If you wanted to keep it simple, chain drives seem pretty common on RW, old-timey steam cars.
Some used chain drive, direct drive and shaft drive was also used, chain drive lasted longer
on IC engine vehicles.
Horizontally oriented engines were common, drawing looking down on a direct drive Stanley installation:
The Gardner-Serpollet was unusual in that it was a four-cylinder poppet-valve engine that used
superheated steam:
Carriages and wagons commonly had suspensions, the leaf-spring goes back to the 18th century,
the common elliptical type being patented to the very early 19th century (1804 in GB).
Steerable front axles are also old, the Ackerman system going back to the early 19th Century.