Motoring file

The motoring file

Sourced facts about cars, engines and roads, topic by topic. Every fact links to its source, checked 2 Nov 2026.

What is a car?

A car (automobile) is a usually four-wheeled vehicle built mainly to carry passengers, and commonly driven by an internal-combustion engine. [source]
There are an estimated 1.4 billion passenger cars in use around the world. [source]

In 1885 the German engineer Karl Benz built the world’s first practical car powered by an internal-combustion engine. [source]
Benz’s three-wheeled Motorwagen first ran early in 1885, and its design was patented on 29 January 1886. [source]
In August 1888 Bertha Benz drove the couple’s two sons about 106 km from Mannheim to Pforzheim in a Motorwagen: the first long-distance drive in a car. [source]

In an internal-combustion engine, the fuel and the air it burns with, and the hot gases they make, are the engine’s working fluids. [source]
The first four-stroke engine was built by the 19th-century German engineer Nikolaus Otto. [source]
A diesel engine squeezes air until it is hot enough to set light to the diesel fuel sprayed into the cylinder, with no spark needed. [source]
The diesel engine is named after Rudolf Diesel, a German engineer. [source]

An electric car is driven by one or more electric motors, powered by rechargeable batteries or a fuel cell. [source]
Toyota launched the Prius, a hybrid that runs on both battery power and petrol, in Japan in 1997 and worldwide in 2000. [source]
Tesla’s first car, the all-electric Roadster of 2008, could travel 394 km on a single charge. [source]

A motorcycle is a two-wheeled, or less often three-wheeled, motor vehicle, usually with an internal-combustion engine. [source]
The first commercial motorcycle design was a three-wheeler built by Edward Butler in Great Britain in 1884. [source]

In the UK, road signs with red circles mostly tell you what you must not do. [source]
Signs with blue circles but no red border mostly give a positive instruction, such as “ahead only”. [source]
Warning signs are mostly triangular. [source]
Direction signs are mostly rectangular: blue on motorways and green on primary routes. [source]

The UK’s current number plate format dates from 2001: two letters for the region where the car was first registered, two numbers for when it was issued, then three random letters. [source]
You cannot rearrange the letters or numbers on a number plate, or alter them so they are hard to read. [source]

The number 66 for the route was approved on 11 November 1926, and the road was not fully paved until 1938. [source]
Route 66 linked Chicago and Los Angeles and was officially commissioned to run over 2,448 miles (3,940 km). [source]

The Ford Model T was built from 1908 until 1927. [source]
More than 15 million Model Ts were built. [source]
Assembly-line building cut the price of a Model T touring car from $850 in 1908 to less than $300 in 1925. [source]
The Model T was nicknamed the “Tin Lizzie”. [source]

Racing on Britain’s public roads was forbidden, so in 1904 a Manx law opened the Isle of Man’s roads for the 1905 Gordon Bennett Car Trial. [source]
The first Isle of Man TT races were held in 1907. Charles Collier won the single-cylinder race on a Matchless, and Rem Fowler won the twin-cylinder class on a Norton. [source]
Since 1911 the TT has used the Snaefell Mountain Course, and today’s races are run over largely the same roads. [source]
A vehicle brought to the Isle of Man that is more than 5 years old needs a roadworthiness test at the island’s vehicle test centre. [source]

For owning and running a car on the island, see Manx Motoring.

Figures are the sources’ own. Rules on signs and number plates are the UK’s, from GOV.UK; check the current rules where you live.

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