Thursday 4th June 1896

Henry Ford drove his first vehicle, the Quadricycle, from the workshop behind his home at 58 Bagley Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. Despite lacking a body, the vehicle was so wide that it required Ford to enlarge his shop’s door with an axe just to get it out of the shop and onto the road. The Quadricycle was basically a light metal frame fitted with four bicycle wheels and powered by a 2-cylinder, 4-horsepower ethanol engine. With his assistant John Bishop bicycling ahead to alert passing carriages and pedestrians, Ford drove the 500-lb vehicle down Detroit’s Grand River Avenue, circling around three major thoroughfares. It had two driving speeds, no reverse, no brakes, rudimentary steering ability and a doorbell button as a horn. It reached about 20 mph. Ford sold the Quadricycle for $200, and built a couple more copies before founding Ford Motor Co. in 1903.