Back in the days of the Penny Farthing cycle; perhaps one of the least well-designed means of transport in history; a German engineer named Heinrich Kleyer fell in love with cycling after spending a year so in the United States where he was introduced to cycle racing.
Ettore Bugatti, who had founded the car manufacturing company that bore his name, was a rather prickly gentleman. He once famously retorted to a buyer of one of his cars, who was complaining that it was difficult to start on a cold morning, that anyone who could afford a Bugatti should be to afford a heated garage!
Back in 1916 a Danish engineer and industrialist called Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen built a factory to make fittings for steam engines. The motorcar had only recently made an appearance and different methods of propulsion were being experimented with. Resmussen tried designing and building his own car, using a steam engine; in German a steam powered car is a 'Dampf-Kraft-Wagen', hence the name DKW. It didn't work.
Fred and August Duesenberg were first-class engineers who created some of the finest early cars in the United States, but unfortunately they were not so good as businessmen.
Benjamin Berkeley Hotchkiss was not at all interested in cars. His passion was guns.
In 1909 a group of businessmen in Detroit formed a company to build cars with the aim of selling them at a price of less than US$1000. That would be equivalent to approximately US$30,000 in 2020.
The Mercedes-Benz 770 Grosser; or Grand Mercedes; was one very big luxurious car. Produced from 1930 until 1943 it was almost inevitably provided to high-ranking officials of Germany's Third Reich.
Perhaps the Packard Motor Company would never have existed if James Ward Packard hadn't been insulted by another car manufacturer!
Do you remember when Honda first brought their motorcycles to the United Kingdom, and they ran their 'cc versus rpm war' advertisements? They were not the first.
Tatra claim to be one of the longest established car manufacturers in the world, although there has been a few bumps along the way!