Here's How Early Car Makers Waged A PR War Against Horses

At the dawn of the automobile, car manufacturers threw everything into a PR battle against horse-drawn carriages - a transport 'war' which might end up being repeated with autonomous cars vs self-driven

Matt Robinson

30 May 2016

Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.

Comments

Well they didn’t have Horse Throttle back then.

All they had was the newspaperstand where you couldn’t say your mates ‘chav’ horse can pull many neighs (equavalent to the youtube comment section😉)

Do you mean HorseWhip?

They did. Adnan’s great great great grandfather created it. #truestory

The analogy is also relevant in another manner: we don’t have to fear about our cars. Horses aren’t present in Europe at least since the 1960s as for transportation, yet they are still used for recreational use. Horse racing is still a thing. The same is probably going to happen to cars too, in the distant future. They may be removed from the cityscape, but they will always be present on the race tracks.

I really hope so, and what about wrc?

The less fuel we use on daily transportation, the more fuel is left for recreational use. EV’s are saving the supercar, the same way that the car saved the horse. Horses used to be slaves to humans, but now people take care of their horses and give them a much better life as they used to have. I believe I heard Jay Leno saying something like this on Top Gear, when they reviewed the Honda Clarity.

Yeah, and most of won’t be able to afford it… Same goes for horses, to have an own horse costs a lot of money, and to have a car that you drive every weekend around the same track would mean that you have to move the car on a trailer, more money, or just use one track. Also, no more night cruises… I just want the ability to get in a car and drive where I want to, on the roads I want to. I don’t want a machine logging where I go…
Oh, and getting to the track is also fairly expensive, and nobody (except car guys) would want a track close to the place they live. So that would most likely way more people for almost the same amount of track. I just hope that we’ll be able to drive regular, old cars on public roads, without special permits and higher insurance then before.

So how would you mod your horse? Better horseshoes? Colourful stuff stuck on them?

Stickers.

LS swap it

You let the Female Horses pork the Better Male Horses.

It’s sort of closer to breeding Pokemon instead of modding cars.

Aero parts.

I am afraid for any horse that gets stanced.

I got cancer from the comments on that video..

parts of my brain died

I went on there in a good mood, read the comments, and became angry. I really need to avoid videos like that, because my temper can’t handle it.

Can”t be topped !!

Back then they had the same people that are against EV today:
“Horses are better, they can use natural fuel, they make beautiful noise, they don’t need to stop to refuel and can go farther on a single tank of water!”

EV SUCKS!~stupid fanboys who never heard of tesla or mclaren and only hate the prius because Jeremy Clarkson said it is horrible.

That was a really good thing to watch, basically a historic PR lesson, would love to see more stuff like this!

Well, back then horses became diesel Volswagens, they had high emissions due to their poo and farts. So automobiles were more reliable with far less emission rate