Los Angeles, California, is the first stop on a cross-country road show launched on this day in 2007 by Smart USA to promote the attractions of its “ForTwo” microcar, which it had scheduled for release in the United States in 2008. In the early 1990s, Nicholas Hayek of Swatch, the company famous for its wide […]

On this day in 2007, the European-American carmaker DaimlerChrysler, created in 1998 in a $36 billion merger, announces that it is selling 80.1 percent of the Chrysler group to the U.S. private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. Cerberus paid $7.4 billion in the deal, mostly in the form of investments in Chrysler; Daimler AG, as it […]

On this day in 2007, Beijing, China, the capital city of the planet’s most populous nation, gets its first drive-through McDonald’s restaurant. The opening ceremony for the new two-story fast-food eatery, located next to a gas station, included traditional Chinese lion dancers and a Chinese Ronald McDonald. According to a report from The Associated Press […]

The Fiat 500 Club Italia, an organization formed in appreciation of the iconic 500–“Cinquecento” in Italian–car produced by the automaker Fiat (Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino), holds what the Guinness Book of World Records will call the world’s largest parade of Fiat cars on July 9, 2006, between Villanova d’Albenga and Garlenda, Italy. Fiat, founded in […]

After a flurry of rumors, DaimlerChrysler chairman Dieter Zetsche announces on this day in 2006 that the company’s urban-focused Smart brand–already popular in Europe–will come to the United States in early 2008. Smart–an acronym for Swatch Mercedes ART–began as a joint venture between Swatch, the company known for its colorful and trendy plastic watches, and […]

On this day in 2006, the animated feature film “Cars,” produced by Pixar Animation Studios, roars into theaters across the United States. For “Cars,” which won the first-ever Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, Pixar’s animators created an alternate America inhabited by vehicles instead of humans. The film’s hero is Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen […]

On February 3, 2006, “The World’s Fastest Indian,” a movie based on the true story of motorcycle racer and land-speed record holder Burt Munro, opens in U.S. theaters. The film starred Anthony Hopkins as Munro, the sexagenarian who in the 1960s set several land-speed records on his modified 1920 Indian Scout motorcycle at the Bonneville […]

On this day in 2006, “Who Killed the Electric Car?,” a documentary about the aborted attempt by the auto industry to create an electric vehicle, debuts at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. The movie posited that there was a conspiracy between oil companies, automakers and the government to kill the electric car. The film […]