Hong Kong, Nov. 28 -- This month, we forsake the driving seat for the front row in a multiplex to reel through some classic films in which automobiles play a leading role.

In 1886, the German inventor Karl Benz patented his first motor car, an event that's generally regarded as marking the birth of the automobile industry. Nine years later, in Paris, the brothers Louis and August Lumiere held a public screening of 10 short films, an occasion that's widely accepted as the beginning of commercial cinema. A young Dustin Hoffman drove a red Alfa Romeo Spider Duetto, just like this, in

Image: Courtesy Rust/ullstein bild via Getty Images

Fast forward another 10 years, to 1905, when the Nickelodeon Theater in Pittsburgh was showing a daily pr...