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The first vehicle to move under its own power was designed by Nicholas Joseph Cugnot and constructed by M. Brezin in 1769.
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A second unit was built in 1770 which weighed 8000 pounds and had a top speed on 2 mile/hour
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blueprint for the modern automobile was perfected in Germany and France
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ready for road trials by September, 1893 the car built by Charles and Frank Duryea, brothers, was the first gasoline powered car in America.
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“The 1901 Mercedes, designed by Wilhelm Maybach is credited for being the first modern motorcar in all essentials."
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"Daimler employed some seventeen hundred workers to produce fewer than a thousand cars per year”"
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"United States produced some 485,000 of the world total of 606,124 motor vehicles.”
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"Henry Ford innovated mass-production techniques that became standard, with Ford, General Motors and Chrysler emerging as the “Big Three” auto companies by the 1920s."
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"Once vital to the expansion of American urban centers, the industry had become a shared global enterprise with the rise of Japan as the leading automaker"