Motoring visionaries who made the world love cars
From Carl Benz to Elon Musk, these 10 men, and one woman, built and reshaped the auto industry.
Maverick genius and Lotus founder Colin Chapman with his Lotus Esprit.
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K, it was supposed to a top 10. But in trying to pare back a long list of people who shaped the motoring industry, the best I could do was 11. I’ll leave it to you, dear reader, to strike a line through any of the following – or add a few names of your own.
CARL BENZ (1844-1929)
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There are arguments about who got there first, but Carl Benz’s three-wheeled, petrol-powered Benz Patent Motorcar, offered for sale from 1886, stakes the strongest claim to launching the motor industry. Honourable mention goes to the other pioneering Germans of that same extraordinarily fertile era. They include Gottlieb Daimler, Nikolaus Otto, Robert Bosch, Rudolf Diesel and Bertha Benz (who financed her engineer husband Carl, and completed the first ever intercity car journey).