Birmingham's earliest roots of transport manufacture lie in the Industrial Revolution with Lunar Society members like Matthew Boulton who was proprietor of the Soho engineering works and James Watt who made the steam engine into the power plant of the Industrial Revolution, the term "horsepower" was first coined by Watt.
Frederick William Lanchester who was arguably the single most innovative automobile developer in the UK joined the Forward Gas Engine Company of Birmingham in 1889, he patented disc brakes in 1902 (even though his innovation was only widely adopted over half a century later). In 1893 he set up his own workshop. Amazingly in 1895 he and his brother built the first petrol driven four-wheeled car in Britain although the engine was underpowered compared to the weight of the six seat body. Fred also experimented with the wick carburetor, fuel injection, turbochargers and invented the accelerator pedal as well the Pendulum Governor for controlling the speed of an engine. In 1893 Fred designed and built his first engine (a vertical single cylinder) which was fitted to a flat bottomed boat designed by his brothers. The boat was launched at Salter's slipway in Oxford in 1894 and was the first all British powerboat.
With firms like BSA, Norton, Ariel, and Velocette motorbikes, LDV vans, Wolseley police cars, Morris, the Mini, Austin, MG Rover Group, Lucas Aerospace, Tyseley Locomotive Works, The Dunlop Tyre Company, the Midland Red Bus Company and a UK branch of Alstom trains, formerly the Midland Railway Carriage and Wagon Company, National Express coach services also are based in Birmingham.
Jaguar also has a production plant at Castle Bromwich.
The N.E.C. Motor Show is the largest motor show in Britain, and is hosted every other year.
In the First and Second World Wars, the Longbridge car plant built everything imaginable from ammunition to tank suspensions, steel helmets, Jerricans, Hawker Hurricanes, Fairey Battle fighters, Horsa Gliders, mines and depth charges, with the mammoth Avro Lancaster bomber coming into production towards the end of WWII. The Spitfire fighter aircraft was mass produced for the Royal Air Force during the Battle of Britain, at Castle Bromwich. It has been argued by some that Britain may have lost the second world war had it not been for Birmingham's massive industrial might.
Longbridge has played a vital role in Birmingham and the wider conurbation's employment since the invention of the aeroplane.
- Transport Museum
- Amazing Austin Aeroplanes
- How Austin helped Russia in WWI
- construction of the avro lancaster bomber in Birmingham
- Surviving Birmingham made Avro Lancasters
- Austin
- MG-Rover
- The Wolseley
- Castle Bromwich Airfield
- national motorcycle museum
- The Spitfire
- Midland Red
- Garner Tractors
- Singer Cars
- The Mini
- Images of the Museum before the fire