Start Your Engine – March 4, 1887
Well, it was on this day in 1887 that the first four-wheeled “carriage” with a water-cooled gasoline-powered internal combustion engine (the predecessor to the primary car engine design to this day) was given it’s test run.
It was Gotlleib Daimler’s “Benzin motor carriage.”
Incidentally, “Benzin” has nothing to do with Carl Benz, another auto manufacturer associated with Daimler. Benzin is the German word for gasoline. Daimler and Benz were fierce rivals until the two companies merged in 1926, and Gotllieb and Carl never actually met.