From the first record player for automobiles to inventor of the cruise control, get to know more about the world of motoring with this huge collection of fascinating facts.

1. There are approximately 1 billion cars currently in use in the world.
2. In 1916, 55 percent of the cars in the world were Model T Fords, a record that has never been beaten.
3. In 1923, 173 new inventions by women for cars had been reported. Among these inventions were a carburettor and an electric engine starter.
4. The Peanuts comic strip characters were first animated in 1957 for a Ford Fairlaine automobile commercial.
5. The Pagani Zonda supercar shares its instrument panel with a Lancia city car.
6. The Austin Maestro was one of the first cars with a talking digital dash. The company had actress Nicolette Mackenzie read out warnings, like low oil pressure or the brakes need servicing. For some markets (like Spain and Germany), Austin-Rover gave the car a male voice, presumably because it didn’t think Germans or Spaniards wanted to take orders from a woman.
7. Most American car horns beep in the key of F.
8. In Tokyo, a bicycle is faster than a car for most trips of less than 50 minutes!
9. 95% of a car’s life is spent parked.
10. During a car crash, 40% of drivers never even hit the brakes.
11. Sweden’s Volvo made the three point seatbelt design patent open and available to other car manufacturers free, in the interest of safety. It saves one life every 6 minutes.
12. There are more cars than people in Los Angeles.
13. In Turkmenistan, car drivers are entitled to 100 litres of free petrol each month.
14. The inventor of the cruise control was blind.
15. In the first part of the twentieth century, horses wee and poo caused so much pollution that cars were seen as the ‘green alternative’.
16. Car crashes are the number one cause of death for Americans under 35 years of age.
17. The city with the most Rolls Royce’s per capita is Hong Kong.
18. The first person to win the Indianapolis 500 at a speed of over 100 mph without a relief driver was Billy Arnold, who won in 1930 with an average speed of 100.448 mph.
19. The odds of dying in a road accident are in the region of 1 in 5,000.
20. Volkswagen owns Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Audi, Ducati and Porsche.
21. The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At the time, the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola
22. Approximately 75% of all cars produced by Rolls Royce are still on the road today.
23. The average car has 30,000 parts.
24. It would take approximately 5.5 months to drive to the moon at 60 mph.
25. Every year in the US, over 20 million kilograms of rubber is worn off tyres every single week. That’s enough to make 3.25 million new tyres!.
26. The ‘new car smell’ is composed of more than 50 volatile organic compounds.
27. The Porsche 911 was originally badged as a 901 until a disagreement with Peugeot who were using the ‘ 0 ‘ in their model numbering.
28. The Bugatti Veyron is named after French racing driver Pierre Veyron, who won the 24 hour race at Le Mans for Bugatti in 1939.
29. Only 16 factory authorised right-hand drive prototype De Lorean DMC-12s were made for use in the United Kingdom.
30. The Bugatti Veyron takes ten seconds to stop from its top speed of 253 mph.
31. The Bugatti Veyron’s gearbox took 50 engineers five years to perfect.
32. The paint on a Ferrari F40 is so thin you can see the carbon fibre weave through it. More layers would have added undesirable weight.
33. Ferrari makes a maximum of 14 cars a day.
34. The Mercedes SLR McLaren had 37 patents created for its use of carbon fibre.
35. The propeller blades in low inertia turbochargers can spin at up to 250,000 rpm.
36. The record for most cannon rolls of a car in a film was set during filming for the 2006 James Bond film Casino Royale, when an Aston Martin DBS was rolled seven times. The stunt crew fitted a nitrogen cannon to propel the car into the air.
37. The acronym KITT (the car from Knight Rider) stands for Knight Industries Two Thousand.
38. David Beckham’s first car was a Ford Escort.
39. Wayne Rooney’s first car was a Ford Ka.
40. The first car was the three-wheeled Benz Patent Motorwagen, built in 1885.
41. The British Army saved the Volkswagen Beetle. Major Ivan Hirst was ordered to take control of the heavily bombed Volkswagen factory at Wolfsburg in Germany. He oversaw the removal of an unexploded bomb which had fallen through the roof, and persuaded the British military to order 20,000 Beetles.
42. In the early sixties the cause of a spate of broken down Minis was traced to the red feather duster used by one of the cleaning ladies on the production line. Its feathers were becoming clogged in the cars’ carburettors.
43. Test teams at the Bonneville Salt Flats have to wear sun cream on the inside of their noses, as sunlight reflects off the bright white salt surface underneath them.
44. Porsche is the world’s most profitable car manufacturer.
45. William Grover-Williams, winner of the first Monaco Grand Prix in 1929, worked for the Secret Operations Executive in World War Two. He was captured by the Nazis and is believed to have been executed in 1945.
46. Rally drivers must display their blood group on their helmet or overalls.
47. The late Colin McRae was the youngest ever World Rally champion at just 27 years and 89 days old.
48. The longest ever rally was the Singapore Airlines London to Sydney Rally in 1977, which covered an incredible 19,329 miles.
49. The average Ford Mondeo driver in the UK covers 15,483 miles per year, more than drivers of any other car.
50. Henry Ford is often misquoted. His famous quote was actually: “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black”.
51. In 1989 petrol cost 38.5 pence per litre, while diesel cost just 36.1 pence
52. Not many cars come in Pink! In fact, there is a about 0.31% chance of seeing a pink car. That’s about 1 in 330 cars. Barbie’s pink XJS can be seen at the Coventry Transport Museum.
53. Speed limits on UK Motorways were not introduced until December 1965. This happened after several serious accidents, mainly in fog, when an experimental speed limit of 70 mph (112 km/h) was introduced. It was then made permanent in 1967 for all Motorways and Dual Carriageways with a central reservation.
54. Belgium’s Jacky Ickx won Le Mans 24 Hours in a Ford in 1969 despite walking across the track at the start. He did so in protest at the traditional run-and-jump start, which he felt encouraged drivers to race with their seatbelts unfastened.
55. Britain’s Tony Rolt, who drove a Jaguar to victory at Le Mans 24 Hours in 1953, was incarcerated at Colditz Castle during the Second World War. While there he conceived the daring plan to escape using a self-built glider.
56. Racing driver Johnny Dumfries is the Seventh Marquess of Bute.
57. Two months after winning Le Mans 24 Hours with Mazda in 1991, Belgian Bertrand Gachot received a two-month prison sentence for spraying a London taxi driver with CS gas.
58. The first person to pass the driving test in Great Britain was a Mr R Beere, who paid the grand total of seven shilling and sixpence (37.5p) to take the test.
59. There were no driving test centres in 1935 when driving tests were introduced in Great Britain so candidates had to arrange to meet the examiner somewhere like a post office, train station or town hall.
60. Driving tests were suspended in Great Britain on 2 September 1939 for the duration of World War 2. During the war, examiners were redeployed to domestic traffic duties and the supervision of fuel rationing. Tests resumed on 1 November 1946.
61. The average American spends about 38 hours a year stuck in traffic.
62. 92% of all new cars sold in Brazil use ethanol as fuel, produced from sugar cane.
63. Windsreen wipers were invented by a woman.
64. In the 1970’s cars were scrapped almost twice as often as small trucks, but over the years cars have become more durable and in 1999 the scrappage rate was almost equal.
65. The first petrol (gas) gauge appeared in cars in 1922.
66. Worldwide approximately 165,000 cars are produced daily.
67. Buyers of a new McLaren F1 received a golf bag, tailored to fit on the passenger’s seat and luggage holdalls with the motor’s chassis number embossed on them.
68. The ill-fated 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder seen in the film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was in fact one of three fibreglass replicas. The company who made the replicas were sued by Ferrari for wrongful use of the company’s logo.
69. A Rolls-Royce Phantom’s leather interior is made from 15 different hides.
70. The car driven by Steve McQueen in the film ‘Bullitt’ was a dark ‘Highland Green’ 1968 Ford Mustang GT 390 CID Fastback.
71. The Aston Martin DB5 driven by Sean Connery in James Bond films Goldfinger and Thunderball was sold at auction in 2006 for more than £1 million. The car’s gadgets include built-in Browning machine guns, tyre-slashers, and an oil slick ejector.
72. Game designer Kazunori Yamauchi, the man behind Gran Turismo, helped develop the Nissan GT-R.
73. Jeremy Clarkson’s mum Shirley manufactured the first ‘classic look’ Paddington bears, the first of which was a present for her son in Christmas 1971.
74. The original black-suited Stig from Top Gear was Formula One tester Perry McCarthy.
75. The spark plug was patented by French-Belgian engineer Jean Joseph Étienne Lenoir in 1860.
76. If a car is hit by lightning its occupants will generally be safe. The Faraday effect (discovered by Michael Faraday in 1845) causes the electricity to dissipate around the car’s metal frame.
77. The first official NASCAR race was held at the Charlotte, North Carolina fairgrounds in 1949. Jim Roper won the first race, driving a 1949 Lincoln.
78. The first Daytona 500 – NASCAR’s biggest race – was held in 1959. Lee Petty won the race by edging out Johnny Beauchamp in a photo finish.
79. Stock car racing began in the southern United States in the 1920s during the age of Prohibition (that’s the time when selling or drinking alchohol was illegal in the United States). Bootleggers would deliver illegally made booze from hidden stills to hundreds of markets across the southeastern United States. To avoid police, bootleggers would need to have fast cars and be great drivers. Eventually, these bootleggers began to race against each other to see who was the best driver and who had the fastest car. The sport of stock car racing was born!
80. Canadian Capt John Duff, who drove a Bentley to victory in the 1924 Le Mans 24 Hours, was a stunt double for Gary Cooper in the 1928 film Beau Sabreur.
81. Woolf “Babe” Barnato, a hat-trick 24  Hours of Le Mans winner with Bentley from 1928, played first-class cricket for Surrey. He was a wicket keeper.
82. In 1968 a separate driving licence group for automatic vehicles was introduced in Britain.
83. In June 2005 Australian Joe Gosschalk, covered a quarter of a mile in 13.7 seconds in a turbo-charged 1979 Ford LTD P6 hearse.
84. The world’s longest car is the 100 foot limousine built by Jay Ohrberg of Burbank, California. The car features a king-size waterbed and a swimming pool, complete with diving board.
85. The world’s longest running motoring event is the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run, an annual event which takes place on the first Sunday of November and commemorates the Emancipation Run of 14 November 1896.
86. The world’s lowest street-legal car is the 19 inch-tall ‘Flatmobile’, built by Perry Watkins from Buckinghamshire. The record was previously held by Andy Saunders, whose car ‘Flat Out’ stands 21.5 inches off the ground.
87. The fastest time for removing a car engine, and replacing it, is 42 seconds for a Ford Escort, on 21 November 1985.
88. The onboard computer in a typical modern car is more powerful than the one used to send astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s.
89. The fastest ever speeder on UK roads was clocked at 172mph in a £98,000 3.6-litre Porsche 911 Turbo.
90. ‘Traffic-collision reconstructionist’ W.R. ‘Rusty’ Haight has endured over 780 collisions as a human crash test dummy.
91. The best-selling car of all time is the Toyota Corolla, which sold a staggering 30 million before its replacement by the Toyota Yaris in 2007.
92. The London motor show began in November 1895, organised by RAC founder member Sir Evelyn Ellis. The show consisted of five cars in a field, 500 people turned up.
93. Land Rover made 30 bright yellow Judge Dredd ‘cabs’ for the 1995 Sylvester Stallone film.
94. The Rolls Royce hood ornament is called the Spirit of Ecstacy.
95. The first cars did not have steering wheels. Drivers steered with a lever.
96. The New York City Police Department used bicycles to pursue speeding motorists in 1898.
97. 135 million cars travel the roads and interstates in the United States each day.
98. The first Ford cars had Dodge engines.
99. The engine bay of a McLaren F1 road car is gold plated because it’s the best material for reflecting heat.
100. Buyers of a new McLaren F1 received a golf bag, tailored to fit on the passenger’s seat and luggage holdalls with the motor’s chassis number embossed on them.
101. Harvey Firestone, Henry Ford, and Thomas Edison, generally considered the three leaders of American industry during the first decades of the twentieth century, often worked and vacationed together.
102. It takes less than 30 grams of petrol to start a car.
103. Chrysler built B29 planes that bombed Japan. Mitsubishi built the Zeros that tried to shoot them down. Bot companies now build cars in a joint plant called Diamond Star.
104. Most cars can drive another 60+ miles are they hit empty. This is called the ‘buffer zone’, and the US cars have the largest buffer zone of any vehicles.
105. A deploying airbag moves at up to 4500mph within the first second. It has a generated force of up to 200g. They are designed to deploy after a collision of over 19mph and the entire cycle from impact to deployment to collapse takes 40 milliseconds.
106. Red cars are prohibited in Shanghai China.
107. The original dashboard was a piece of wood that was fastened in front of a horse drawn carriage that prevented mud from hitting the driver.
108. The most expensive speeding ticket in history was in Switzerland where a Swedish man was clocked at 180mph. Fines in Switzerland are proportionate to income. His fine: $1,000,000.00.
109. Plymouth spent $10,000 developing the horn of the 1968 Roadrunner so the car could sound like it’s namesake cartoon character.
110. Nissan used the number 23 in racing because the number 2 translates to ni. And, the number 3 translates to san. 23 translates to ni-san.
111. A study by an American University found that the Toyota Camry (78.5%) and the Honda Accord (76%) both contained more domestic content than the ‘American’ Chevrolet Camaro (68%).
112. Volkswagen was sued by Czechoslovakian car maker Tatra before WWII because the original Beetle was so similar to the Tatra T97. After Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938 the lawsuit was cancelled by the Nazis.
113. One of the first flying cars was a Ford Pinto, which killed its inventor when the wings came off mid flight.
114. Driving the Bugatti Veyron at its top speed of 253 mph will drain its 26.4 gallon tank in 19 minutes.
115. General Motors gave The Mercury and Apollo series astronauts a free Corvette when they returned from space.
116. If cars were driven by computers, a single lane of freeway could transport road trains of up to 35,000 vehicles per hour, up from 1,500 human driven cars per hour.
117. Until the automobile came along in the late 1800s, petrol (gasoline) was largely a waste product and a nuisance to the oil refining industry.
118. Google has created and tested driverless cars on the streets of California, and over the course of 300,000 miles, they’ve only been in two accidents: One while someone was driving the car manually, and one in which the car was rear-ended at a stoplight.
119. The engine on the BMW M5 is so quiet the company plays fake engine noises through the speakers to “remind” drivers of their car’s performance.
120. Clyde Barrow (Bonnie and Clyde) once wrote a letter to Henry Ford, thanking him for the reliability and performance of his V-8 automobiles.
121. Porsche puts the ignition on the left of the steering wheel because Le Mans racing drivers used to make running starts, this way they can shift and start the engine simultaneously. Whale oil was used in automobile transmission fluids as late as 1973.
122. It is illegal to slam you car door in Switzerland.
123. Although Ferdinand Porsche founded the company in 1931, Porsche did not begin to manufacture cars until nearly a decade later. Instead, the company offered motor development and consulting services. For instance, Ferdinand Porsche is credited with the design of the bestselling Volkswagen Beetle. The company also contributed to the design of Tanks during the Second World War.
124. Early versions of the 911 were referred to as Porsche 901s. But after Peugeot successfully challenged the Porsche’s naming system, which infringed on their rights to name cars with three-digit numbers marked by a zero in the middle, Porsche changed the name of the 901s to the 911.
125. The Dubai police fleet includes a Lamborghini, Ferrari and Bentley. According to them, expensive and fast cars allow them to catch speeders who can outrun others. In fact, the fleet is more of a PR exercise. They’re for showing off the glamour of Dubai and are all driven by female officers to improve Dubai’s public image.
126. Volkswagen mostly name their cars after winds in German, including Passat (after the German word for Trade wind), Golf (after Gulf Stream), Bora (after Bora), Polo (after Polar Winds), and Jetta (after Jet stream).
127. In 2008 Lamborghini gave the Italian state police the world’s fastest police car, a Gallardo LP560-4, which was equipped with a video surveillance camera, gun racks, GPS, organ transplant cooler (in the luggage compartment) and a defibrillator.
128. The very last car to be able to play cassettes was the Ford Crown Vic, which still had an optional player in 2011.
129. It is illegal to slam you car door in Switzerland.
130. Contrary to legend, Ford’s Model T originally came in a variety of colors…and black was not one of them. The “any colour so long as it is black” philosophy arrived in 1913, as Henry Ford sought to simplify production.
131. Volkswagen had the good sense to change the original, Hitler-sanctioned name for its small car, the Kraft durch Freude Wagen (“Strength Through Joy Car”), to the ‘Beetle’.
132. The motor vehicle fatality rate in the United States—the average number of deaths per passenger-mile of driving—has dropped by roughly 80% in the past half century.
133. The contact patches—the areas of the tyres that actually touch the road at any given moment—cover an area of just over 650 square centimetres for an average family saloon.
134. BMW has developed headlights that highlight nearby people to help focus the driver’s attention, and a Carnegie Mellon University researcher has developed lights that can track droplets and avoid illuminating them, rendering rainfall nearly invisible.
135. In 2004 Nevada hosted the first Darpa Grand Challenge for autonomous cars. None of the contenders finished the course, and one lunged menacingly at spectators. Now Google’s fleet of self-driving cars has completed 140,000 miles on the road with only two small accidents—one of them caused by human error.
136. Many high-end vehicles are already partly autonomous, with brakes that activate if sensors indicate an impending crash, steering that prevents drifting, sonar systems that navigate into parking spaces, and cruise control that prevents following the next car too closely.
137. Self-driving cars could improve highway flow by regulating distances between cars and ease urban congestion by automating the search for parking (which causes up to three-quarters of city traffic).
138. One in five motorway accidents are caused by drivers falling asleep at the wheel.
139. Pigeons follow motorways and even turn off at junctions to navigate their way home, according to Oxford University research.
140. There are over 27 million private cars in Great Britain. These account for 83% of the 34.5 million licensed vehicles in Britain.
141. On average, each full UK licence holder drives about 700 trips each year: nearly 14 each week.
142. When the first motorways opened in Britain, the penalty for reversing up the carriageway was a £20 fine.
143. More than 700 miles of motorway are jammed daily by drivers hogging the middle lane, says the RAC.
144. The cost of congestion on Britain’s motorways is estimated to be around £20 billion a year.
145. The 70mph limit was imposed on Britain’s motorways in 1965, after British Rail’s new express service began running beside the M1 and some drivers tried to keep up.
146. An early motorway safety advert from the 1950s warned of the dangers of enjoying a family picnic in the slow lane of the M1.
147. A study published in medical journal The Lancet found living within 500m of a motorway permanently damages children’s lungs.
148. A section of Avenue K in a Californian desert town was paved with grooves so that cars passing over would hear a rendition of Rossini’s ‘William Tell Overture’.
149. The official definition of horsepower states that the force produced must be enough to lift 33,000lbs over the distance of one foot in a minute, or as the dictionary puts it:\n“An imperial unit of power equal to 550 foot-pounds per second.”\nComparatively, an actual horse manages to produce just 0.7hp.
150. BBC Top Gear TV presenters James May and Jeremy Clarkson were the first men ever to successfully drive to the North Pole. They completed the Top Gear Challenge against their colleague Richard Hammond in a modified Toyota Hi-Lux.
151. More than 4,300 speed cameras watch motorists on the British road network.
152. One in two drivers regularly breaks the 70mph limit.
153. The M1 was built to handle up to 14,000 vehicles a day. It now serves 10 times that number.
154. The M96 in Gloucestershire in England is a mock motorway, which is used to train Fire Service College students.
155. When a sculpture of a horse was placed by the M8 in Scotland, there was a debate on which direction its behind should face. Now, it faces neither Glasgow nor Edinburgh.
156. The first muscle car was the Chrysler 300 series. This vehicle was first designed in 1949 and was released to the public in 1950.
157. The 1967 Shelby Mustangs used Mercury Cougar tail lamps, but the 1968 models used tail lamps from the ’66 Ford Thunderbird
158. Actor James Garner raced a beefed-up 1970 Olds 442 in the NORRA Mexico 1000 (a precursor to the Baja 1000), where it won second in class. The Goodyear Grabber, as it was known, was built by legendary Baja-race-vehicle guru Vic Hickey and sponsored by Goodyear tires. The vehicle was recently restored and put up for sale
159. The Lincoln Town car is the last US luxury car to still use body-on-frame construction, as opposed to a unibody frame, which allows it to be easily lengthened, explaining the car’s full domination of the limousine market.
160. Norway has very strict rules on advertising cars as “green,” saying “cars can do nothing good for the environment except less damage than others.”
161. When Oprah gave the audience cars back in 2004, they were not really free. They had to pay about $6,000 in federal and income taxes. Some people paid the taxes by taking out car loans; others traded their new Pontiacs for cheaper, less souped-up cars.
162. A Greek taxi driver has the highest recorded mileage to date (2.9 million miles) on a Mercedes. He donated his car to the museum, and he was gifted a new car.
163. Honda Prelude was the first mass produced car that featured a mechanical 4-wheel steering system. In its debut year it beat every car in the slalom test, including Porsche and Ferrari.
164. The Soviet Union allowed cinemas to play The Grapes of Wrath because of its depiction of the plight of the poor under capitalism, but it was later withdrawn because Russian audiences were amazed that even the poorest Americans could afford a car.
165. In 2002 a car was reported running off the road in Surrey, England by multiple witnesses. Police arrived, but found no signs of a crash. After a careful search the car and driver were finally found but it was determined the accident occurred 5 months earlier.
166. In 2007, 20-year-old Florida kid named Ryan Holle was sentenced to life without parole for lending his car to a friend, who then murdered an 18-year-old girl.
167. Residents of Churchill, Canada leave their cars unlocked to offer an escape for pedestrians who might encounter polar bears on Main Street.
168. It is legal in California to drive a motorcycle between two cars in their lane (lane splitting) and only 53% of state residents know that it is legal.
169. The first car to use a rear-view mirror was driven by inaugural Indy 500 winner Ray Harroun in 1911 to see the cars catching up behind him.
170. In many states in USA, you can be charged with a DUI even if the car is parked and you’re sleeping while drunk.
171. During the 1978 Formula One, there was a car named BT46B “fan car.” Fans were used to suck air out from under the car. Air-tight ‘hover-car like’ skirts allowed the fans to develop negative pressure beneath the chassis. This effectively allowed the car to ‘stick to the road’. It won its only race before being banned.
172. In Sweden, car headlights have to be on at all times when driving, even in broad daylight.
173. In 2006, the Indy Car Series switched over to Honda engines and since then, there have been no Indy Car engine failures.
174. South African residents can legally attach small flamethrowers to the side of their cars to provide defence against carjackers.
175. You can instantly cool down a car that has been sitting under the sun by rolling down the window on one side and opening and closing the door on the other side five to six times.
176. The ignition on Porsches was traditionally located on the left side of the wheel. This is because back when Porsche was primarily a racing team, the driver could save a fraction of a second by starting the car with his left hand, while simultaneously switching the car into gear with his right hand.
177. Between 256 and 321 Dodge Chargers were used in the original “Dukes of Hazzard” television show. Most of them were destroyed.
178. The 1969 Pontiac GTO was featured in a commercial where a rock band called “Paul Revere and the Raiders” sang a song about the GTO, called “The Judge.”
179. GTO stands for Gran Turismo Omdogato. The words in Italian mean “Homologated for Grand Touring.”
180. Dodge called their line of muscle cars “The Scatpack” in 1968. Plymouth also gave their line of muscle cars a name – the “Rapid Transit System.”
181. The 1971 Plymouth Hemi Barracuda convertible is one of the rarest muscle cars around. Only 11 were ever made.
182. The first Model T’s were sometimes used to power farm machinery, sausage grinders and newspaper presses.
183. Due to the heat generated by its massive sixteen cylinder quad-turbo engine, the Bugatti Veyron has 12 radiators strategically placed throughout the body. To cool such an engine with a single radiator would require it to be about the size of a pool table. In order to create a sleek profile, smaller radiators are used in areas of high air pressure to keep the beast from a meltdown.
184. The thirsty fuel injectors of Dodge’s Challenger SRT Hellcat could drain an Olympic sized pool in 361 days. Each of the eight injectors can flow 600 cc per minute, for a total of 4,800 cc/minute. An Olympic pool is approximately 2,500,000,000 cc. Some simple arithmetic gives us 8680.5 hours, or 361 days, for the engine to drain that amount of fuel.
185. The Pagani Huayra use 1,400 titanium bolts at $80 each, resulting in a cost of $112,000 for the bolts alone. Mr. Pagani has pioneered new techniques for titanium machining, and his grade-7 hardware has his logo etched into the bolt heads.
186. Lamborghini’s Gallardo and Audi’s R8 are cousins, sharing the same chassis and interior layout, the differences are mostly cosmetic.
187. In the early 1990s, when McLaren was developing the transmission and brakes for their upcoming F1, they used a 454ci (7.4L) Chevrolet Big Block V8 to ensure that their components could handle the power of the BMW sourced V12.
188. The fastest American car in 1987 was the 245 hp turbocharged Buick GNX. Based on the Regal Grand National, it was much quicker than the Corvette. Chevrolet was not amused, and the GNX was cancelled with only 547 cars produced.
189. In 1872 it became an offence in Great Britain to be drunk while in charge of carriages, horses, cattle and steam engines!! The penalty for which was a fine not exceeding 40 shillings OR at the discretion of the court, imprisonment with or without hard labour for a term not exceeding one month.
190. In 1925 it became an offence in Great Britain to be found drunk in charge of ANY mechanically propelled vehicle on any highway or other public place. The penalty for which was a fine not exceeding 50 pounds and/or imprisonment for a period not exceeding 4 months as well as a disqualification from holding a driving licence for a minimum period of 12 months.
191. In 1930 it became an offence in Great Britain to drive, attempt to drive or be in charge of a motor vehicle on a road or any other public place while being “under the influence of drink or a drug to such an extent as to be incapable of having proper control of the vehicle”. No legal drink driving limit was set until 1967.
192. During the First World War some London buses were modified to transport carrier pigeons.
193. ‘Bus’ is an abbreviation of ‘omnibus’, the Latin for ‘for all’, as they were transport for all people.
194. In 1834, Charles Dickens wrote an essay called ‘Omnibuses’ praising them…“of all known vehicles, from the glass-coach in which we were taken to be christened, to that sombre caravan in which we must one day make our last earthly journey, there is nothing like an omnibus” (Dickens).
195. The word ‘omnibus’ was first recorded in English in 1829. ‘Bus’ first appeared in 1832.
196. Before 1907 London buses were in different colours to signify their route.
197. The first London bus service was established in 1829 and ran between Paddington and Bank. It carried 22 people and was pulled by three horses.
198. The European patent office holds more than 5 000 listed inventions relating to traffic lights.
199. In 1928, Charles Adler Jr invented traffic lights that could be activated by drivers honking.
200. The average modern car engine emits 28 times less carbon monoxide than 20 years ago. An average new car today consumes 15% less fuel per 100km than 10 years ago.
201. Traffic jams result in 5.7 billion person-hours of delay annually in the United States.
202. Public transportation saves more than 3.2 billion litres of gasoline annually, a level equivalent to the energy used to heat, cool and operate 25% of all American homes for a year.
203. One bus could carry the same number of people as 30 cars, while only occupying the road space of three cars.
204. Britons spend an average of two weeks travelling including nine days in their cars.
205. There are 26 million cars on British roads and this is expected to increase to at least 31 million by 2020.
206. Britons spend an average of two weeks travelling including nine days in their cars.
207. There are nearly half a million traffic jams in Britain every year. That is nearly 10,000 a week.
208. A quarter of Britain’s main roads are jammed for an hour a day.
209. There are between 200 and 300 incidents of major congestion every day on British roads.
210. Drivers seated higher think they are driving more slowly than drivers seated lower, and so tend to speed more often.
211. More than 80% of traffic in a typical city runs on 10% of the roads.
212. Anywhere from 10% to more than 70% of people in urban traffic are simply looking for parking.
213. When roads are closed for construction, traffic on other nearby roads often decreases rather than increases.
214. Saturday at 1 p.m. has heavier traffic than weekday rush hours.
215. A driver driving at 30 mph sees an average of 1320 pieces of information every minute.
216. New cars crash at a higher rate than older cars.
217. Most car crashes happen on sunny, clear, dry days.
218. Drivers drive less closely to oncoming cars on roads without center-line markings.
219. Men honk more than women, and men and women honk more at women than at men. Drivers in convertibles with the tops down are less likely to honk than those with the top up. Drivers honk faster at cars whose drivers are on cell phones. And drivers are more likely to honk at people from another state or country than their own. Drivers honk less on weekends.
220. Car drivers drive closer to helmeted cyclists (and farther from cyclists who who appear to be women).
221. Pedestrians think drivers can see them up to twice as far away as they actually can.
222. The average driver looks away from the road for .06 seconds every 3.4 seconds; drivers search for something in the car 10.8 times per hour.
223. The plot of the David Niven movie Where the Spies Are features a rare Cord convertible as the incentive for the hero to undertake an espionage mission.
224. Four names appeared on the shortlist at a 1962 product strategy meeting to discuss a new Ford: Monte Carlo, Monaco, Torino, Cougar. GM and Chrysler owned the first two. The design team had called their car Cougar from the beginning, and Ford boss Lee Iacocca preferred Torino. When news leaked of Henry II’s two-year affair with Italian divorcee Cristina Vettore Austin, Torino was out. The car became the Mustang instead.
225. A speeding car in Hackensack New Jersey in 1902 spooked a horse pulling two men on a lawn mower. One man was seriously hurt and the other killed. This incident prompted the need for speed limits on US roadways.
226. William Phelps Eno published the first book on traffic engineering in 1903. New York police adopted his rules for traffic and created the first traffic bureau after the Times commented: “Only agile pedestrians can survive.”
227. The Mobile Company of America built a 200-foot ramp (53 feet high) at the first first National Automobile Show in November in New York to demonstrate the hill-climbing and braking ability of steam vehicles.
228. Edward Bassett coined the word “freeway” in 1930 for urban roads designed for trucks, as well as the passenger cars allowed on parkways.
229. The first practical and affordable car radio in the US was designed and produced by the Galvin Manufacturing Corporation in 1930. The original model 5T71 radio sold for between $110 and $130, and could be installed in most popular automobiles.
230. Paul V Gavin, founder of Gavin Manufacturing Corporation, coined the name “Motorola” for the company\’s new car radio, effectively linking the ideas of “motion” and “sound.” Motorola became the brand name of Gavin Manufacturing\’s products.
231. French authorities stopped the Paris-Madrid race in Bordeaux in 1903 after 10 were killed, including Marcel Renault, leading to a French ban on road races.
232. Ford gave workers a $1,000 Christmas bonus in 1906, which exceeded most workers annual salary.
233. C H Laessing invented the modern gas pump in 1905.
234. London ‘Daily Graphic’ in 1905 coined a new word ‘smog’ to describe the mixture of smoke & fog
235. Woodrow Wilson (then President of Princeton University) in 1906 stated that: “Possession of a motor car is such an ostentatious display of wealth that it will stimulate socialism.”
236. British inventor John C. Wood patented triplex shatter-resistant glass in 1906.
237. Up to the early 1920s most automobile windscreens were of polished plate glass.
238. Henry Ford fitted laminated safety glass windscreens to the Model T Ford.
239. In 1911 gasoline sales surpassed kerosene sales for the first time in the US.
240. New Yorkers bragged in 1912  that Fifth Avenue had more motor traffic than any other street in the world. The city had traffic police at every corner south of 42nd Street.
241. The world’s first flying-boat airplane, designed by Glenn Curtiss, makes maiden voyage at Hammondsport, New York in 1912.
242. Standard Oil opened the first gasoline station in Cincinnati Ohio in 1912. Up until that time, car owners bought fuel from hardware stores and sometimes lumberyards
243. Daily traffic in 1915 at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street in New York: 25,580 vehicles & 142,230 pedestrians
244. C.D. Noonan of Paris Illinois advertised a kit in 1915 to add overhead valves to Fords for street racing.
245. Eurovision song contest winner, Sandy Shaw, was a punch card operator at Ford Dagenham before her singing career took off.
246. Land speed record breaker, Sir Malcolm Campbell, was a director of Ford.
247. Maurice Gatsonides, inventor of the GATSO speed camera, won the 1953 Monte Carlo rally.
248. Dagenham’s 10 millionth car and Ford’s 250 millionth worldwide, a Fiesta, was driven off the line at Dagenham in 1996 by retired boxing champion and local resident Frank Bruno.
249. Dagenham’s 10 millionth car and Ford’s 250 millionth worldwide, a Fiesta, was driven off the line at Dagenham in 1996 by retired boxing champion and local resident Frank Bruno.
250. An early pioneer of recycling, Henry Ford fuelled Dagenham’s power station by burning London’s waste – 2,000 tons per week until 1939.
251. Flame-proof coveralls are made available in July 1954 to NASCAR drivers for $9.25 each by Treesdale Laboratories. It was the third NASCAR-specific product of the season. The $35 GenTex 70 helmet and special racing tires priced at $37.90 each from Pure Oil Co. had already been offered.
252. British luxury car marque Aston Martin’s name came from one of the founders Lionel Martin who used to race at Aston Hill near Aston Clinton.
253. Jamaican reggae singer-songwriter and guitarist, Bob Marley owned a BMW, not for prestige but because of the coincidence of initials for Bob Marley and the Wailers.
254. As a young man, Henry Ford used to repair watches for his friends and family using tools he made himself. He used a corset stay as tweezers and a filed shingle nail as a screwdriver.