car

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Small, driver-guided, passenger-carrying motor vehicle; originally the automated version of the horse-drawn carriage, meant to convey people and their goods over streets and roads.

Most are four-wheeled and have water-cooled, piston-type internal-combustion engines fuelled by petrol or diesel. Variations have existed for decades that use ingenious and sometimes less polluting power plants, but the motor industry has failed to improve on the current basic design for the consumer market. Experimental and sports models are streamlined, energy-efficient, and hand-built.

Origins
Although it is recorded that in 1479 Gilles de Dom was paid 25 livres by the treasurer of Antwerp in the Low Countries for supplying a self-propelled vehicle, the ancestor of the car is generally agreed to be the cumbersome steam carriage made by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot in 1769, still preserved in Paris. Steam was an attractive form of power to the English pioneers, and in 1803 Richard Trevithick built a working steam carriage. Later in the 19th century, practical steam coaches were used for public transport until stifled out of existence by punitive road tolls and legislation.

The first cars
Although Jean Etienne Lenoir patented the first internal-combustion engine (gas-driven but immobile) in 1860, and Siegfried Marcus built a vehicle which was shown at the Vienna Exhibition (1873), two Germans, Gottleib Daimler and Karl Benz, are generally regarded as the creators of the car. In 1885 Daimler and Benz built and ran the first petrol-driven car (they worked independently with Daimler building a very efficient engine and Benz designing a car but with a poor engine). The pattern for the modern car was set by Panhard in 1891 (front radiator, Daimler engine under bonnet, sliding-pinion gearbox, wooden ladder-chassis) and Mercedes in 1901 (honeycomb radiator, in-line four-cylinder engine, gate-change gearbox, pressed-steel chassis). Emerging with car manufacturers Haynes and Duryea in the early 1890s, US demand was so fervent that 300 makers existed by 1895; although only 109 were left by 1900.

In 1896 (after the Red Flag Act had been repealed) Frederick Lanchester produced an advanced and reliable vehicle, later much copied.

Cars as an industry
The period 1905–06 inaugurated a world car boom continuing to the present day. Among the legendary cars of the early 20th century are: De Dion Bouton, with the first practical high-speed engines; Mors, notable first for racing and later as a silent tourer; Napier, the 24-hour record-holder at Brooklands in 1907, unbeaten for 17 years; the incomparable Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost; the enduring Model T Ford; and the many types of Bugatti and Delage, from record-breakers to luxury tourers. After World War I popular motoring began with the era of cheap, light (baby) cars made by Citroën, Peugeot, and Renault (France); Austin, Morris, Clyno, and Swift (England); Fiat (Italy); Volkswagen (Germany); and the cheap though bigger Ford, Chevrolet, and Dodge in the USA. During the interwar years a great deal of racing took place, and the experience gained benefited the everyday motorist in improved efficiency, reliability, and safety. There was a divergence between the lighter, economical European car, with its good handling, and the heavier US car, cheap, rugged, and well adapted to long distances on straight roads at speed. By this time motoring had become a universal pursuit.

After World War II small European cars tended to fall into three categories, in about equal numbers: front engine and rear drive, the classic arrangement; front engine and front-wheel drive; rear engine and rear-wheel drive. Racing cars had the engine situated in the middle for balance.

From the 1950s a creative resurgence produced in practical form automatic transmission for small cars, rubber suspension, transverse engine mounting, self-levelling ride, disc brakes, and safer wet-weather tyres.

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