either side?

The McLaren F1's engine bay is lined with gold foil as a heat shield; with its driver in the middle, it reached 240.1 mph in 1998, then a record for a production car.

The Lamborghini Miura of 1966 took its name from what?

A fighting-bull breeder, Don Eduardo Miura of Seville, gave the car its name after the firm's founder visited his ranch in 1962 and took the bull as his badge.

Maserati's trident logo is modelled on a statue of Neptune in which Italian city?

Mario Maserati, the artist among the brothers, drew the emblem from Giambologna's Fountain of Neptune in Bologna, where the firm was founded in 1914 before its 1940 move to Modena.

Which Indian carmaker unveiled the Nano in 2008, priced at one lakh rupees?

Tata Motors priced the Nano at 100,000 rupees, roughly $2,000 to $2,500, yet sales never neared the planned 250,000 a year.

Which 1975 model, styled by Italdesign, was South Korea's first domestically developed car?

The Hyundai Pony, styled by Giugiaro's Italdesign and launched in 1975, was the first car developed in South Korea; it used Mitsubishi engines and was engineered under ex-British Leyland boss George Turnbull.

British sports car maker Morgan traditionally frames its body shells with which wood?

Ash has framed Morgan bodies for about a century, but contrary to the popular myth the wood is only the body's substructure: the chassis underneath is metal.

How many Tucker 48 sedans were built before Preston Tucker's company collapsed in 1949?

Just 51 Tucker 48s were built, the 'Tin Goose' prototype plus 50 production cars, before the plant closed in 1949; Preston Tucker was acquitted of fraud in 1950, and Coppola filmed the story in 1988.

Aston Martin's name combines founder Lionel Martin's surname with what?

A hill-climb venue: Lionel Martin raced his specials at Aston Hill in Buckinghamshire, and the name joined the hill to his own, leaving partner Robert Bamford out.

Which 1955 French saloon introduced self-levelling hydropneumatic suspension on all four wheels?

The Citroën DS, launched at the 1955 Paris Salon, had self-levelling hydropneumatic suspension on all four wheels, able to raise the car to change a wheel without a jack, and brought front disc brakes to mass production.

Which driver nicknamed the Nürburgring 'the Green Hell'?

Jackie Stewart, who won the 1968 German Grand Prix there by four minutes in fog and rain, coined the nickname 'the Green Hell'; the Nordschleife runs 20.83 km through the Eifel forests with over 300 m of elevation change.

Which abbreviation names the 17-character code that has identified new US cars since 1981?

VIN stands for vehicle identification number; US regulators fixed its 17-character format from 1981 because, until then, each carmaker had laid its numbers out in its own way.

The Soviet-era Lada Riva and its 'Classic' siblings were derived from which Italian car?

The Fiat 124 was built under licence at the AvtoVAZ plant Fiat helped set up at Tolyatti; the first VAZ-2101 of 1970 was toughened for Russian roads, and its descendants were built in Russia until 2012.

Which pickup range was America's best-selling vehicle for over 40 consecutive years through 2024?

The Ford F-Series has outsold every other vehicle in America each year since the early 1980s; for 2015 Ford rebuilt its best-seller with an aluminium body in place of steel, helping the truck shed about 700 lb.

Which Japanese performance car got the nickname 'Godzilla' from an Australian magazine?

The Nissan GT-R earned it: Wheels magazine coined 'Godzilla' in 1989 for the R32 Skyline GT-R, which went on to win Australia's Bathurst 1000 in 1991 and 1992 despite weight penalties.

La Jamais Contente, the first road vehicle to exceed 100 km/h in 1899, ran on what power source?

Electricity drove the torpedo-shaped Belgian racer to 105.88 km/h with Camille Jenatzy at the wheel, before petrol engines came to dominate the next century.

Britain's first speeding motorist, Walter Arnold, was caught in 1896 by a policeman riding what?

A bicycle was all the constable needed, because Arnold was doing just 8 mph in a 2 mph zone; the offence cost him a one-shilling fine.

Which country switched from driving on the left to the right on Dagen H, 3 September 1967?

Sweden banned non-essential traffic from 1 am to 6 am that Sunday while everyone swapped sides; Iceland made the same switch the following May.

Which brand name did Paul Galvin coin in 1930 for his company's new car radio?

Motorola joined 'motor' to the '-ola' ending of Victrola, and the radio sold so well that Galvin's whole company took the name in 1947.

Which SUV brand began after Arnold Schwarzenegger lobbied AM General to sell a civilian army truck?

Hummer began as a road-going Humvee, which Schwarzenegger wanted after seeing an Army convoy while filming Kindergarten Cop; he bought the first two sold.

Which actor died in 1955 at the wheel of a 550 Spyder he had nicknamed 'Little Bastard'?

James Dean, 24, was driving the car to the Salinas Road Race when it collided with another vehicle at a junction near Cholame, California.

NASCAR grew out of drivers in the American South outrunning the law while hauling what illegal cargo?

Moonshine haulers of the Prohibition years tuned small, fast cars to escape the police, then raced each other for pride; 1950s star Junior Johnson began that way.

Which country gave the world the 'ute', built by Ford in 1934 at a farmer's wife's request?

Australia got its first coupé utility in 1934, after a Victorian farmer's wife asked for a vehicle to go to church on Sunday and carry pigs to market on Monday.

Which American rock band is named after a light truck first built in Lansing, Michigan, in 1915?

REO Speedwagon took the name after founder member Neal Doughty saw the truck's name written on a blackboard; REO are the initials of its maker.

Which podium tradition did Dan Gurney start on the spur of the moment after winning Le Mans in 1967?

Spraying champagne began when Gurney turned his magnum playfully on the journalists crowding the podium, and winners across motorsport have copied him since.

What does the name Volkswagen, coined for a 1930s German mass-motoring project, mean in English?

People's car was the promise: German families were to pay for one through a savings scheme, yet war broke out and no saver ever received a car.

Which US highway, running from Chicago to Santa Monica, did John Steinbeck call the Mother Road?

Route 66 earned the name in The Grapes of Wrath, where Dust Bowl families follow it west; the full run covered 2,448 miles across eight states.

What do British drivers call the rear luggage compartment that Americans know as the trunk?

Boot first meant the outside step of a horse-drawn coach, then the low compartment where luggage was stowed; 'trunk' recalls the travel chest once strapped on the back.

Which BBC motoring show features an anonymous helmeted test driver known only as the Stig?

Top Gear introduced the Stig in 2002 as a joke about faceless racing helmets, and the first man in the suit, Perry McCarthy, was unmasked by a newspaper within months.

Which die-cast toy car brand did Mattel co-founder Elliot Handler launch in 1968 to rival Matchbox?

Hot Wheels was meant to do for boys what Barbie had done for girls, and Mattel ended the rivalry in 1997 by buying the owner of Matchbox.

Which Brazilian three-time Formula 1 champion died while leading the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix?

Ayrton Senna crashed his Williams at Imola having won 41 Grands Prix, and his 65 pole positions were still the record when he died.

Which tyre maker's glamorous trade calendar, first published in 1964, is known simply as 'The Cal'?

Pirelli prints only about 20,000 copies a year, and it is the Italian firm's UK subsidiary that has published the calendar from the start.

Which Pontiac model played KITT, the talking car in the 1980s TV series Knight Rider?

A 1982 Firebird Trans Am, modified by customizer Michael Scheffe, played KITT, whose name is short for Knight Industries Two Thousand.

Plymouth paid Warner Bros. $50,000 to name a 1968 muscle car after which cartoon character?

Road Runner it was, and Plymouth spent a further $10,000 developing a horn that copied the cartoon bird's 'beep beep'.

In which US state are the Bonneville Salt Flats, where land speed records have been chased since 1914?

Utah's salt pan became famous in the 1930s, when Ab Jenkins and Sir Malcolm Campbell competed there to set speed records.

Which engineer popularised the unit 'horsepower' to market his improved 18th-century steam engines?

James Watt wanted buyers to see how many draft horses one engine could replace; the unit later named after him is far smaller, at about 746 to the horsepower.

Which car brand did Henry Leland found in 1917 and name after the first president he voted for?

Lincoln honoured the man Leland backed at the ballot box in 1864, more than half a century before he and his son Wilfred set up the company.

Which hatchback, unveiled in 2009, was billed as the world's first mass-market electric car?

The Leaf got its name, Nissan said at the unveiling, because leaves purify the air in nature and the car takes emissions out of driving.

Which car-age invention did Richard Hollingshead patent in 1933 after testing it in his New Jersey driveway?

Drive-in theater number one opened near Camden that June, advertised with the promise that the whole family was welcome 'regardless of how noisy the children are'.

Which Ford brand, launched for 1958 and dropped within three years, became a byword for failure?

Edsel honoured Henry Ford's son, though Henry Ford II objected that he did not want his father's good name 'spinning around on thousands of hubcaps'.

Which toxic element did GM chemist Thomas Midgley add to petrol in 1921 to stop engine knock?

Lead won out after some 33,000 substances were screened, and leaded petrol for cars was only phased out worldwide in 2021, when Algeria finally gave it up.

Which process, patented by Charles Goodyear in 1844, makes natural rubber tough enough for tyres?

Vulcanization made the tyre industry possible, yet the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company was only named in his honour, not founded by him.

Which Scottish vet developed the practical pneumatic tyre to smooth the ride of his son's tricycle?

John Boyd Dunlop ran one of Ireland's largest veterinary practices in Belfast, and went on to develop his air-filled tyres for cycle racing.

Which Texan racer persuaded Britain's AC Cars to fit a Ford V8 into its roadster, creating the Cobra?

Carroll Shelby, a bankrupt poultry farmer turned 1959 Le Mans winner, had the first chassis air-freighted from Surrey to Los Angeles in February 1962.

The word 'chauffeur' comes from a French term for which job, a legacy of early steam-driven cars?

Stoker is the literal meaning: the French nicknamed early motorists chauffeurs, from chauffer, 'to heat', because the first cars had boilers to fire.

Which carmaking group was formed in 2021 by the merger of Fiat Chrysler and France's PSA Group?

Stellantis says its name comes from the Latin stello, 'to brighten with stars'; the merger put brands from Jeep and Ram to Peugeot and Opel under one roof.

Which ousted car-industry boss escaped house arrest in 2019 hidden inside a large box on a private jet?

Carlos Ghosn was awaiting trial on financial charges when he had himself shipped out as freight, bound for Lebanon, where he had grown up.

Which executive, fired by Ford in 1978, went on to rescue Chrysler with a government loan guarantee?

Lee Iacocca then fronted Chrysler's television commercials himself, with a trademark challenge: 'If you can find a better car, buy it.'

Which rear-engined, air-cooled Chevrolet did Ralph Nader attack in his 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed?

The Corvair's early swing-axle handling was Nader's target, yet a 1972 report for US safety regulators found it no more prone to losing control than rival compacts.

Under which brand name did Nissan sell its exports, including the 240Z sports car, until 1986?

Datsun was phased out in March 1986, revived in 2013 as a budget badge for emerging markets, then dropped for a second time in 2022.

Which vehicle maker began in 1909 as a loom works in the seaside town of Hamamatsu?

Suzuki built weaving looms for the silk industry for decades before its first car, the tiny front-wheel-drive Suzulight, arrived in 1955.

Which German city was founded in 1938 as a planned town for workers at the new Volkswagen factory?

Wolfsburg only took its name from a local castle in 1945; until then it was the 'City of the Strength Through Joy Car at Fallersleben'.

Which British Grand Prix circuit was laid out on the runways of a wartime RAF bomber station?

Silverstone's three runways still lie inside the outline of the track, which staged its first British Grand Prix in 1948, two years after the bombers left.

Which car interior term first meant a panel that stopped horses' hooves flinging mud into a carriage?

Dashboard dates from 1846 and the days when mud was 'dashed' up by a horse's hooves; the word outlived the horse and now names the instrument panel.

Which NASCAR driver, nicknamed 'the King', won a record 200 Cup races between 1958 and 1992?

Richard Petty won 27 of those races in the 1967 season alone, and was the first driver to take seven Cup championships.

Which Ohio inventor's electric self-starter, fitted to 1912 models, spared drivers the kickback-prone hand crank?

Charles Kettering had already invented the electric cash register at NCR, and later headed research at General Motors for 27 years.

Which American carmaker was the first to offer air conditioning as an option, on its 1940 models?

Packard had each car shipped to an outside factory to have the bulky unit fitted; it sold poorly, and the option was dropped after 1941.

Which General Motors styling chief built the 1939 Buick Y-Job, regarded as the industry's first concept car?

Harley Earl also launched Project Opel, the scheme that became the Chevrolet Corvette, and authorised the first tailfins on American cars.

Which Italian stylist, named Car Designer of the Century in 1999, drew the original Volkswagen Golf?

Giorgetto Giugiaro made straight-lined 'folded paper' shapes the look of the 1970s, and the Golf proved his most commercially successful design.

Which Italian open-road race ran from Brescia to Rome and back 24 times between 1927 and 1957?

Mille Miglia entrants were numbered by start time, so the car Stirling Moss shared with Denis Jenkinson in 1955 wore 722 for its 7:22 am departure.

Which Michigan city's 44-day sit-down strike of 1936–37 won the United Auto Workers recognition from General Motors?

Flint's one-page settlement gave the union instant legitimacy, and came after Governor Frank Murphy refused to use force against the strikers.

Which word, meaning 'signboard', names the just-in-time parts system Taiichi Ohno developed at Toyota?

Kanban was inspired by supermarkets: Toyota studied how shelves were restocked only as shoppers emptied them, then applied the idea to the factory floor.

Where was the world's first parking meter installed in 1935, at the urging of publisher Carl Magee?

Oklahoma City switched on the first meter on 16 July 1935, two years after Magee asked engineers to design one; he patented the device in 1938.

Which US state had no daytime speed limit from 1995 to 1999, only a 'reasonable and prudent' rule?

Montana's open-road era ended when the state Supreme Court threw out 'reasonable and prudent' as unconstitutionally vague; the night-time limit had been 65 mph.

Catalytic converters attract thieves because they contain platinum, palladium and which other precious metal?

Rhodium works as the reduction catalyst inside the converter, while palladium handles oxidation and platinum can do both jobs.