12 Car Facts You Really Don’t Need To Know

11/05/2011

But they're interesting anyway

During World War I, Enzo Ferarri was a mule-shoer for the Italian army. He really was a trailblazer in the transportation business.
The most expensive car ever sold is a 1957 Ferrari Testa Rossa for $16.4 million.
The windshield wiper was invented and patented by a woman, Mary Anderson, in 1903. By 1923, 173 new inventions by women for cars had been reported.

Ford produced the first assembly line for automobiles. Henry Ford supposedly got the idea from a process that was used to slaughter pigs. Whatever it takes to be inspired…

In 1916, 55% of all cars were Ford Model T's – not surprising since, with the help of the assembly line, it only took 93 minutes to finish a complete Model T. The only paint color that would dry fast enough to keep up with the production speed of this model was black Japan enamel, hence Henry Ford’s famous declaration "the public can have any color it wants, so long as it's black!"

In 1898, the New York City Police Department used bicycles to pursue speeding motorists. We don’t know if that says something about the speed of the cars at that time or the speed of the police officers.

In 1902 the first speeding ticket was issued. (Possibly by a police officer on a bike?)

Henry H. Bliss was the first person killed in a car-related accident in 1899, when he stepped out of a vehicle and was hit by a taxicab.

In 2009, New York and New Jersey were surveyed as having the Worst Drivers in America. Not really a surprise, considering this is where said Henry died – they clearly have a long history of bad drivers.

Founder of the Chevrolet Motor Car Company, Louis Chevrolet, lost all his money in the 1929 stock market crash. He went to work as a line mechanic in a Chevrolet factory and died almost penniless.

Women spend more than $65 million a year on new cars and trucks and influence 80% of all new car purchases. Anyone who thought cars were solely a man’s thing were apparently wrong.

The most expensive car currently available on the market is the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport for a mere $2,400,000. You would think that people would be really careful with a car like that. Nope.