Category: Motoring Milestones

  • 29 November – 5 December: Motoring Milestones

    Discover the most momentous motoring events that took place this week in history ……. 110 years ago this week, the Henry Ford Company was organised to continue the work of the defunct Detroit Automobile Company [30 November 1911]….. and on the same day [30 November 1911], more than 25,000 people lined the Ocean Parkway in…

  • 20-26 December: Motoring Milestones

    Discover the most momentous motoring events that took place this week in history ……. 220 years ago this week, British inventor Richard Trevithick took seven of his friends for a test ride on his “Puffing Devil,” or “Puffer,” the first steam-powered passenger vehicle [24 December 1801]. Unlike the steam engine pioneered by the Scotsman James…

  • Motoring Milestone: 13-19 December

    Discover the most momentous motoring events that took place this week in history …… 230 years ago today, a traffic regulation in New York City established the first street to go in one direction only, or “One Way,” as the signs said [17 December 1791]……..90 years ago this week, Rolls-Royce acquired the much smaller rival…

  • Motoring Milestones: 6-12 December

    Discover the most momentous motoring events that took place this week in history…… 140 years ago this week, Vincent Hugo Bendix, the American inventor and industrialist who founded the Bendix Corporation of Chicago in 1907 to manufacture Bendix Buggies, was born [12 December 1881]. The company failed two years later after producing 7000 vehicles, but…

  • 22-28 November: Motoring Milestones

    Discover the most momentous motoring events that took place this week in history…….. 120 years ago this week, Clement Studebaker (70), American carriage manufacturer died [27 November 1901]. With his brothers, he founded H & C Studebaker Company, which built Pennsylvania-German conestoga wagons and carriages during his lifetime, and automobiles after his death, in South…

  • 15-21 November: : Motoring Milestones

    Discover the most momentous motoring events that took place this week in history ……. 120 years ago this week, a low-slung car called the “Torpedo Racer”—basically a square platform on bicycle wheels—broke the world speed record for electric cars in Coney Island, New York [16 November 1901]. The car’s builder and pilot, an engineer named…

  • 8-14 November: : Motoring Milestones

    Discover the most momentous motoring events that took place this week in history ……. 100 years ago this week, Oakland General Manager George Hannum announced that testing of the new cooper-cooled engine had been unsuccessful [8 November 1921]……. The world’s first traffic jam happened in Washington DC, on Armistice Day [11 November 1921]. It lasted…

  • 24-31 October: Motoring Milestones

    Discover the most momentous motoring events that took place this week in history …… 120 years ago this week, Packard used its famous ‘Ask the man who owns one’ slogan in their advertising for the first time [31 October 1901]. By the time this ad came out, Packard already had a prestigious owner on its…

  • 18-24 October: Motoring Milestones

    Discover the most momentous motoring events that took place this week in history …… 130 years ago this week, a one-mile dirt track opened for harness races at the site of the present-day Tennessee State Fairgrounds in Nashville, US [21 October 1991]. Harness racing proved a popular event at the annual Tennessee state fair, but…

  • 11-17 October: Motoring Milestones

    Discover the most momentous motoring events that took place this week in history …… 120 years ago this week, a White steamer driven by Robin H White won the 5 and 10 mile races in Detroit, Michigan, often cited as the first ‘serious’ trrck races in the US [11 October 1901]…….110 years ago this week,…