Lambert is recognized by the Smithsonian Institute as the inventor of America's first gasoline powered car. The institute's museum and research center collections department holds several documents and photographs in Washington, D.C., that have been used by historians over the years to determine Lambert's gasoline buggy, also called the Buckeye gasoline buggy, as the first operational gasoline automobile made in the United States. He is also credited with the first American automobile accident. In 1891, while testing his horseless carriage, Lambert drove it into a tree root and accidentally ran into a hitching post. Lambert was driving the gasoline powered vehicle at the time and carrying a passenger by the name of James Swoveland, a local businessman that operated the city's drug store.