Historedia
Episode 1 of 1

First American Automobile Sale

When
March 24, 1898
Where
Port Carbon, Pennsylvania
Part of
Robert Allison buys first American-built automobile, a Winton

Robert Allison purchased a Winton automobile on March 24, 1898, becoming the first person to buy an American-built car.

The sale took place in Port Carbon, Pennsylvania, for approximately $1,000. Allison was motivated by an advertisement in Scientific American. This transaction marked the beginning of commercial automotive sales in the United States.

Sources

  1. Winton Motor Carriage Company Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-08
  2. Alexander Winton Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-17

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.