Yes, motel was, indeed, coined from motor hotel, when folks enthusiastically took to the roads in the 1950's and small roadside hotels sprang up to accomodate these new vehicular nomads. The motels in the Wildwoods (the shore resort town in New Jersey where I live) are a prime example of this period, now dubbed Doo Wop architecture. And we have the largest concentration of these 1950's-early 1960's motels in the country (US).