The ancestor of the department was the IV-th Department of Mechanical Engineering. According to the 1945/46 yearbook searched by a colleague László Muzsnay, the department then had only five lecturers. An article by Artúr Balogh was published in the October 1948 issue of today's Car, the forerunner of today's Autósélet, in which he demanded the start of the "car engineer" training and the establishment of the car department. The result of this was published a year later in the December 1949 issue of The Car.