Steam Cars
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Glasgow Museums has a collection of one steam car which dates from around 1919. Steam engines powered cars by burning fuel that heated water in a boiler, creating steam that expanded and pushed pistons or cylinders to turn the crankshaft, which then turned the wheels. This worked perfectly well for locomotives that ran on rails but was not so successful for road transportation. They were used quite widely in the USA but less so in Britain. The weight of these cars was detrimental to speed and the rapid improvements in internal combustion engines made them impractical.
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