1. The First Car Was Powered By Steam And Invented In France
And the first usable car was on the road when Louis XV was on the French throne!
This thumper was invented by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot. Setting a trend that continued until the early 20th century, he named it the fardier à vapeur: "steam dray [horse]." More than 150 years after he invented it, cars were still called "horseless carriages." As recently as 1948, Cirtroen tipped the hat to the good ol' hayburner by naming its economy model Deux Chevaux: "two horses".
The VP of Citroen at the time, Pierre-Jules Boulange, named it "Two Horses" because he wanted to market it to farmers who were still plowing their fields with horses. The Deux Chevaux soon became notorious for being underpowered: it was the car you had too push up a steep hill. Despite its name, the base model had a nine-horsepower 375 cc engine.
2. The First Automobile Race Was Won By A Car That Averaged Six Miles Per Hour
By the close of the eighteenth century, the leading edge for steam-car design shifted to Great Britain. Americans moved in too.
The first carriage-sized automobile suitable for use on existing wagon roads in the United States was a steam-powered vehicle invented in 1871 by Dr. J.W. Carhart, a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in Racine, Wisconsin.
Once the Wisconsin legislature heard about it, they authorized a prize of $10,000 to the inventor of the first "practical" car that could maintain an average speed of 5 mph over 200 miles of driving. Naturally, this inspired a city-to-city race, which ended in Madison and started off in good ol' Green Bay. :) Although seven vehicles were registered, only two showed up.
The Oshkosh [entrant] finished the 201-mile (323 km) course in 33 hours and 27 minutes, and posted an average speed of six miles per hour.
Source: (Wikipedia, naturally.)
3. The Electric Car Was More Popular Than The Gasoline Car In The Late 19th Century
Like mechanical television, the electric car was better than the internal-combustion car in the early days of the modern automobile.
Above is the vehicle that's considered the first "real" electric car. Invented in Germany, it was called the Flocken Elektrowagen. Herr Flocken was not the first one to name his invention after himself: the first inventor of the four-cycle engine was named Rudolf Diesel. No joke.
4. The First Canadian Car Was Displayed In Canada's Birth Year
The honor belongs to Henry Seth Taylor, who showed off his car at the Stanstead Fair in Stanstead, Quebec in the year 1867.
Powered by steam, it could reach a top speed of twenty kilometres per hour or 12.5 mph.
Speaking of steam and speed...
The First Race Cars Were Steam Powered
Like electronic television, internal-combustion cars were slow off the gate. As of 1906, the fastest car in the world was the venerable Stanley Steamer:
It managed a top speed of more than 128 mph. Now, that's steaming along!
(Source for all of the above is Wikipedia's History of the automobile.)
Bonus Fact:
Gary Numan's famous New-Wave song Cars
was inspired by an incipient road rage incident he escaped from by locking his doors. (Source.)
