Sunday Open Thread: What’s The Most Amazing Car You Only Saw Once, By Chance?

Of Facelvega
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We’re going to try something new here; on Sundays, instead of taking your computer or phone out to a field or lake and letting it run and swim free, what if we used those machines to let all of us Autopians talk and discuss things and get to know one another even better! Let crushes form, rivalries grow, grudges fester, facts learned, opinions proffered, mockeries attempted, all that. Who’s up to try? You are! So, here we go with our first prompt to get everyone talking: What’s the most amazing car you only saw one time, by chance?

I think for me it’d be a Facel-Vega, a Chrysler V8-powered elegant French beast I once saw street parked in West LA as I was driving by. Who is street parking and driving around a Facel-Vega? It’s like using a golden chariot pulled by winged horses as a septic tank cleaning vehicle. It’s too good for the real world, yet there it was, parked behind some beige Corolla with a mismatched door and by a driveway to a Jack In The Box.

So, what was your amazing, unexpected, chance car sighting? Tell me! I’m so very nosy!

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Mercedes Streeter

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167 thoughts on “Sunday Open Thread: What’s The Most Amazing Car You Only Saw Once, By Chance?”

  1. Not exceedingly rare, but when it came out, we told our kids that the first one to spot a BMW Z8 would get $100. It was rare enough that we never thought we would ever see one. A few years later I spotted one up in the Lake Tahoe area.

    Growing up in Sacramento we saw lots of what are now rare and unique cars. I do recall seeing a Plymouth Superbird drive through our neighborhood. I said at the time that it would become valuable.

    At our local car show some impressive vehicles appeared: 1954 Copper Corvette with period original bubble top and matching trailer. Some folks used that bubbletop as mold to make reproductions. A Mercedes Gull wing coupe with matching original luggage. And many more rare and unusual vehicles.

    1. Hah. Never make a bet with kids. I once bet a girlfriend’s kid fifty quid he couldn’t lick his own elbow. He looked me straight in the eye… and licked his own fuckin’ elbow. Which SHOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE.

      His mom tried to get me to Welsh on it, because ‘£50 is too much for a seven year old to have at once’, but a bet is a bet.

  3. Growing up in California, driving the coast or Napa / Sonoma; I saw so many classic Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Porches… They stopped being special. The ones that stuck; first time I saw a Viper (In a mall in France!), first time I saw a Veyron (Everglades), and the Petty liveried Superbird driven by a King Richard lookalike in North Tahoe.

  4. I have a few memories that stand out of cars I encountered in the wild:

    1. Summer 1991, I-40 Memphis – while driving home from my job at a chemical factory, I was holding up traffic by going 70 in a 55, and I got passed by a Weinermobile. I wondered if I had gotten too close to some of the stuff at work.

    2. 2006, the only stoplight in town – I looked in my mirror to see a Mayberry Squad Car (horizontal quad headlights, but IDK which year). I wondered again if I had gotten too close to some of the stuff at work in 1991.

    3. 2019, Jefferson City, MO McDonald’s – while exiting the parking lot, I saw the most beautiful rear end in front of me. Black, sensuous, curvy, almost feline. Circuit breakers started tripping in my brain as smoke came out of my ears, and it wasn’t until the car turned and I could see it in profile that I could get enough brainpower to recognize that it was a McLaren 570s. It was hard to comprehend seeing that in this town of 40,000.

  5. Trip to LA in 1990 or so, was driving down Santa Monica Blvd when a white Vector W8 passed me at some ungodly speed. That car looked more like a UFO than a car, at least from the rear. I don’t recall ever seeing one since then.

  6. I saw Truckla parked in my hood earlier this year. I was just starting my morning walk with the dog. Planned on snapping a pic on our return home, but by then it was gone.

  7. Long, long, long ago in my mispent youth, I searched out and visited Vector Automotive in Venice, CA. They had a Vector W8 and a De Tomaso Mangusta in their garage. That was the only time I’ve ever seen either.

  9. about 15 years ago, way before the 25 year rule, i saw a bayside blue r34 in Michigan.
    never seen it in person again but i saw pictures of it from a meet posted in a local facebook page a few years ago. guy that owned it said it was a motorex car

  11. Typical of me I saw a 1 of 264 VW golf III harlequin back in 2000-2001. This car was owned by a local and parked in a small office complex in Beachwood Ohio where I played cstrike 1.1-1.3 every other weekend.
    Didn’t know what it was or that it was rare but knew I wanted one. Used a l33t version of the word harlequin as my gamer tag for a few years thereafter. Wish I could find (and afford) that particular car but have no idea what the vin was.

    2. There was one owned by someone who lived in the same apartment complex as me back when they were new so I would see it about every day. I had no idea at the time how rare they were.

    1. I’ve seen three original US-spec SD1s. First one was an old beater in the early ’90s whose owner had broken down on a busy stroad after dark and I helped him get it into a parking lot out of traffic by pushing it, by hand at first and then with my old beater Corolla from the same 1980ish era. A metaphor for the British and Japanese auto industries if there ever was one.

  13. I saw it more than once, but I only went up to it once to see what it was, and the next day, it was gone.

    On my commute, there was a dust covered coupe thar was just barely visible from the road. One day, on a whim, I stopped to see what it was. A Maserati Sebring 3500. I posted about it on a Car And Driver forum, and somebody on there with the screen name Vitesse told us all a bit about it.

    Never saw it again…

  14. The first thing that comes to mind was the Lancia Delta Integrale spotted in traffic in White Plains New York. Then there was the Armstrong Siddeley on a back street in Bend Oregon. I also saw a grey import Suzuki RG500 Gamma at Marcus Dairy in 1991.
    There are also cars in odd places or uses like the new Volvo 245 wagon with New Jersey plates parked in an alley in Lisbon Portugal or the guy in Bend who uses a Mitsubishi Delica as a work truck. Bend has a lot of Delicas done up as overlanders but only one with a ladder rack and sign writing like an Econoline. Another oddball was the Ferrari Mondial convertible with the child seat in the back street parked in lower Manhattan in 1986.

  15. I was commuting back home from work once, when I heard the formidable rumble of a 2-stroke engine, only to look over my shoulder and see one of the fourteen lightburn zeta utes ever made, out in the wild.

  16. So many I can’t recall or begin to list, but since the pic shown is a Facel Vega, I saw one of those sitting in a random garage in NYC I just happened to look into while walking by. It was covered in what looked like years of dust. It was too dark to tell if it was a Facel II or HK500.

    Another odd ball that was particularly strange since I don’t believe they were ever certified for US sale (it must have been on a 1-year exemption or something as I believe it had US plates), was a yellow Pagani Zonda roadster around Boston, but I saw that more than once.

  17. The one-times that live in my head:
    Lance Macklin’s 1955 Austin Healey 100 when it was sent out to Australia for restoration maybe 10 years ago.
    A Maserati Quattroporte 3 and a Matra Murena parked close to each other in Paris.

  19. For me it was the Rolls Royce Silver Ghost running at the Wiscombe Park Hill Climb in the mid ’60’s, truly regal silence progressing forward amongst the noise. It didn’t appeal to me, but a one time vision I never forgot.

  22. We owned a gas station years ago. One day a customer comes in with a 1956 Messerschmitt bubble car. The coolest car I had ever seen. The cockpit had its direct legacy with those German fighters of WW2.

  23. I was leaving a ferry in Norway and through this kinda carnival funhouse mirror esc plexiglass I saw two Trabants. I tried to get a picture but due to the glass you couldn’t tell what I was taking a picture of.

    I also saw a UAZ-469 in Norway.

    That being said my favorite automobiles I saw on that trip were a few Nissan e-NV200s.

    What I imagine are horribly boring vans to the average European were so damn cool to me. I want one badly and I seriously doubt Nissan will ever sell them in the US though they should. They’re basically a NV200 with a Nissan Leaf drivetrain.

    Currently the only electric van in mass production for sale in the US is the Ford e-Transit so Ford has the Market cornered, Ram is supposed to start selling an US spec electric Promaster pretty soon but even if that happens I think the eNV200 would still sell very well in the US if they keep the price down because it’s small, cheap, simple, reliable, durable, has a proven drivetrain, and have a generally maintenance free battery pack. I’d definitely buy at least one of them!

    For great eNV200 camper videos I’d highly recommend Glyn Hudson’s channel on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/GlynHudson

  24. In a fairly nice village just down the road from me in Staffordshire, UK – a silver Jaguar XJ220 just parallel parked on the fairly narrow High Street. I wish I’d have got a photo.

    1. Hanseat was in India outside of Delhi,

      In southern India I saw a 1967 Chevy Impala Right Hand Drive!!! Apparently back in the day someone converted about 200 of them to RHD and shipped them over.

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