[pbhjpbhj]

That doesn't appear to be true, Duryea and Benz vehicles (ICE burning petrol/gasoline in the late 1800s) appear to have replaced bicycles and horse-drawn carriages and acted as functional means of transportation, rather than "toys".

Earlier electric and hydrogen powered vehicles I've seen appear similarly to have been created as functional replacements for horse-drawn vehicles.

Maybe you could expand your comment to demonstrate your point?

[mikestew]

I don't know about horse-drawn carriages, but bicycles of the late 1800s were luxuries for, well, not rich people but certainly for the well-to-do. It's one of the reasons that child-sized highwheel bicycles are rare: they were ridiculously expensive, and most certainly not a child's toy. And they did arguably serve a utilitarian purpose; at least a bicycle doesn't eat if you don't ride it. But how were bicycles, specifically highwheelers, portrayed by the press of the day? As ridiculous toys for wealthy people. Source: grew up around antique bicycle collectors, and have an 1886 Columbia Standard myself.

I remain unconvinced, however, that an early ICE-powered automobile was nothing but a temperamental toy that the owner really, really wanted to be practical. I've hung around with enough people with Ford Model Ts (my parents also had a Ford A for a while) to suspect that something built twenty years prior to the Ford T had to be laughably unreliable. Because I only rely on a T to get me to work if my boss were pretty laid back. :-)

[jacobr1]

There were steam-powered cars in the late 1700s that were toys of a few wealthy patrons ...

[DoreenMichele]

https://www.leaderherald.com/news/local-news/2019/07/when-au...

https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/toys-rich

[pbhjpbhj]

Your first link is blocked for me by the website owner.

The second in turn links to https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/climate-change-will-push-ca... . When they say "cars are an expensive toy for the rich" they're saying figuratively that cars aren't reliable nor efficient. I don't think anyone would disagree that [important, useful] new technologies tend to get cheaper and more efficient over time.

It's really not clear, if this is the sort of backing to the "toy" claim what it is hoped to prove?

The early users appeared to use cars for transportation, which the second link doesn't contradict, so not literal toys. The "toy" claim is just a perjorative that the link appears, implicitly, to say was used by those who were already profiting from horse related industry.

[DoreenMichele]

From the first piece:

The oft-printed statement that early automobiles were ‘playthings of the rich’ until Henry Ford’s super-cheap Model T started rolling off the assembly line in October 1908, is easily proven by scanning the makes of high-priced chariots and their wealthy owners who participated in the Amsterdam Evening Recorder’s Saturday, July 10, 1909 “Sociability Run” from Amsterdam to Lake Luzerne.

Everything I've ever seen indicates cars were considered to be "toys" for the rich when they first came out. Roads were not really designed for them. They were insanely expensive. They were not generally considered to be serious new tech that would eventually compete as transportation.

That changed when Henry Ford made cars affordable for the masses.

Old laws often said things like "You must have someone walk in front of your car ringing a bell so you don't spook the horses." This implicitly tells you that early cars were also extremely slow and horses were the form of serious transportation that the culture revolved around.

[dredmorbius]

Even more so when post-WWII cheap petrol made cars affordable, and suburban living made them essential.

Half of all households (based on ~4 persons per household) didn't own an automobile until between 1945-1950. Ownership didn't cross the 10% threshold until the 1930s.

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2cy898/durin...

[dredmorbius]

https://web.archive.org/web/20190722171109/https://www.leade...

Internet Archive mirror, should be accessible.

[DoreenMichele]

For clarity, that's a mirror of the first link I posted.

[dredmorbius]

Updated to note that.

[perl4ever]

"The early users appeared to use cars for transportation, which the second link doesn't contradict, so not literal toys."

I think when people say they were toys, they mean that in the same sense that a Spyker or Ariel Atom are "toys" today.