---
title: "Which came first, the car or the Ford Motor Company?"
description: "the car vs the Ford Motor Company: the car came first, by 17 years — 1886 against 1903. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/car-vs-ford/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, the car or the Ford Motor Company?

**Which came first, the car or the Ford Motor Company?: the car**

1886 — 17 years before the Ford Motor Company

the car came first, by 17 years. Karl Benz patented the Motorwagen.

## Side by side

|  | the car | the Ford Motor Company |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1886 | 1903 |
| Date | 1886-01-29 | 1903-06-16 |
| Category | invention | company |
| What happened | Karl Benz patented the Motorwagen. | Ford Motor Company was incorporated in Detroit. |

## the car

Benz's patent of 29 January 1886 is the usual date for the first practical petrol car. The vehicle's commercial breakthrough came from his wife: in 1888 Bertha Benz drove 106 km to Pforzheim without telling him, fixing the fuel line with a hatpin and the ignition with a garter on the way, and the resulting publicity sold the machine. Ford did not exist until 1903 and the Model T not until 1908.

## the Ford Motor Company

Ford was incorporated in June 1903, fourteen years after Nintendo and six months before the Wright brothers flew. The Model T followed in 1908 and the moving assembly line in 1913, which cut the time to build a car from twelve hours to about ninety minutes. Ford was Henry Ford's third attempt at a car company; the first two failed.

## Common questions

### Which came first, the car or the Ford Motor Company?

the car, by 17 years — 1886 against 1903.

### When did the car start?

1886. Karl Benz patented the Motorwagen.

### When did the Ford Motor Company start?

1903. Ford Motor Company was incorporated in Detroit.

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## Sources

- Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History — Smithsonian Institution (https://naturalhistory.si.edu/)
- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]