History of Cars - Car Planet

Chariots thrived in the ancient Mediterranean and Middle-East. Steam-power was a product of 18th-century Britain. In the 19th century, French and German engineers built the first gasoline cars. At the start of the 20th century Henry Ford, an American, made simple cars people could afford. Ever since then, the miracle of the motor car has spread around the world... and changed the face of our planet.

People's wagon: 1940s: Germany

German dictator Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) gave Henry Ford a medal for making cars affordable. Inspired by the Model-T Ford, Hitler asked German auto-maker Dr Ferdinard Porsche to develop a simple people's car or "Volks Wagen" called the KDF (Kraft durch Freude or Strength through Joy). Renamed the Beetle, it sold over 20 million worldwide and was one of the most popular cars of the 20th century.

Photo: Small, basic cars like this Austin Mini, popular in the UK during the 1960s and 1970s, owed much to pioneering, affordable cars like the Model T-Ford and Volkswagen Beetle.

Status symbols: 1950s–1960s: America

Ford wanted to keep cars simple to keep them cheap. But his "any color so long as it's black" message fell out of favor: people wanted comfort and style. In the 1930s, cars became sleek, glamorous, and "streamlined"; inside, they boasted luxuries like automatic gears and window defrosters. The end of World War II brought cars inspired by planes. Swaggering "gas guzzlers" were given tail fins like jet fighters—and burned almost as much fuel!

Paving the way: 1930s–1950s: Europe and America

Many countries launched huge roadbuilding schemes in the mid-20th century. Hitler helped to pioneer Germany's high-speed Autobahns in the 1930s, while his Italian pal Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) greatly expanded the Italian network of autostrade. Britain didn't start building motorways until the 1950s, when America also reorganized its major roads into a simple numbered network called the Interstate Highway System.

Cuban Classics: 1950s: Cuba

Cuba has been cut-off from the United States since the Cuban revolution of 1959, so many Cubans still drive round in classic cars from the late 1950s. It's hard to buy new cars or spares for old ones!

Trabi trials (1950s–1980s): East Germany

Before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, eastern Europeans zipped around in 3 million ugly little cars called Trabants (or "Trabis"). They were cheap and cheerful—even cool in some ways, with recycled plastic body parts that lasted nearly 30 years. But their engines chugged like mowers and smoke belched from their exhausts. When communism collapsed, people drove their Trabants to the scrap heap at top speed. Only to find the plastic bits couldn't be recycled.

Big Sheik Out: 1970s: Middle East

In 1973, oil-rich states in the Middle East began to restrict exports—turning off the tap that supplied the world with oil. There were sharp hikes in fuel prices and queues of cars snaking from gas stations were a familiar sight.

Sugar cars: 1970s– : Brazil

When the 1973 oil crisis hit home, the Brazilian government launched a major project to run the country's cars on ethanol made from sugar beet. Almost 30,000 filling stations in Brazil now sell ethanol, which supplies a fifth of the country's fuel.

First robot carmaker: 1961: Ewing, New Jersey, USA

Henry Ford pioneered automation, but General Motors took it a quantum leap further in 1961. That's when the first-ever car-making robot started building car bodies at the GM plant in Ewing New Jersey.

Photo: A modern car-welding robot at Think Tank, the museum of science in Birmingham, England.

Big in Japan: 1970s–1980s: Japan

American and European car firms dominated car production till the 1970s. Then Japanese upstarts such as Nissan, Honda, Mazda, and Toyota began to undercut them by exporting cheaply made cars to the West. For a time, countries like the United States and Britain fought off these imports. So the Japanese went further and began exporting their factoriesinstead. Honda became the first Japanese maker to open plants in the United States and Canada in the early 1980s.

Compete or cooperate? California, USA: 2000s–

Car makers used to compete; now they cooperate. In the world of "globalization", big companies and their brands operate beyond national borders. New cars are expensive to design so makers in different countries work together to reduce costs. A Renault made in France might use exactly the same chassis, engine, or bodywork as a Nissan made in Japan. Another example of globalization is when a car plant in one country builds vehicles for more than one maker. Toyota and General Motors jointly run a plant like this in Fremont, California making parts for Toyotas, Pontiacs, and Chevrolets.

Car-making memories: UK: 2000s–

Britain's car industry once employed over a million people and was the world's second-biggest producer after the United States. Today, the only big car plants left in Britain are run by Japanese firms and the once great names of British motoring—Jaguar, Rolls Royce, Bentley, and Aston Martin—are foreign-owned too.

Dream cars: China: 2000–

The Chinese are bicycle crazy: there are twice as many cycles in China as people in the United States. But all that could soon change. Car makers are eagerly turning their eyes to China, the world's fastest-growing car market, where sales are growing at 80 per cent a year. The country's biggest car maker, Shanghai Automotive, has already formed powerful alliances with big western firms including Fiat, General Motors, and Volkswagen.

Self-driving cars: California: 2000–

Who knows if we'll even be driving cars in the future? Companies like Google are now busily developing cars with onboard sensors that can navigate their way around the world while the people inside sit back and enjoy the view. Part robot, part computer, part old-fashioned automobile, these hybrid machines are likely to prove far safer and much more environmentally friendly than cars driven by careless, fallible humans.

Also visit History of Cars - Early Times and History of Cars - Rise and Fall of Henry Ford

Source: http://www.explainthatstuff.com/

Aston Volante Spotted in Snow

Aston Martin is getting its flagship cabrio ready for production with some testing in the frozen north where it was caught on video.

Driving prototype supercars strikes us as good a way to make a living as we can think of – beauty-pageant judge being another – but a rear-drive V12 convertible has to be about the worst car you could pick for a drive in the cold and snow. Someone’s got to do it, though, and our friends at WorldCarFans have caught it on video. The car in question is the Aston Martin Vanquish Volante, the upcoming convertible version of the British automaker’s current line-up.

Spied refueling during winter testing in northern Europe, the Vanquish Volante is expected to debut in Frankfurt this September. Power will come from the same 573hp 6.0-liter V12 as the coupe, only with a fabric roof mechanism to let in the exhaust note and rushing wind - but hopefully not the cold.

Sexualized Cars: Aston Martin Vanquish

Like its powerful V12, the Aston Martin Vanquish's sexy styling is one of its most defining elements.

Officially, the Aston Martin Vanquish was given its name because it was intended to "vanquish" the competition, specifically from Ferrari. But didn’t that always sound a bit corny to you? The more likely explanation is that "vanquish" was one of those Victorian euphemisms for sex, the sort still favored by the writers of horrible "romance" novels. Moreover, it’s probably the closest a car has ever come to having a name which relates directly to sex.

When Ford took over Aston Martin in 1994, the company was just barely hanging on. It was mostly in desperate need of new products, and following an expansion of the DB7 line, the Vanquish became the first all-new model built under Ford management in 2001. The Vanquish replaced the Virage line, which ended with the Vantage and Le Mans variants of the car. This particular incarnation of the Virage was introduced in 1989 and, to be honest, wasn’t one of AM’s best cars to begin with. So although any car originally from 1989 would have been lagging behind in the high-end GT market by 2000, the Vantage was seriously obsolete.

But the original car began being phased out in favor of the more powerful (514-horsepower) Vanquish S as early as 2004, with production of the regular Vanquish ending in 2005. With the sales of Aston Martin and the closing of the Newport Pagnell factory, the whole Vanquish line was ended in 2007. This was seen as a shame at the time, but with the economic crisis which came shortly thereafter, cutting back the lineup actually turned out to have been a good move. There is now a new Vanquish for 2013, and this is every bit as deserving of the name, not to mention the name’s sexual undertones.Yet it is still definitely present, particularly in Aston’s designs of late. Hugh Grant, a former Vanquish owner, once said of it in an interview with Top Gear that "you want to lick it, or mate with it, or something". The bulging rear fenders do create a certain hip-like effect, and there is a feminine quality to the grace of the car’s curves. But a coke bottle has curves, and our feelings towards these rarely need to be euphemized. There is something more to the car, and an Aston in particular. For one, a Vanquish can also sing beautifully, thanks to its V12 engine. In the original car, this 5.9-liter unit produced 450 horsepower.

The literature stops short of describing anything as "heaving", but that same barely-concealed sexualizing of the car is still very much present. It’s something we think of as being more closely associated with Italian automotive design, but half of the cars in this series are British, and this entry is perhaps the most sexualized car currently available for sale. It’s maybe a difficult call to make, as supercars are rarely unsexy, but the Vanquish has that little bit extra, and it's more than just in the name.