EVERYBODY'S GOT START TO SOMEWHERE BEFORE THEY WERE MOTORING ICONS.INDUSTRY TITANS WERE JUST HUMBLE HUMANS PSYCHED TO SEE THEIR NAMES IN PRINT.

DESPITE WHAT PSYCHICS might say, you never know what the engines of fate have in store.

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A. Louis Chevrolet's racing exploits eventually led him to drive for William C. Durant, who co-founded Chevrolet with Louis and Louis's brother.

B. At age 38, Henry Ford won a race in a car he built himself, which directly helped establish the company bearing his name.

Tomorrow you may be struck by lightning-in the metaphorical sense, in which all your wondrous ambitions become realized, or in the real sense, in which you could exit this earth in a puff of smoke.

Take the great icons of motoring. When they started out, they were unsure what they would amount to.

They had no clue that thousands, if not millions, of people would one day be driving cars with their names (or brand names) on them. In other words, long ago, they were normal people like you and me.

Using today's whizbang technology, Road & Track has unearthed some of the earliest mentions in the American press of some of the biggest names in motoring history. These articles reveal the origin of their origin stories. Who they were, before the world knew their names.

Take David Dunbar Buick, for example, whose name appeared in an 1886 issue of Scientific American magazine in an "Index of Inventions." "D. D. Buick" surely had high hopes when he patented a ball valve.