Cars of Legend

LIST OF BRANDS

Cugnot

Amédée Bollée

Carrocerías Capella

Castilla

La Maquinista Terrestre & Marítima

Roper

Van Leisen

Jacquot

Jeantaud

De Dion-Bouton

Delamare-Debouteville & Malandin

Callihan´s

De Dion Bouton & Trépardoux

Amédée Bollée

Daimler & Benz

American Daimler

Bonet

Albert Falke & Co.

Nadig

Serpollet

Peugeot

Lambert

Panhard-Levassor

VABIS

Philion Steam Car

Duryea Motor Wagon Company

Lutzmann

Menier

Bernardi

Dasse Motors

Automobiles Delahaye

Morris & Salom

Rossel Gautier & Wehrlé

Georges Richard – S.A.E.

Phoenix Motor Works

Jean Perrin Frères

Rochet-Schneider

Société Parisienne de Constructions Velo

Autocar Company

Berliet

Hartley Power Supply Company

Oakman-Hertel

Diligeon et Cie

Lanchester Motor Company

Léon Bollèe

Mors

Manufacture Voitures Automobiles Vincke

Wolseley Sheep Shearing Machine Co. Ltd.

American Electric Vehicle Co.

Arrol-Johnston

Audibert & Lavirotte

Beeston

Belsize Company Ltd.

Bock & Hollender - OHG

Vaughan-Sherrin Electrical Engineering Company

Brouhot

Daimler England

Darracq

Egg & Egli

Louis Fisson & Cie.

Gladiator

Grout Bros Automobile Co.

Henriod

Labourdette

Laspougeas

Leyland Motor Corporation Limited

Marshall & Company

Millot

Okey

Orient Express

Petters Limited of Nautilus Works

Reeves Auto Carriage

Riker

Riley

Roberts Electric

Christian Salvesen Shipping Company

Whitney

Yakovlev & Freze

The Ackerman Automobile

Ailloud & Dumont

Bardon

Barrè

A. T. Cross Company

Crouch Automobile Manufacturing & Transportation Company

Cudell

De Dietrich & Cie

Deckert

D'Ieteren

Egger-Lohner

Eysink

Fabrique Nationale d´Armes de Guerre  - F.N.

FEY

Goddeu

Hugot

Hurst & Lloyd

Kriéger

Lacoste et Battmann

Lorraine-Dietrich & Cia 

Malicet et Blin - M.A.B.

Martini

Mildé

NW - Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau

Oldsmobile

Société Pieper

Stanley Motor Carriage Company

Star Cycle Company Ltd.

Tarrant Automobile

Winton Motor Carriage Company

Yeovil Motor Carriage & Cycle Company

Adams Company

Alldays & Onions Pneumatic Engineering Co Ltd.

American Waltham Manufacturing Company

Daniel Auge & Cie

Auto Tri

Clement

Cottereau & Cie

History of the First Automobiles

The first autonomous rolling machine in history was built in China, back in the seventeenth century, in exactly the year 1678, the artifice of this 3-wheel steam car was the French Jesuit Ferdinand Verbiest (1623-1688).

In 1769, in France, the engineer Nicolás-Joseph Cugnot (1725-1804) built the first self-propelled vehicle of which there is a historical record, which he called fardier à vapeur, whose meaning is "cargo wagon weighs -steam ». It is a vehicle with 3 cart wheels, a front and two rear wheels, an approximate weight of 2,800 kg., And a front steam engine (where in a common cart would be the draft horses), with a huge coal tank Incandescent that evaporates to the water, pistons and rods that convert the linear movement produced by the vapor pressure, in rotational movement, through a mechanism that generates the rotation of the wheels and therefore the movement of the vehicle, which can reach a speed of up to 3.8 km/h.

In 1784 the British engineer and inventor, William Murdoch (1754-1839), built another steam car and the first made in Great Britain and in a country that was not France. It is a small tricycle to scale, about 30 centimeters high, with a small front wheel and two rear larger, a steam engine with boiler located in the back between the two wheels and a lever that works as turning rudder to move the front wheel. This vehicle had some new features such as a cylinder partially inserted into the boiler and with a safety valve to prevent explosions. Murdoch made the first public demonstration of a self-propelled vehicle in Great Britain, in the River Lounge of the King's Head Hotel in the city of Truro, Cornwall. Currently, this miniature vehicle is housed in the Thinktank Museum of Science in Birmingham.

In 1786, Murdoch built another model and according to some, in the 1790s came to build some model of human-sized size large enough to transport a passenger, although there is no record or historical document to confirm the latter. Murdoch did not have time to fully involve himself in his project since he worked for the steam engine company of Matthew Boulton (1728-1759) and the Scottish engineer James Watt (1736-1819) and did not have too much free time.

In 1786, the British William Symington (1763-1831), built the first large-scale steam car, that is, on a human scale, of Great Britain. It was a steam carriage, whose design resembled that of a horse-drawn carriage, since the steam engine was isolated from the rest of the vehicle (just like the horses of a common carriage), except that instead of Be ahead, was in the back, pushing the carriage in front of him. The traction of this vehicle was direct to the rear wheels, and was exhibited in the city of Edinburgh and in spite of having worked sometimes, it did not have a good performance and soon, the project was abandoned.

In 1794, the British inventor Richard Trevithick (1771-1833), he met the model on the scale of William Murdoch (it is noteworthy that they were neighbors and lived a few meters away between the years 1797 and 1798 in the city of Redruth, in the English region of Cornwall to the southwest of Great Britain). In 1799, inspired by the work of Murdoch, Richard Trevithick, built what is thought to be the first high-pressure steam engine, fully functional.

In 1801, Trevithick built Britain's first fully functional and well-performing car. He called it Puffing Devil (smoking devil) and on the eve of Christmas of that year, made a public demonstration, transporting six passengers from the city of Camborne, also in the English region of Cornwall, to the neighboring town of Beacon. During this experiment he was even driven uphill by the area of a hill.

The vehicle had a weight of 1,520 kg., And thanks to the greater performance of its high pressure steam engine and a single piston, it could reach a maximum speed of 14.5 km/h. and after a few more tests, this car A steam engine in the shape of a small locomotive (in fact it was a locomotive to walk on roads) was broken by passing through a ditch on a road. The vehicle was left in a kind of shelter, by mistake with the boiler still on, while the operators went to eat at a nearby pub. During all that time the water in the boiler evaporated completely and the machine started to burn and was finally destroyed. However, Trevithick did not see it as a serious problem and continued with more developments over the next few years (including the first steam railway locomotive).

The first Trevithick car was very uncomfortable to carry passengers and had an unpleasant aesthetic design. So in 1803 he built, along with the mechanical engineer and captain of English mines Andrew Vivian (1759-1842), who was his cousin and also partner, a carriage with cabin and seats to carry several passengers, which some consider as the first automobile designed especially to carry comfortably seated passengers, although others maintain that the vehicle of Symington of the year 1786, in spite of not having had a good performance, was the first automobile destined to the transport of passengers seated comfortably. But what is clear is that this Trevithick carriage, was the first car of good performance and fully functional. This vehicle had the shape of a carriage, but without horses but a steam engine with a boiler and tailpipe in the back. It had two large rear wheels of 2.40 m. in diameter, connected to the traction axle of the vehicle. It was sent to build in the carriages workshops of William Felton (1823-1909), in London and parts of the engine were manufactured in the city of Falmouth in the Cornwall region, from where they were transported to the workshops of Felton where they were assembled.

It was called London Steam Carriage, although it was also known as Puffing Dragon, or what is the same Smoky Dragon, and was tested in a public demonstration , in a route of 16 kilometers through the streets of central London (which were closed especially for this experiment to all other types of traffic), carrying between seven and eight passengers at a speed of between 6 and 14.5 km/h.

The London Steam Carriage had a length of 4.90 meters by a width of 2.18 meters and a height of 3.45 meters. Its vacuum weight was 1,900 kilograms (1.9 tons). Its engine had a power of 3 HP (horse power) at 50 rpm, the transmission was done through separate driving gears on each of the rear wheels (the driver could choose transmission to one of the wheels or both). It had a range of 15 kilometers with 180 liters of water in the boiler tank and capacity for 8 passengers.

However, the London Steam Carriage proved to be quite uncomfortable for the passengers and unprofitable, since it was much more expensive to maintain and operate than a horse-drawn carriage, in addition to being quite similar in speed. Finally, during another experiment, the carriage ended up colliding with the bars of a house, so that the potential buyers and investors completely lost interest in this vehicle.

In 1805, the American engineer and inventor, Oliver Evans (1755-1819), built what was the first automobile in the United States. An amphibious steam car (the world's first amphibious vehicle) shaped like a ship to navigate in the water and wheels to walk the earth. This vehicle, in addition, had a rear propeller to navigate by fluvial waters. It was 9 meters long by 3.5 meters wide and weighing 17 tons (17,000 kg). Its engine could generate a power of up to 5 HP, (horsepower).

His only client was the Board of Health of the City of Philadelphia (Philadelphia Board of Health) that required him to dredge the sandbars in the shipyards of the city, for that reason he was called Oruktor Amphibolos. Finally, it was impractical due to its great weight, the problems of bending on land and the low efficiency of its engine, but it did serve to plant the idea in the United States, that it was possible in the future, the use of steam powered vehicles to transported by this huge country. Finally in 1808, as the Oruktor Amphibolos was not effective in the tasks of dredging, and scrapped. Evans, even, in 1812, described a few decades before the development of the North American railway network, in a publication of his, a futuristic image of how people were going to be transported from one side to the other one day, through a vast network of roads , in vehicles propelled by steam locomotives.

During the following decades various experimental steam cars were developed in different parts, but they would not have a practical and useful use yet, and among them, it is worth mentioning the steam car of the Czech-Polish engineer and inventor, Josef Bozek (1782-1835), built in 1815, which was the first to run through Czech lands and Eastern Europe, in this way the Czechs have shown, from the start, to be pioneers in motorsports in Eastern Europe. With a wooden body, space for 3 people and a steam engine located in the middle of the vehicle that allowed, through a transmission to the rear wheels, reach 15 km/h.

In 1810 the English mechanical engineer George Medhurst (1759-1827), who designed and built a steam carriage that proved and worked well. Between 1819 and 1820, he designed and built a steam car that he tested on April 3, 1820, transporting a person between the London boroughs of Paddington and Islington. On July 6 of that same year he made another successful test and in 1821 he built a stronger steam car that could go up and down Paddington Hill, in London, at a speed of up to 8 km/h. Around 1827 according to historical documents, Medhurst put on sale a steam carriage that he had built, which could transport 4 passengers at a speed of up to 11 km/h.

In 1821, the British engineer Julius Griffiths designed a steam coach, which was built by the mechanic Joseph Bramah (1748-1814). The stagecoach had a double cab body that was between the two wheel axles, its steam engine was mounted behind the rear axle. This diligence required the presence of two drivers, that is, a machinist who had to travel on the rear platform, next to the engine, to control its operation and attend to the level of fire in the boiler, while the other was to be seated in the front to control the rudder.

It also had a steam condenser, which consisted of a system of thin tubes that were cooled by contact with external air, thus condensing the vapor into liquid water, which was then pushed into the lower row of pipes of the boiler or boiler. However, the boiler was not large enough to operate for a long time and push such a heavy vehicle, which gave it a low autonomy, so it was only used experimentally for a few years without providing regular commercial services, until the project was abandoned. In spite of this, the Griffiths steam coach would serve as an example to other engineers who during the following years would develop carriages, stagecoaches and even the first self-propelled buses in history.

A very particular case was that of the British engineer, David Gordon, who did not fully trust the thrust generated by the friction between the wheels and the ground, as he maintained that the wheels wasted much of the energy generated by the steam engine - especially when ascending by pen-teeth-, reason why in 1824 he built a steam carriage, that in addition to having three wheels, counted on six legs of push. These legs consisted of iron tubes with wood inside, to combine the robustness of the metal with the lightness of the wood. The legs were distributed in two rows of 3 on each side and each leg had at its lower end a kind of foot shaped circular segment, whose dentate plant had species of iron teeth and whale bone. These legs were not nailed to the ground but moved back and forth alternately and in semicircular motion, providing additional thrust to the vehicle.

The alternate movement of the legs was generated by the same two motors that propelled the wheels and that this carriage had in its frontal part. This gigantic hexápodo car was baptized with the name of Comet. Although the vehicle worked, it was very heavy, like its legs, so the performance was not very good.

In 1824 the British mechanic William Henry James, who designed, patented and built a steam carriage powered by two small 2-cylinder steam engines. Then he joined the engineer James Anderson (1739-1808), to perfect it between 1826 and 1828. This vehicle, while being tested on a poor road that crossed Epping Forest, managed to reach 19 to 24 km/h. for a few moments until one of the boilers was damaged and the speed was reduced to 12 km/h; for the rest, the trip continued without incident and some consider that this was the most efficient steam vehicle that had been built until then. Then, in 1829, they built a 3-ton steam coach with a capacity for 15 passengers, powered by two engines. During the 1830s, James continued to build more experimental steam wagons.

At that time, the British engineers worked mainly in the construction of large experimental steam trainings, weighing several tons, in order to achieve mass transportation of people and thus provide sevices that competed with those of stagecoaches thrown to horses and with the, at that time, emerging railroad.

Between 1825 and 1829, the British inventor Goldsworthy Gurney (1793-1875), built some steam carriages that could reach speeds of up to 32 km/h. and he used to make trips with passengers in suburban areas of London. In 1829, one of his steam vehicles made a trip between London and the city of Bath at an average of 14 km/h.

But they were not commercially successful, largely because of the fear of people traveling in the same car with a steam boiler that could explode at any time. To counteract these fears, Gurney unrolled articulated vehicles, in which the passenger carriage was separated and tied to another steam-powered car, which pulled the passenger carriage.

In the year 1830s, the British inventor Walter Hancock (1799-1852) put into operation a series of bus services. In 1829 he had built a 10-seat steam bus which he named Infant, and from 1831 he began to provide regular services between central London and the Stratford area, located about 10 kilometers to the east. These are usually considered as the first bus services in history.

From 1833, Hancock began to provide regular services with an innovative steam bus that he called Enterprise, which linked the London areas of London Wall, Islington and Paddington. This bus required 3 operators to operate: a driver in the front, in charge of steering the rudder; a second operator located in a small compartment in the back of the vehicle, between the boiler and the engine, who was in charge of controlling the water levels of the tank and placing the reverse lever when necessary; and a third located on a later platform, responsible for maintaining the fire and applying the brakes when necessary.

However, due to conflicts with its investment partners, Hancock terminated the service and thereafter dedicated itself to operating other steam bus services on its own, between the years 1833 and 1840.

In 1836, Hancock began to provide bus services between different areas of London, with a new vehicle, called Automaton, with capacity for 22 seated passengers and which could reach speeds over 30 km /h. although normally it circulated at speeds between 19 and 24 km/h.

The businessman Charles Dance was interested in Gurney's vehicles, so he inaugurated in the 1830s, daily services between the city of London and the seaside town of Brighton, located 85 km to the south. In 1833, for a few months, Dance and Gurney provided an articulated steam bus service between the cities of Gloucester and Cheltenham, located about 86 kilometers apart, covering the trip 4 times a day; but because of pressures from businessmen related to the horse-drawn carriage business as well as from local officials not very open to this type of innovation, the service had to be suspended.

These bus services continued to operate until the beginning of the 1840s, when due to the constantly growing rise of the railroad and the pressure exerted by horse-drawn carriage businessmen, a series of legislations was implemented to establish road tolls. -nos, which were known as Turnpike Acts, which discouraged the provision of steam bus services.

The situation for steam cars and any other type of self-propelled vehicle that was not the railroad worsened even further after 1861, when again under pressure from the railroad and horse-drawn carriages, other, even stricter, laws were implemented. as Locomotive Acts, which imposed a series of harsh prohibitions on all types of self-propelled road vehicles, since they limited the maximum speed allowed on roads at 16 km/h. and at 8 km/h. in cities.

These laws were reinforced in 1865, when the maximum permitted speeds were further reduced to 6 km/h. on roads and 3 km/h. in cities and with the obligation that a banderillero was walking ahead with a red flag to warn the passage of one of these self-propelled vehicles. Only in 1879 an exception was established for steam (and later electric) trams, which were not subject to these prohibitions. These harsh laws literally emptied the British roads of all types of self-propelled vehicles (except trams) until 1896 - the year they were repealed - allowing for exceptional railway development in Britain.

In 1859, the British Thomas Rickett, built for the Marquis of Stafford a 3-wheel steam vehicle, with a chain transmission system to