As with most revolutions, the transport revolution was founded on dreams. One was the vision of a certain Colonel Drake; the other that of an earnest young man by the name of Henry Ford. The Colonel had a dream of oil, a dream which came true on a hot August day in 1859.

After months of fruitless searching and back-breaking labour, his primitive drilling rig struck into a hidden pocket of "black gold," and produced the first oil gusher.

By the time that the next quarter century had rolled by, Henry Ford had made his dream out of wood, wire, metal and bicycle wheels, pushed in and out of a backyard shed in Detroit, and smiled delightedly as the forerunner of the first family production car sputtered its way to history. Together these unrelated events added up to revolution—a new way of life made possible by one oil product—gasoline.