How Long Have Cars Been Made?

Answer 1

Cars of one sort or another have been being built as experimental prototypes for Centuries. Leonardo da vinci experimented with pedal-powered and pulley-powered vehicles in 16th Century Italy; the first internal combustion engines appeared in England in the 1680's and used gunpowder as fuel; and steam-driven road tractors and coaches began appearing in the late 18th Century, with regular passenger services being introduced in late Georgian times. However, the first true petrol-driven cars first appeared in the 1870's- Daimler and Benz were among the earliest pioneers. The first ever PRODUCTION car, that was available for sale to the general public, was the Benz 3-wheeler of 1885; essentially a huge petrol-engined tricycle with tiller steering and a single-cylinder four-stroke engine with belt transmission. This was the advent of car production in Europe, and by the 1890's a number of other manufacturers in the UK and on the Continent were producing cars. Car production began in the USA slightly later, the first US car on the market being the 1896 Ford. It began later still in Central & Eastern Europe, Russia and Japan- they didn't begin making their own cars until Edwardian times, although they were importing them from Europe and the USA before then. Other nations, such as China and India, only launched their own makes in the 1930's.