La Marquise, the world’s oldest car as well as world’s longest running car ever, is a steam powered car built in 1884 by De Dion, Bouton & Trepradoux in France. The oldest car was originally built as prototype for the Albert, the Count of Dion who is a pioneer of automobile industry in France. In 1887, the Count of Dion drove this car out for first time demonstration and covered up 20-odd-mile Paris-to-Versailles round trip at the average speed of 26 miles per hour.

In 1885, Karl Benz designed and invented the first gasoline powered car in Germany and unveiled the car in 1886. Both of the cars La Marquise and Karl Benz’s Benz Patent Motorwagen were actually built around the same time. Both of the inventors were working independently of one another in France and Germany.

During the time technology isn’t advance as todays, therefore it brings controversial who invented the first car. La Marquise is the world’s oldest running car and Benz Patent Motorwagen should be the first gasoline-powered car.

The world’s oldest car takes about a half-hour to work up enough steam to drive. If you have to start work at 9am, you will need to wake up early to give extra 30 minutes to start up this car to drive. By running with coal, wood and bits of paper, surprisingly the car top speed could reach 38 miles per hour which is a good result for a car built in 1880s.

As the oldest car, it did not wear number 1 but number “0” in the 1996 London to Brighton Veteran Car Run. In 2007, a fortunate car collector had successfully bid the car at Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance and the car was sold for US$3,520,000. Imagine putting on 10,000 miles a year on the mileage meter if the car has one, the car will be more than 1200,000 miles on the car! Remarkably, after over a century, it has only had two owners for the world’s oldest car.