Porch Notes
The First Car Ever Driven in Detroit Wasn't Ford's — and Ford Watched on a Bicycle
Cars and driving
Everybody knows Henry Ford put the world on wheels. But the very first automobile to rumble down a Detroit street wasn’t his.
On the night of March 6, 1896, a 28-year-old engineer named Charles Brady King drove a gasoline “horseless carriage” he’d designed and built out onto the streets of Detroit — the first car ever driven in the city, and almost certainly the first in Michigan. Just before 11 p.m., he set off from the machine shop where he’d built it, rolled down St. Antoine Street, turned onto Jefferson, then up Woodward Avenue, drawing an astonished crowd that grew so big it briefly halted him near Cadillac Square. He topped out around six miles an hour. The next morning’s Detroit Free Press reported that the contraption “caused a deal of comment.”
Here’s the kicker: trailing along behind King’s historic drive, on a bicycle, was a young Henry Ford. King was three months ahead of Ford, who wouldn’t test his own Quadricycle until that June. The two were friends; King even gave Ford spare engine parts to help finish his first car.
To be fair and accurate, King didn’t invent the automobile — Karl Benz had patented the gasoline car in Germany a decade earlier. But King’s midnight spin lit the fuse on Detroit’s century as the Motor City. His reward that night? A police officer threatened to ticket him for disturbing the peace.
Where to see it
Woodward Avenue in downtown Detroit — King's route — is still the city's main artery. The Detroit Historical Museum covers his story, and King was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in Dearborn.