A Short History Of The Automobile 

Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot is often credited with building the first self-propelled mechanical vehicle or automobile in about 1769, but this claim is disputed by some, who doubt Cugnot's three-wheeler ever ran.

Others claim Ferdinand Verbiest, a member of a Jesuit mission in China, built the first steam-powered 'car' around 1672. What is not in doubt is that Richard Trevithick built and demonstrated his “Puffing Devil” road locomotive in 1801, the first truly successful steam-powered road vehicle. 

François Isaac de Rivaz, a Swiss inventor, designed the first internal combustion engine, in 1806, which was fuelled by a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen and used it to develop the world's first vehicle to run on such an engine.

The design was not very successful, as was the case with Samuel Brown, Samuel Morey, and Etienne Lenoir who each produced vehicles powered by clumsy internal combustion engines. 

An automobile powered by an Otto gasoline engine was built in Mannheim, Germany by Karl Benz in 1885 and granted a patent in January of the following year under the auspices of his major company, Benz & Cie. which was founded in 1883. 

Although several other German engineers (including Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach, and Siegfried Marcus) were working on the problem at about the same time, Karl Benz is generally acknowledged as the inventor of the modern automobile. 

In 1879 Benz was granted a patent for his first engine, designed in 1878. Many of his other inventions made the use of the internal combustion engine feasible for powering a vehicle and in 1896 Benz designed and patented the first internal combustion flat engine. 

Approximately 25 Benz vehicles were built and sold before 1893, when his first four-wheeler was introduced. They were powered with four-stroke engines of his own design.

Emile Roger of France, already producing Benz engines under license, now added the Benz automobile to his line of products. Because France was more open to the early automobiles, more were built and sold in France through Roger, than Benz sold in Germany.

The large-scale, production-line manufacturing of affordable automobiles was debuted by Ransom Olds at his Oldsmobile factory in 1902.

This concept was then greatly expanded by Henry Ford, beginning in 1914. 

As a result, Ford's cars came off the line in fifteen minute intervals, much faster than previous methods, increasing production by seven to one (requiring 12.5 man-hours before, 1 hour 33 minutes after), while using less manpower. It was so successful, paint became a bottleneck. 

Only Japan black would dry fast enough, forcing the company to drop the variety of colours available before 1914, until fast-drying Duco lacquer was developed in 1926.

This is the source of the famous line “ You can have it any colour, as long as it's black.”In 1914, an assembly line worker could buy a Model T with four months' pay. 

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The Concept Car 

A concept car is a car prototype made to showcase a concept, new styling, technology and more. They are often shown at motor shows to gauge customer reaction to new and radical designs which may or may not have a chance of being produced.

General Motors designer Harley Earl is generally credited with inventing the concept car, also known as a “show car”, and did much to popularize it through its travelling Motorama shows of the 1950s.

Concept cars are often radical in engine or design and might never go into production directly; in modern times all would have to undergo many changes before the design is finalised for the sake of practicality, safety and cost. After a concept car's useful life is over, the cars are usually destroyed. Some survive, however, either in a company's museum or hidden away in storage.

One unused but operational concept car that languished for years in the Californian shop of car customizer George Barris, Ford Motor Company's "Lincoln Futura" from 1954, received a new lease on life as the Batmobile in the Batman series that debuted in 1966.

Concept cars don't always appeal to the masses either and can go from the downright ugly, such as the Renault Operandi, a goods transportation vehicle with a hybrid drive unit, to the Lincoln MK 9 coupe concept, of which Lincoln Design Director Gerry McGovern says "The Lincoln MK 9 displays a timeless elegance borne of the design's inherent simplicity and visual logic, while its overall exuberance is unmistakably American."

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