Harvey Firestone started making rubber carriage tires in 1890 and founded the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in 1900, one of the first global automobile tire makers.
Walter Chrysler began as a Kansas railroad machinist, earned a mechanical degree by correspondence and became the founder and namesake of Chrysler.
Mary Barra started at GM as an 18-year-old co-op student checking fender panels and became CEO in 2014, the first woman to lead a Big Three automaker.
Roger Penske bought and repaired used cars as a teenager, became SCCA Driver of the Year in 1961 and built the Penske Corporation, Team Penske and ownership of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903 and made the car affordable with the 1908 Model T and the assembly-line system known as Fordism. His legacy also includes 1920s antisemitic publications.
From PayPal co-founder to the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk has built companies spanning electric vehicles, rockets, AI and brain-computer interfaces. He became the first trillionaire on paper at the June 2026 SpaceX IPO.
Founded in 1945 to import two- and three-wheelers, Bajaj now builds them for the world — the third-largest motorcycle maker anywhere, the largest three-wheeler maker, and in FY2026 the first year it crossed five million units.
It started in 1945 as a steel trading firm called Mahindra & Mohammed. When Mohammed left for Pakistan, the family couldn't afford to reprint stationery reading 'M&M' — so they became Mahindra & Mahindra. Today it is India's largest SUV maker and the world's largest tractor manufacturer by volume.
The world's oldest motorcycle brand still in continuous production — born in Redditch in 1901, rebuilt in Madras from 1955, and now shipping over 1.22 million motorcycles a year from four Tamil Nadu plants to riders in 80+ countries.
