17 Amazing car facts


  1. The last car with a cassette player was the Ford Crown Vic in 2011.
  2. The names of all Lamborghini’s cars are derived from the world of bullfighting. The Diablo and Murcielago are both the names of famous bulls, while the Estoque is the style of sword that Matadors use.
  3. The word “car” is from the Latin Carrum, which originally meant a “two-wheeled Celtic war chariot.” The Latin has further derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *keys- “to run 
  4. The first cars didn’t have a steering wheel. People had to steer them with a lever.
  5. A dashboard was initially a piece of wood attached to a horse-drawn carriage to prevent mud from splattering up from the horses and onto the driver.
  6. Approximately 5 months of a person’s life is spent waiting in a car at red lights.
  7. About 165,000 cars are produced each day, which is equivalent to 60 million cars per year.
  8. Lamborghini gave the Italian state the world’s fastest police car in 2008. It had a video surveillance system, gun racks, a defibrillator, and an organ transplant cooler. They crashed it a year later
  9. In 1668, Ferdinand Verbiest, a Flemish member of a Jesuit mission in China, constructed the first known automobile. It was just 2 feet long and steam-powered.
  10. Chevrolet introduced the first car radio in 1922, with a huge price tag of $200. Many safety agencies believed the radio was distracting and sought to ban them from cars.
  11. The first speeding ticket was issued in 1902. At this time, most cars could only drive up to 45 mph.
  12. The first electric traffic lights were launched in 1927.
  13. Over 250 million car tires are discarded each year
  14. Using a cell phone while driving a car increases the chances of an accident by 20 times. Looking at a cell phone for just 5 seconds is like driving down a football field at 55 mph--without looking.
  15. The name “BMW” stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke name or Bavarian Motor Works.
  16. The name “Hyundai" means “the present age” or “modernity” in Korean.
  17. Nearly 1.3 million people die in car crashes each year around the world, which equals about 3,287 deaths a day. An additional 20-50 million people are injured or disabled each year.