What's Your Favorite Automotive Fun Fact?

Cars have changed the world, and there are so many interesting things about the companies who make them that it sometimes becomes hard to keep track. Like how a lawsuit spearheaded by the Dodge Brothers against the Ford Motor Company set the precedent that corporations exist mainly to create profit for its shareholders. 

Then again, cars themselves also have many quirks in their history, such as a story Senior Editor Daniel Golson described in Slack about the Bugatti Veyron's grille. The mesh was originally going to be made out of aluminum, but birds kept rocketing through the grille when the car hit its top speed of 250 miles per hour, damaging radiators. So the company switched to titanium for production to prevent more devastating bird strikes. 

The last 140 years of automotive know-how is filled with such quirks and oddities. For today's question, I want to know what surprising tale is your favorite?  

Being an F1 can feel a little gluttonous at times, but good things have come from the motorsport. This factoid went viral about a month ago and, by the time I realized we'd never covered it, it was all over the internet already. But it's worth recounting here — Formula 1 racing led to a drastic reduction in the deaths of premature infants. It all starts with an exhausted surgeon in Belgium who happened to catch an F1 race one night after marathon back-to-back surgeries. Marc de Laval describes the moment for The Times: 

"It was very fast — when they were refuelling in those days — and there were a few shots which suddenly reminded us of the problem we were facing. Essentially, if you look down on the pitstop from above, there's your [driver] in the car and all the people looking after that precious parcel and when you look down on a baby on a trolley moving from one place to the other, it's the same thing."

F1 teams Ferrari, McLaren and Williams began working with researchers and hospitals to build a system of care that greatly cut down on the number of life-saving checkboxes missed. Doctors learned that division of labor was key to lower mortality rates in babies with extremely premature births. If everyone knew their job and stuck to it, there would be no fumbling of medical devices, no mad rush when something went wrong and fewer missed critical measurements or medicine delivery. The things NICU doctors learned led to better survivability rates for teen tiny babies.

There are tons of other weird and wild facts about cars and how they shape our daily lives. What's your favorite?