In German: is 'die' for feminine and 'der' for masculine?

Most world languages have nouns that are either masculine or feminine. German, besides capitalizing all nouns, goes them one better and adds a third gender: neuter. The masculine definite article (“the”) is der, feminine is die, and neuter is das. German-speakers just seem to know whether Wagen (car) is der or die or das. (It's der Wagen.) And they also know that the other German word for car is das Auto. But when referring to cars by brand name, it's always der Ford, der VW or der Mercedes.