Every car firm has a star, looks-wise. So we decided to choose the car we reckon represents every major car brand at its best. We know you won’t agree with every choice, but we do hope you enjoy the journey:
An almost preposterously long bonnet, voluptuous wheel fairings, a rakishly compact cockpit of a cabin – this was rapid transit, 1930s style. Rapid, indulgent transit from eight cylinders.
Brawn on wheels, the Cobra appears to be bursting with power and indeed, usually is. It’s because the AC Ace from which it swelled was so well-proportioned that the Cobra works.
View Price on AmazonA perfect blend of Alpine’s A110 Berlinetta past and the design language of the present, the new A110’s pretty, trim and athletic alloy bodywork makes you want to step inside and drive.
These were almost unsalable new, skewered by astronomical prices despite their lightweight beauty. Prices eventually hit the millions for the 19 originally made, prompting the 1990s build of four more utilizing unused chassis numbers.
As glamorous as any pre-war Alfa Romeo, Hispano-Suiza or Mercedes, Auburn’s straight eight series reached its lofty design zenith for the 1935 model year. Despite this achievement, Auburn ceased manufacturing in 1937.
Clean-sculpted to the point of utilitarianism, the original TT combined modernity with an irresistible flavour of avant garde 1930s design, a theme abandoned in subsequent generations.
Still one of the most handsome two-seater sports cars ever, and purest in its early, folding windscreen form that turns it into a speedster. Crude mechanicals are part of the charm.
This is the spare look of your 21st century single seat roadster. There’s not much bodywork, but what there is turns compellingly shapely the more you stare.
Among the most handsome Bentleys ever, and it shares a platform with a Volkswagen. It’s decidedly more handsome than a Phaeton however and though big, does not look as unnecessarily large as its current successor.
Albrecht von Goertz’s 1956 507 was as handsome as any contemporary Ferrari, but a costly build pushed its price too close to these exotics, killing the car after only 252 were built, and bankrupting BMW.
Extravagant, fantastical, sculptural and suggestive of exotic lives lived by the few, the Atlantic borders on the mythic. And the intrigue continues with the clamshell doors and the vertical fin continuing the split screen’s vee.
If the bearing of the Riviera seems heavy for a Buick, that’s because it was originally destined to be a Cadillac or even a revived LaSalle. But it ended up as a beauty, nonetheless.
The fins were the highest they’d ever been, the bullet tail lights redolent of the rocket age, and an interior packed with luxury technology with power for everything. The ’59 represented Cadillac and parent General Motors at their heights of self- confidence – perhaps America itself too.
A brand mostly associated with mediocrity today, it’s easy to forget Chrysler once had an upmarket image and one that launched many innovations that became commonplace. And it had cars that had stature, shown most by this model, enhanced by its real wood and the majesty of its long hood, turning the necessity of housing a straight eight into virtue.
GM design chief Bill Mitchell’s ’59 Stingray concept car turned showroom eye magnet. Developed in secret because GM had banned racing, it saved the ‘Vette from early extinction.
Much car design of the 1950s was American influenced. Not the DS, which was shaped by an Italian sculptor and the wind. It levitated as well, to the accompaniment of space age clicks and whirrs.
Front-wheel drive packaging allowed a floor low enough to eliminate running boards, the headlamps were hidden pop-ups and the Cord’s elegantly boxy prow produced a beautiful car of tomorrow. Unreliability killed it, but the shape was repeatedly revived by others.
A quintessential ‘60s muscle car, but one of finesse, from the clean-flanked Coke bottle waist.
Source: autocar.co.uk
