How did steam cars work? I can't imagine having a stoker to shovel coal into one of those things on a regular basis. Also you mentioned that petrol cars needed transmissions with multiple gears - why didn't steam cars require gearing in the way petrol cars did?
I find there's an interesting parallel between car and tank development, where the tank was first mass produced in Britain, but it was France where, funnily enough, Renault managed to develop something that would use the same design principles as the most modern tanks we have today in the Renault FT.
Sand casting has been around for some 4000 years or so. As a method of shaping large chunks of metal for engine blocks, pumps and other things it's been used from the beginning of cars and long before. Could you perhaps be more specific?
