10 Fun Facts About Cars

Most of us have cars and in fact, cars have always been part of our lives. We remember our first car, our favorite car, the car we learned to drive in and maybe our family’s first cars.  So how about some fun car facts?

It was 1886 in Germany when Karl Benz invented the first car. Yes, that Benz.  But it took a while for cars to become widely available.

In America, Henry Ford’s Model T was the first car to be really popular. That was in 1908 and cars began to replace horse-drawn carriages and carts. The cars were called Tin Lizzies.

Ford was once quoted as saying that in the future “Customers can have any color car they want as long as it’s black.”  Can  you imagine?

But that wasn’t really true, because from 1908 to 1912, Model Ts only came in grey, green, blue and red, depending on the model.  By 1914, cars were black, probably because it was cheaper. Today’s cars have elaborate names like Tahitian Pearl, Goldfinger and Polynesian Green.

In 1976 the most popular colors for cars in America were red, white and blue. Americans took the bicentennial seriously. One has to wonder how many regretted that decision.

Would you believe the first electric cars were made in 1880s and were actually pretty popular into the early 20^th century. But that popularity ended when technology brought about internal combustion engines and cheap gas.  In the late 1980s they became popular again during the U.S. energy crisis, but nothing became commercially viable until around 2008.  You have to wonder what would have happened to insurance rates had electric cars really taken hold back then. Would drivers have been able to get reasonable New Jersey auto insurance quotes from ?  Now, Tesla’s the big name in electric cars—electric muscle cars.  The car is pricey and probably not cheap to insure.

It was called the Hydramatic. Developed by General Motors and introduced in Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles for the 1940 model year , it was the very first automatic transmission for passenger cars.

Speaking of Oldsmobiles, they are no longer made. Other big name brands that now are left to history include the Edsel, Nash, the Rambler, Studebaker, the Stutz and the Packard—both favorites in old movies—and the Pontiac, among others. It remains to be seen if the Tesla will take off or go the way of these once famous old brands.