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When the first wheels rolled into India

Text: S Muthiah & K N Gopalan December 23, 2008

The fascinating story of the start of motoring in India...

The first wheel may have been used for transport about 4,000 years ago in India, it is said, but it was the 18th century before the first horseless carriage actually hit the roads.

Powered vehicles, however, have been experimented with from as early as the 14th century, several Italians having tried out wind-driven cars, Leonardo da Vinci being one of them.

It was after James Watt's steam engine in 1705 that a powered vehicle was looked at more seriously.

Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot of France developed a three-wheeled, steam-powered vehicle in 1769 and this is considered the first automobile. By the 1830s the steam car had made considerable progress, but stiff competition from the railways and an ill-considered legislation in Britain forced the steam automobile off the roads. Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler of Germany laid the foundation of the motor industry as we know it today. Benz invented the petrol engine in 1885 and, a year later, Daimler built a car driven by a motor of his own design.

In America, Ransome Olds, who had built steam-driven cars and is said to have sold one to an Indian potentate, built a motor car driven by a gasoline engine in 1887. By 1890, two Frenchmen, Panhard and Levassor, began producing automobiles powered by Daimler engines. Read on...

Image: A model poses near the new Fiat 500 Abarth cars displayed at the Paris Mondial de l'Automobile. | Photograph: REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen