The birth of the car as we know it today occurred over many years before, IT was in the year 1885 the first car which rolled down the street,though many attempts were made before like in year 1769 the first self propelled car was built by Nicolas Cugnot in 1769 which could attain speeds of upto 6 kms/hour. In 1771 he again designed another steam-driven engine which ran so fast that it rammed into a wall, recording the world’s first accident.
another in 1807 Francois Isaac de Rivaz designed the first internal combustion engine.IT was the first car to run on engine such that with mixture of hydrogen & oxygen 2 produce energy.......
In 1860 thereafter, Jean Joseph Etienne Lenoir built the first successful two-stroke gas driven engine. In 1862 he again built an experimental vehicle driven by his gas-engine, which ran at a speed of 3 kms/hour. These cars became popular and by 1865 started using on the roads.
After that in 1885 four stroke enginr was designed by Gottileb Damlier and Nicolas Otto,Daimler created his own engines which he used both for cars and for the first four wheel horseless carriage where as Henry Ford began to work on a horseless carriage in 1890 with which He went several steps forward and in 1896, completed his first car the Quadricycle in 1896,It was powered by two cylinder gasoline engine, The Ford Motor Company was launched in 1903...
Continuing with his innovations & ideas introducing the modern mass production techniques of the automobile industry................
REFERENCE LINK: http://auto.indiamart.com/cars/carhistory.html
