Wednesday, September 21, 2011

CARMAKERS – the century that went by

The only other things which wow men apart from beautiful women are cars. And why not! The latest models boast of power, speed and are curvy, attractive and elegant too.

But how were they when they came into existence way back in the 19th century?












Invention of automobile is largely credited to Carl Benz and of production to Henry Ford. The snapshot of development of the cars along the lines of the century can be depicted as follows:
1899: FIAT formed
1902: Mercedes registered
1906: Alpha Romeo was born under the name SIAD
1908: GM was formed in USA when when William C. (Billy) Durant brought Oldsmobile and Buick together to form General Motors Company. A year later, Cadillac and Oakland (which became Pontiac in 1932) marques joined General Motors
1909: Bugatti built his first car
1913: Aston Martin found under name Bamford and Martin
1919: Bentley found
1922: Jaguar found under name of Swallow Sidecar Company
1925: Chrysler founded
1931: Bentley taken over by Rolls Royce
1937: Volkswagen formed to develop German People’s Car
1948: Porsche’s first car rolled out
1955: Suzuki’s first car rolled out
1965: VW bought Audi
1969: Ferrari joined FIAT group
1993: Maserati bought by FIAT group
1998: Bentley bought by VW
1998: Bugatti name bought by VW
2002: Bentley became fully VW and Rolls Royce become BMW

With the Audis, Mercs, RRs, Porsches filling in the automobile market, the old Ford models soon became things of stone-age and basic purpose of a car changed from “a means of transport” to “a mean power machine used for transport, race with elements of style, sexiness and power embedded in it”.

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