What wheeled machine did Leonardo da Vinci design as an early self-propelled cart?

Leonardo da Vinci designed a self-propelled cart powered by coiled springs and controlled by a system of gears.

The machine appears in drawings from the late 15th century and is often described as an ancestor of the automobile. Two large springs stored energy, while geared mechanisms transferred that energy to the wheels. A steering system helped determine the cart’s path, and a programmable control mechanism could set a limited route.

The cart was probably intended for theatrical performances or court events rather than transportation. Leonardo’s surviving drawings do not provide every construction detail, and historians have debated how the mechanism should be reconstructed.

In 2006, a team at the Museo Galileo in Florence built a working model based on Leonardo’s plans. The result demonstrated that the cart could move, although modern reconstructions necessarily interpret incomplete evidence. It was not powered by combustion and therefore was not a car in the modern mechanical sense.