Pub trivia: Cars
Cars
Cars come in more shapes and sizes than your average x-factor queue, although not many come with the optional extra of Simon Cowell sitting in the passenger seat criticising your driving technique. Here are some fast and furious facts to keep you clued up on your cars.
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Fact
The Volkswagen Beetle has the dubious distinction of being the most popular car ever created by an evil dictator. Adolf Hitler personally sketched the first Beetle designs in the early 30s.
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Fact
Beginning with Mary Anderson, who invented the first windscreen wiper in 1903, women have played a striking role in the evolution of the car. In fact, women inventors were responsible for developing the sparkplug, the clutch and the carburettor.
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Fact
The world's first petrolheads didn't get behind the wheel – they toggled the tiller. That was the name of the giant sort-of joystick that was used to "steer" first cars around. The steering wheel was introduced in 1899, and within a decade the tillers were history.
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Fact
The fastest car in the world has a highest recorded speed of 257mph and can go from 0 to 60 in 2.78 seconds. Unfortunately, it's called the Ultimate Aero. But it could have been worse. It could have been called the Ultimate Twix.
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Fact
The most important car ever made was the Model T Ford. Popularly, the credit goes to Henry Ford, although it was a friend of Ford's, Childe Harold Wills, who oversaw the design of the car and even came up with the squiggly Ford logo. He and Ford later fell out and Wills set up his own car company. Which flopped.
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Fact
The "father of the car" was Karl Friedrich Benz, and the first car was the Benz Patent Motorwagen, built in 1885. And it was a three-wheeler, so don't scoff at Reliant Robin drivers – they're keeping it real.
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