Cars & Automotive Quiz
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98 free Cars & Automotive trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
75 free Cars & Automotive trivia questions with answers. Sixty-five car questions in three rounds. The first is car brand trivia: what the Mercedes star and Subaru's six stars actually mean, the Milanese serpent on the Alfa Romeo badge, the explorer behind Cadillac, why BMW started with aircraft engines, the saw-maker that became Peugeot, and the racing driver Louis Chevrolet. The second is classic car trivia questions and answers: the Model T, the Beetle, the 1964 Mustang launch, the Jaguar E-Type Enzo Ferrari supposedly envied, the warship that named the Corvette, the Suez-crisis Mini and Bond's Aston Martin DB5. The third covers how cars work and race: engines, forced induction, ABS, the boxer layout, Le Mans, Formula 1 and the Dakar. Easy questions come first and the last stretch is for people who read the workshop manual for fun. Every answer has been checked against a reference source, shown under each question once you answer.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which German engineer built the first true internal-combustion automobile in 1886?
Karl Benz
Karl Benz patented his Benz Patent-Motorwagen on January 29, 1886 (DRP-37435), which is widely regarded as the birth certificate of the automobile.
Q 02What is the best-selling car nameplate of all time, with over 50 million units sold worldwide?
Toyota Corolla
The Corolla has been the best-selling automobile nameplate since 1997 and passed 50 million units in 2021 across twelve generations.
Q 03What was the nickname commonly given to the Ford Model T?
Tin Lizzie
The Ford Model T was affectionately nicknamed the Tin Lizzie. Introduced in 1908, it became the first truly affordable automobile, with over 15 million produced by 1927.
Q 04Ferrari's prancing-horse emblem came from the plane of which Italian WWI flying ace?
Francesco Baracca
Baracca's mother suggested the horse as a good-luck charm after a 1923 race win in Ravenna; the canary-yellow background is the colour of Modena, Enzo's hometown.
Q 05Which car company was originally a tractor manufacturer before entering the sports car business in 1963?
Lamborghini
Ferruccio Lamborghini founded Lamborghini Trattori in 1948, and the tractor company still exists today in Pieve di Cento.
Q 06Which engineer invented the modern three-point seatbelt in 1959?
Nils Bohlin
Bohlin came from the aircraft industry, where he had worked on ejector seats, and his belt became standard on his employer's cars the same year.
Q 07What does the acronym SUV stand for in automotive terminology?
Sport Utility Vehicle
SUV stands for Sport Utility Vehicle. The term became widely used in the 1980s and 1990s as these larger vehicles, combining off-road capability with passenger comfort, grew in popularity.
Q 08Which country is home to car manufacturers Toyota, Honda, and Nissan?
Japan
Toyota, Honda, and Nissan are all Japanese automakers. Japan became one of the world's largest automobile-producing nations, with Toyota becoming the world's largest carmaker by volume.
Q 09Which rating measures a petrol's resistance to engine knock?
Octane rating
The octane rating measures how well a petrol resists knocking, or premature ignition under compression; the cetane number is the equivalent ignition-quality measure for diesel fuel.
Q 10Which car brand's logo features four interlocking rings?
Audi
Audi's logo of four interlocking rings represents the four companies that merged in 1932 to form Auto Union: Audi, DKW, Horch, and Wanderer.
Q 11Which muscle car, launched at the 1964 World's Fair, created the "pony car" segment?
Ford Mustang
The Ford Mustang debuted on April 17, 1964 at the New York World's Fair. It sold over 400,000 units in its first year and launched an entirely new class of affordable, sporty cars known as pony cars.
Q 12What was the first commercially successful hybrid car, launched in Japan in 1997?
Toyota Prius
The Toyota Prius went on sale in Japan on December 10, 1997, becoming the world's first mass-produced petrol-electric hybrid vehicle. It was introduced to worldwide markets in 2000.
Q 13What does ABS stand for on a car?
Anti-lock Braking System
Q 21Which layout places the cylinders horizontally opposed to one another, as used in Subaru's cars?
Boxer (flat)
In a boxer layout each opposed pair of pistons moves in and out together, like a boxer's fists, giving a low centre of gravity and natural balance.
Q 22Which stainless-steel, gull-wing flop found immortality as a 1985 movie time machine?
DeLorean DMC-12
Built only from 1981 to 1983 and a commercial failure, the DMC-12 lives on as the Back to the Future time machine.
Q 23Which Japanese automaker built rotary-engined cars from the 1967 Cosmo to the RX-8?
Mazda
Mazda mass-produced rotary (Wankel) cars for 45 years, from the 1967 Cosmo through the RX-7 (1978-2002) to the RX-8 (2003-2012), far longer than any other carmaker.
By keeping the wheels from locking under hard braking, ABS lets the driver keep steering while stopping.
Q 14Which rear-engined Stuttgart sports car has been built continuously since 1964?
911
The Porsche 911 has been built in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen since 1964; it kept an air-cooled flat-six for 34 years before switching to water cooling in 1998.
Q 15Which car brand's hood ornament is called the "Spirit of Ecstasy"?
Rolls-Royce
Rolls-Royce has carried it since sculptor Charles Robinson Sykes designed it and registered it in 1911.
Q 16Which military vehicle, mass-produced during World War II, became the ancestor of the modern Jeep brand?
Willys MB
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.
Q 17Which Volkswagen was the most-produced single-platform car ever, at over 21.5 million units?
Beetle
The Volkswagen Beetle was produced from 1938 to 2003, totaling 21,529,464 units. Its 65-year production run on a single platform is the longest in automotive history. It surpassed the Ford Model T's production record in 1972.
Q 18In what year did Henry Ford introduce the moving assembly line for automobile manufacturing?
1913
Henry Ford introduced the moving assembly line at his Highland Park plant in 1913, revolutionizing manufacturing. This innovation dramatically reduced the time to build a Model T from over 12 hours to about 93 minutes.
Q 19What do the letters GT on a sports car stand for?
Gran Turismo
GT stands for Gran Turismo, Italian for grand touring: a car built for fast, comfortable long-distance driving. The label spread to English with the Italian GTs of the 1950s and 1960s.
Q 20Which automaker holds the record for the most overall wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race?
Porsche
Porsche's 19 overall victories include seven in a row from 1981 to 1987, plus 107 class wins.
Q 24What type of forced induction system uses exhaust gases to spin a turbine that compresses intake air?
Turbocharger
A turbocharger's turbine is spun by exhaust gases and drives a compressor that forces more air into the engine, unlike a supercharger, which is belt-driven off the crankshaft.
Q 25Which race, first run in 1911, fills a 2.5-mile Indiana oval every Memorial Day weekend?
Indianapolis 500
The Indianapolis 500 has run at the Speedway since May 30, 1911 — Ray Harroun won the first — and is billed as the world's largest single-day sporting event.
Q 26What does the term "displacement" refer to when describing a car engine?
Volume swept by all the pistons
Engine displacement is the total volume swept by all pistons inside the cylinders, typically measured in liters or cubic centimeters. A 2.0L engine means its pistons sweep a combined 2,000cc of volume in one complete cycle.
Q 27Which luxury brand, revived by Volkswagen in 1998, makes the Chiron and Veyron hypercars?
Bugatti
The modern company was founded in 1998 in Molsheim, Alsace, reviving the name of Ettore Bugatti's original firm.
Q 28Which two drivers each had seven Formula 1 World Drivers' titles as of the end of 2024?
Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton
Michael Schumacher (titles 1994-2004) and Lewis Hamilton (2008-2020) had each won seven championships by the end of 2024, when Hamilton also held the records for wins (105) and pole positions (104).
Q 29What is the primary advantage of all-wheel drive (AWD) compared to two-wheel drive systems?
Better grip on slippery surfaces
All-wheel drive distributes power to all four wheels, providing significantly better traction on wet, icy, snowy, or uneven surfaces. The trade-off is typically increased weight, complexity, and slightly higher fuel consumption.
Q 30Which automaker introduced the driver airbag as an option on its S-Class saloon in 1981?
Mercedes-Benz
Mercedes-Benz introduced the driver airbag as an option in the W126 S-Class in 1981 in Germany, pioneering automotive airbag technology. The system automatically tensioned seatbelts before deploying the airbag on impact.