What Was the First Car in America? The Duryea Brothers and Early Pioneers

The first successful gasoline-powered automobile built in the United States is generally credited to brothers Charles and Frank Duryea, who road-tested their motor wagon in Springfield, Massachusetts, in September 1893. In 1895 they founded the Duryea Motor Wagon Company — the first American company formed to build and sell gasoline cars — and Frank won America’s first automobile race, the Chicago Times-Herald race, on Thanksgiving Day 1895. Earlier steam-powered vehicles and experiments existed, which is why the “first American car” title comes with caveats.

At a glance

Before the Duryeas

• Steam vehicles: American inventors built steam-powered carriages decades earlier, and Sylvester Roper built steam carriages in Massachusetts in the 1860s.
• George Selden filed a patent for a gasoline automobile in 1879 but did not build a working car until much later. His patent was used to demand royalties from car makers until Henry Ford won a court challenge in 1911.

The Duryea motor wagon

The Duryeas, bicycle makers, fitted a single-cylinder gasoline engine to a used horse-drawn buggy. After tests and improvements, their vehicle ran on public roads in Springfield in 1893. Frank Duryea continued refining the design, making it more reliable.

America’s first auto race

On November 28, 1895, the Chicago Times-Herald sponsored a race of about 54 miles from Chicago to Evanston and back. Snow covered the roads, and only a few of the entrants started. Frank Duryea won in a little over ten hours of running time — proof that the gasoline car could work in real conditions.

The industry begins

The Duryea company built a small number of cars in 1896 — among the first American cars sold to the public. Soon hundreds of manufacturers appeared, including Oldsmobile, Cadillac and Ford. Read the Ford Model T and the Benz Patent-Motorwagen for the European story.