Around 1910 the motor car turned the corner  on popularity - becoming a middle class 'necessity' and not merely a frivolous toy of the rich. That's probably why there is so much mention of automobile rides in the Nicholson letters. By 1910 not only did town tycoon Mr. Wales own a car (he takes Margaret for a spin one day)  but so did many of Norman Nicholson's professional class neighbours and friends. There were 50,000 motor cars registered in Canada in 1912 according to the web site of the Ontario Genealogy Society.

There were hundreds of auto makers in that era (manufacturing steam, petroleum  and electricity driven vehicles) and cars were still fairly pricey, costing the same amount as a house, but there was a growing sense that they were the "in thing" especially in towns like Richmond.

(Read all about Mr. Montgomery's enthusiasm for cars in the letters. Here's an example letter.)

Click on "Reality vs. Image" above to see some Nicholson neighbours in their 1910 era auto.

Edgar Andrew Collard in his book All Our Yesterdays claims that the first automobile in Montreal was purchased in 1898 by a Mr. Dandurand.

One wonders  how our world would be better off, had Edison managed to make electric cars more practical! Click for picture of Edison's Llewellen Park garage with article from 1910. For outside link to article about DRIVING IN 1910 in MOntreal? What you need to know.

(Adapted and abridged from entry MOTOR CAR in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.)

It could be said that the automobile was born in France in 1885 when M.Levasseur took an internal combustion engine (invented by German Gottleib Daimler) and stuck it onto  a horse carriage, with engine in front and the axis parallel to the side frame of the vehicle.  It could also be said that the automobile was made people-friendly in that same country, due to the Frenchman's  love affair with car racing. In the late 1800's early 1900's these French sport enthusiasts perfected the car's design (making it quieter, cleaner and more comfortable to ride in) to such a degree that ordinary (rich) people able to pay for chauffeurs wanted to go around in them.

The House of Daimler soon produced a vastly improved model, the Mercedes with some radical changes in design.  Soon the British (who had outlawed car racing) improved on the French and Germans by using lighter metal alloys in their cars - thereby boosting efficiency and saving on fuel -and by taking advantage, unlike the French, of the superior Mercedes system. The British invented the six cylinder system and a few other innovations, like the spare tire.

In 1908  the US produced 200,000  motorcars, up from 23,000 in 1906 and just 600 in 1899.  They imported very few cars from overseas, just 1,387 in 1908.  At first the Americans had preferred steam-driven cars (considering them cleaner) but they too soon turned to petroleum 'spirits' driven vehicles. Oil in those days came from the Dutch East Indies and Russia for the most part. 

Self-propelled vehicles had been around in Britain since the 1820's, in the form of various steam fueled contraptions, giant bicycles and wheelchairs . But people weren't keen on going around with a boiler room on their back, preferring to ride in steam driven trains. Also the livery (horse) lobby made sure these vehicles couldn't go anywhere fast, limiting their speed to 5 miles an hour. So the car was put on hold for a few decades until Daimler invented the internal combustion engine..  The quieter internal combustion engine, if smelly and dirty, had one other key quality going for it: a person didn't need to understand how it worked to run it. And then, of course, American Henry Ford (one of many many car makers of the time) started building cars by assembly line, making them cheap enough to be bought by his own workers!