Interesting History Stories in the Automobile World

A lot of us do not know the history of the world of the automobile, but many stories were very interesting and inspiring, here are some of them.

In 1885, German inventor and engineer Karl Friedrich Benz, who co-founded Mercedes-Benz, built the Benz Patent Motorwagen, a 3-wheel car that was powered by an internal combustion engine and was the world’s first production car, 25 production version units of the car were sold between 1886 and 1893. Benz’s company built its first four-wheel automobile in 1893 under the name of Benz & Cie and developed the first of a series of racing cars six years later. Benz left the company in 1906, but it went on to merge with Daimler, forming the company which was to manufacture Mercedes Benz cars till this day.
Karl Benz (1844-1929) was the son of a railway engineer and studied mechanical engineering in the years 1853-1864.

The founder of Lamborghini, Ferruccio Lamborghini, made tractors and farm equipment before manufacturing cars.
He was based near Ferrari, and he bought himself a Ferrari long ago, but he had problems with the car’s clutch, he brought those concerns to Enzo Ferrari in his office in Maranello, and Ferrari told Mr. Lamborghini off, his famous response was "Lamborghini, you may be able to drive a tractor, but you will never be able to handle a Ferrari properly". Lamborghini decided to get even by starting to manufacture his own high-performance cars. Just four months after, he showcased the Lamborghini 350 GTV at the 1963 Turin Motor Show.

Fiat had a track on the roof of their factory in Turin, Italy, it was first opened in 1923, this track was used for testing the first-generation Fiat 500 and other previous Fiat cars.
Fiat’s Lingotto factory closed its operations in 1982 and it was redeveloped into a public space with a shopping center, art gallery, movie hall, and hotel, the 4-star Hotel NH Torino Lingotto Congress. Also, a skating rink was built later downstairs, which hosted the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics.

Ford GT was a result of a Ford-Ferrari war, it went to win the famous Le Mans 24-hour race four times in a row
All this started when in 1963 Ford was in talks with Enzo Ferrari to invest in the Italian marque because of Ferrari's financial troubles, the deal was meant for Ford to take over the whole company. The deal went south when Enzo refused to give up his control of the racing division, which was responsible for Ferrari's success in the Le Mans automobile race. This led Ford to put their entry for the Le Mans, after a couple of years and after spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing the Ford GT40, Ford finally got his revenge from Enzo Ferrari, he was successful to end Ferrari's winning streak in 1966, Ford won Le Mans race for the first time and 3 more years in a row after that. The best part is that the first 3 standings belonged to the GT40's, as seen below,

Toyota Corolla is the best-selling car in the world, more than 45 million vehicles had been sold globally.
The first-ever Corolla was built in 1966, and it only took 8 years to become the best-selling vehicle worldwide, the Corolla was the first-ever car to introduce White reversing lights that all cars use today. The word Corolla is Latin for "Little Crown".
Toyota was headquartered in the city of Toyota, Japan, and was founded there, but it is not named after the city, in fact, the city (originally called Koromo) renamed itself after the company in 1959, because Toyota had become so famous.
Vehicles were originally sold under the name "Toyoda", from the family name of the company’s founder, Kiichiro Toyoda, and in 1936 Toyoda held a contest for the logo, about 27,000 people participated in it. The winning design consisted of the word "Toyota".

In 1959, Volvo engineer Nils Bohlin developed the modern three-point seat belt (the three-point harness). It was introduced in the Volvo Amazon (120) and PV 544 in the Nordic markets in Europe. Although the design was patented, the company decided the patent was to be left open, making it available to all vehicle manufacturers to use for free.

The Volkswagen Beetle is one of the world’s most loved cars and the most popular of the 20th century. The Beetle first came into the world in 1938, when Nazi leader Adolf Hitler commissioned engineer Ferdinand Porsche to design a simple, economical vehicle for the German people. The same original design stayed in production for almost 60 years, until the new 1998 New Beetle came into the world.
In 2018, Volkswagen announced that after 80 years, it was discontinuing production of the car the following year, so that the last model to ever exist would be the 2019 beetle.