General Motors
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50 free General Motors trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
General Motors spent most of the twentieth century as the biggest carmaker on earth, and its story is full of outsized characters: a deal-making founder who lost the company twice, a president who taught the industry to restyle its cars every year, and designers who turned chrome and fins into an American art form. This quiz covers the whole sweep. There are questions on how GM was put together, the brands it bought, built and closed, and the boardroom fights, strikes and bankruptcy that shaped it. You will also find the cars themselves, from classic Chevrolets and Cadillacs to electric experiments, along with engineering firsts and GM's surprising sidelines outside the car business. It is written for car-club quiz nights, GM owners and anyone who grew up with one of its cars in the driveway. Plenty of the questions come from film, television and music, so you do not need to be a mechanic to score well, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Chevrolet, launched to take on the Mustang, plays Bumblebee in the 2007 film Transformers?
Camaro
Camaro was a word found in an old French dictionary as slang for a pal, though Chevrolet managers told reporters it was a small, vicious animal that eats Mustangs.
Q 02Which 1984 comedy's heroes race to their calls in Ecto-1, a converted 1959 Cadillac ambulance?
Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters used a combined ambulance and hearse built by Miller-Meteor on a Cadillac chassis, and three different cars have played Ecto-1 across the films.
Q 03Which musician scored his first US top-ten hit in 1983 with the single Little Red Corvette?
Prince
Prince took the song to number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100, and after his death in 2016 it climbed back into the top 20.
Q 04Which refrigerator brand did General Motors own for sixty years before selling it in 1979?
Frigidaire
Frigidaire was so dominant under GM that many Americans called any refrigerator a Frigidaire, whatever the make.
Q 05Which author of Unsafe at Any Speed won an apology from GM's president for having him tailed?
Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader's 1965 book opened with an attack on the rear-engined Chevrolet Corvair, and GM's James Roche apologized to him before a Senate subcommittee in 1966.
Q 06Which Japanese carmaker ended General Motors' 77-year run as the world's top-selling automaker?
Toyota
Toyota took the title in 2008, ending a reign that General Motors had held every year since 1931.
Q 07Cadillac rose in 1902 from the remains of a company named after which carmaker, who had just quit?
Henry Ford
Henry Ford walked out after a dispute with his investors, and engineer Henry Leland talked them into building cars in the idle factory instead of selling it off.
Q 08Which GM executive behind the GTO quit in 1973 to build the gull-winged car from Back to the Future?
John DeLorean
John DeLorean was 40 when he became the youngest division chief in GM history, and the sports car that carried his name wore a body of stainless steel.
Q 09Which 1980s TV series starred David Hasselhoff alongside KITT, a talking black Firebird Trans Am?
Knight Rider
Knight Rider's KITT, short for Knight Industries Two Thousand, was a modified 1982 Trans Am voiced by actor William Daniels.
Q 10Which singer had his 1955 Cadillac Fleetwood repainted pink and gave the car to his mother?
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley gave the Cadillac to his mother Gladys even though she never had a driver's license, and it is still on display at Graceland.
Q 11Which American car brand, named after an Odawa chief, built the GTO, the Firebird and the Trans Am?
Pontiac
Pontiac began in 1926 as a cheaper companion to GM's Oakland line and sold so well that it had replaced its parent entirely by 1933.
Q 12Which car brand, founded in 1897, was America's oldest when General Motors closed it in 2004?
Oldsmobile
Oldsmobile's Curved Dash was the first mass-produced car, pushed by hand along an assembly line years before the Model T existed.
Q 13Which car brand, created in 1985 with its own Tennessee factory, sold at fixed no-haggle prices?
Saturn
Saturn was GM's attempt to beat Japanese imports with a fresh start, right down to its own dealers, labor contract and engine, but the brand was closed in 2010.
Q 21General Motors was founded in 1908 in which Michigan city, nicknamed Vehicle City?
Flint
Flint was a hub of carriage making before cars arrived, and GM kept its first headquarters there even though its papers were filed in New Jersey.
Q 22Which former carriage maker founded General Motors in 1908 and was twice forced out of the company?
William Durant
William Durant was pushed out by bankers in 1910 and by shareholders in 1920, and he later ran a fast-food restaurant, working in the kitchen himself.
Q 23Which GM president of the 1920s introduced annual styling changes and a ladder of brands by price?
Alfred P. Sloan
Q 14Which SUV brand did GM buy from AM General, close in 2010 and later revive as an electric GMC truck?
Hummer
Hummer began in 1992 as a civilian version of the Army's Humvee, and a deal to sell the brand to a heavy-machinery maker collapsed shortly before GM closed it.
Q 15Which Swedish carmaker, born of an aircraft builder, did GM wholly own from 2000 to 2010?
Saab
Saab was sold to the small Dutch sports-car maker Spyker in 2010 and had filed for bankruptcy within two years.
Q 16General Motors began in 1908 as a holding company for which carmaker, started by a plumbing inventor?
Buick
Buick was founded by David Dunbar Buick, a Scottish-born inventor who devised a way to bond enamel to cast iron that made white bathtubs cheaper.
Q 17Which full-size Chevrolet set an American record by selling more than a million cars in 1965 alone?
Impala
The Impala wore the leaping antelope as its logo, and its 1965 tally set an all-time American industry record for one year's sales.
Q 18Which nickname has stuck to the armored Cadillac limousines used by US presidents since 2001?
The Beast
The Beast earned its nickname in the 2000s, while the Secret Service knows the presidential car by the code name Stagecoach.
Q 19Which nickname is given to the Chevrolet emblem, said to be based on a French hotel's wallpaper?
Bowtie
The bowtie first appeared on Chevrolet cars in 1914, and by one company account a traveling executive tore off a strip of the wallpaper to show his friends.
Q 20Cadillac takes its name from the French explorer who founded which American city in 1701?
Detroit
Detroit was founded by Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, and the crest on the cars that carry his name is based on his coat of arms.
Alfred P. Sloan started out running a roller-bearing maker, and his steps from Chevrolet up to Cadillac were meant to keep buyers in the GM family for life.
Q 24Louis Chevrolet, the racing driver who co-founded the car brand in 1911, was born in which country?
Switzerland
Switzerland's watchmaking town of La Chaux-de-Fonds was his birthplace, and he sold his share of the company in 1915 after rows over the car's design.
Q 25Which form of US bankruptcy did General Motors file for in June 2009, emerging within six weeks?
Chapter 11
Chapter 11 let GM sell its best assets to a new company backed by the US Treasury, in what was then the fourth-largest bankruptcy filing in American history.
Q 26Which engineer joined GM as an 18-year-old co-op student and became its chief executive in 2014?
Mary Barra
Mary Barra was the first woman to run one of America's Big Three automakers, and she added the chairman's title two years later.
Q 27Which ex-railroad mechanic earned $10,000 a month running a GM division before quitting in 1919?
Walter Chrysler
Walter Chrysler stayed in the car business after leaving GM, and in 1925 he turned the ailing Maxwell company into a firm bearing his own name.
Q 28Which GM styling chief pioneered clay models and built the Y-Job, the industry's first concept car?
Harley Earl
Harley Earl, a coachbuilder by trade, used the Y-Job as his own daily driver once its show career was over.
Q 29Which Charles Kettering invention debuted on the 1912 Cadillac and soon spread to almost every car?
Self-starter
The self-starter replaced a hand crank that could kick back violently, and its inventor had earlier built the first electric cash register.
Q 30Which lightweight material, laid by hand, formed the body of the original 1953 Chevrolet Corvette?
Fiberglass
Fiberglass bodywork became a Corvette trademark, and the car took its name from a small, maneuverable class of warship.