22 Weird Car Facts. Four of Them Involve Horses

Brought to you by our Automologist, MAC.

I, for one, have had enough of the Coronavirus and how this minuscule microbe will seemingly end humanity as we know it. So, with the same energy and panache employed by Nero as he fiddled when Rome burnt, I have decided that I would come up with some weird car facts to keep us all amused…or was that bemused:

1. There are currently some 1 billion cars in the world.
2. The US of A has more cars than any other with some 300 million; China is coming in at second now but with only 78 million, they have some catching up to do.
3. Last year, some 60 million cars were manufactured—that is 164,000 per day, 6,849 per hour and 114 per minute.
4. One-in-four cars in the world are currently manufactured in China, though.
5. An average car would have some 30,000 individual components, of which about 80% can be recycled.
   
6. The word ‘car’ comes from the Latin Carrum, which meant two-wheeled Celtic chariot.
   
7. The word ‘dashboard’ comes from the plank on a horse-drawn carriage that was designed to stop mud splattering the drivers.
   

   

    

8. Approximately 75% of all Rolls-Royces ever produced are still on the road.
9. Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Audi, Ducati and Porsche are all owned by Volkswagen. They also own SEAT, Skoda, SCANIA and MAN.
10. The average motorist in the US spends 42 hours per year stuck in jams; in the UK, this figure is 99 hours. Malaysians spend an average of 321 hours and the poor folks over in Manila get delayed in jams for about 384 days in their own Carmageddon.
11. Over 250 million cars tyres are thrown away every year.
12. People who take public transport rather than drive their own car are 2.5 kilos lighter.
13. Approximately 1.3 million people died in car accidents last year. That is roughly 3,287 deaths per day.
14. At 2.2%, car crashes are the ninth leading cause of death in the world…Covid-19 isn’t even close to that yet.
15. Of all road fatalities, 90% occur in under-developed countries where there are less than half of the world’s vehicles.
16. Twenty-five percent of road accidents last year in the USA involved a cell phone.
17. If you look at a cell phone for as little as five seconds, you increase your chance of having an accident by twenty times.
18. The average driver will be involved in 3 to 4 accidents in their lifetime, or one every 18 years. Looks like I am above average again.
19. Stuttgart, the home of Porsche, literally means ‘stud farm’. The Porsche logo incorporates a stallion in the crest.
20. The Subaru logo has six stars, which is a reference to Pleiadas, which is, as everyone knows, a cluster of stars in the Taurus constellation, and Subaru is the Japanese word for Taurus.
21. Volvo is Latin for ‘I Roll’ and their logo is an ancient chemical symbol for iron.
22. Before the introduction of cars, 15,000 dead horses were left on the streets of New York every year as a result. Cars were initially seen as being environmentally friendly.