The socioeconomic mechanisms of the democratisation process in the Eastern Mediterranean are complex. Approaching the history of capitalism from the point of view of the process of adopting cars, this paper inquires about sui generis socioeconomic and intellectual mechanisms that shaped political transformation in the late Ottoman era and develops the term “transport capitalism.” It argues that transport capitalism emerged in the long nineteenth century, enabling some countries to have lower freight costs and thus industrialisation. Adopting cars in the nineteenth century was a part of the global interest in lowering transport costs. While countries like Britain with natural and man-made canals had more access to transportation, the countries with a land-based topography needed roads and overland transport technologies to compete for the economic share of the first industrial globalisation. For the Ottoman state set at the conjunction of the seas connecting the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, the Adriatic Sea, Indian Ocean, and beyond, maritime transportation did not become a primary means of transporting domestic goods. When the territories making it a Mediterranean state were lost toward the end of the century, overland transportation became even more vital. After the war with Russia in 1877-1878, Ottomans lost their grain gardens in the Balkans. Eventually, importing flour from France and the US became more affordable than transporting grain from Konya to Istanbul. With an interest in realising a potential transport revolution, the Ottoman state supported the building of Anatolian Railways. When cars arrived in 1907 in the Ottoman territories, lowering transport costs was still an economic dream. With the arrival of cars, transport capitalism became more feasible as cars needed car parts and small businesses, from repair, gas stations, and garages to car dealers. Expanding on transport capitalism and its implications for the late Ottoman era, this paper argues that a sui generis form of democratisation process was in process in the late Ottoman era despite the despotism and political suppression of liberties under the Hamidian regime. Lowering transport costs was a significant economic infrastructure to facilitate the transition into a more democratic system by increasing the connection between domestic markets and the mobility of people. If not economically or materially, the process of developing transport capitalism left its imprint on the public view via extensive reports of roads, trains, and cars in the papers.