I know that headline is sort of vague, but I actually do have a specific feeling I’m referring to. This isn’t asking what’s your favorite car, or what car you think is coolest, or would most like to have, or anything like that; I mean a car that has the strange and unique ability to make you pause. A car that, when you see one in the metal-flesh – a photograph isn’t enough for this particular situation – makes you actively feel things, makes you stop and really take a moment to look at the car, to walk around, it drink it in, your mind wiped clean of any thoughts other than the car in front of you. I know there’s cars that can have this effect on you, and they’re not always the ones you expect.
I’ve felt this with a number of cars. It’s happened a few times when I’ve gotten to go to the Pebble Beach Concurs D’Elegance, for example, and been around that 1934 Voisin C-25 Aerodyne, for example, or, really any number of other cars there.
I know I definitely felt it when I was in the presence of the 1948 Talbot-Lago T26 Grand Sport Figoni Fastback Coupé, and I think you can see and feel the emotion I’m talking about in this video:
I still love the ending of that video.
I do think it’s a bit cheating to pick an incredibly rare one-off for this, though, so I may refine the question to ask of you what car makes you feel gelatinous and shaky and funny and electrified deep within your kishkes that is also a production car.
For me, I think it would have to be either the Jaguar E-Type or the Studebaker Avanti. Oh, or a Tatra T87. At this very moment, for some reason, I think I’m going to say Avanti!
I’m not entirely certain why, but I know every time I’ve been around an original Avanti, I’ve gotten that strange, numinous feeling, a combination of awe and wonder, fascinated by the little details and the overall form, the smell and feel and presence, all at once. It’s powerful and potent and maybe even a bit petulent. I love it.
So, for you, what car have you found yourself near and found yourself affected in ways that perhaps you didn’t expect? What car made you stop in mid-sentence and just walk around it, silently, focused, lost? I want to know!
I can’t remember what make, model, or year it was. But I was at a concours show with my dad back in high school. Lots of beautiful restored cars dating back to the 20s or before, new Bentleys and Rolls Royce’s and even a Spyker. But what got me was this massive luxury car from the 20s or 30s. Maybe a Bentley? It was completely unrestored, but complete, in shabby barn find condition. It just had so much…presence. You could smell it, oil and gas, old leather, age, and decay. The best part was when they fired it up. So much noise and smoke, but it ran, it was alive, and so fucking big. It was probably the ugliest car I saw all day, but it left an impression on me.
A customer let me geek out over their 1920s RR—even sit in it and take in the smells. Coachbuilt hand-crafted goodness with buttery leather & rosewood. The experience was almost like taking acid with all the inputs overwhelming me
1965 Buick Riviera.
There’s one that’s in disrepair in my neighborhood and every time I walk by I think “how can we save you?”
That’s a shame, so few out there, we had one many years ago that we restored and sold (yes, regrets/face-palm); if not too rusty, they all should be rescued at this point.
Any police car — or one that might be a police car — in my rear view mirror.
That is a very special feeling we get when they roll up behind us…
An intermediate-size station wagon from the 1960s shouldn’t be on this list, right? But one of them, a very rare, short-lived, low-production (fewer than many supercars, and way fewer than something as pedestrian as an E-Type Jag) that makes me feel funny in the pants every time I see one.
Behold the 1964-1965 Chevrolet Chevelle 300 2-door station wagon. Under 4,500 ever sold. And it’s beautiful in my eyes.
Best wagons ever.
The 55-57 Nomads should be up on the list, too, IMHO.
I stop and gawk every single time I see a mid 1990s Chevy Caprice Classic wagon. They are jaw dropping (to me).
Vanderhall
Any of them.
Almost any pre-VW Bentley.
Any Pre-merger Packard, Pierce Arrow, Cord, Duesenberg…
And JDM cars –
any of the Nissan Pike cars
plus models like Soarer, Leopard, Presea, Chaser, Cresta, Laurel, Cedric, Sentia, Legend, Ascot, Vigor…
2nd gen Soarer might be my second favorite car ever after the DS.
Many. Anything out of the ordinary. But definitely any Ferrari, and I’m lucky to see quite a few where I am.
E28 M5. Also the E39 M5. Both just look so menacing and purposeful.
And, well, the SVT Contour. It’s like seeing someone that looks just like someone you dated in university. The one you really liked and taught you many things. The one you still look back on with a fond chuckle.
Wow. I literally just saw (for the first time in probably 20 years) an SVT Contour at our on and off “shitcar sunday” earlier today. Had a school buddy that owned one for awhile.
Hardto find them these days, thanks to relative rarity and biodegradable wiring harnesses mechanically totalling them. I have had a couple of opportunities to get one again over the last couple of years, and the wiring scared me off.
I’m going to go in a different direction than everybody else here – a car that when I see it, it just feels wrong, like it’s some sort of render error: the Ford EcoSport.
It’s too tall for its length, or too short for its height, and not wide enough for either of those dimensions.
Ford EcoSport. Wrong. Just wrong.
Good call. I always think “jacked up Fiesta” when I see one, which is all manner of wrong.
Ooh, I was failing to come up with a good answer, but now that you mention it I have a similar issue with a generation or two of the CR-V. It felt like someone did a bad photoshopping job on the rear of the car and it ended up with some weird bulges that did not fit the rest of the lines.
It’s hard to choose just one, so I will say a few. First off, the Lamborghini Miura. Incredibly beautiful, incredibly rare, incredibly expensive. It’s a bridge of sorts, a heady mix of the mid-engine V-12 supercar that started it all, and one of the last curvacious mid-century automobiles before the wedge took over. I will also nominate the Tesla Cybertruck; the first time I saw one in the flesh, I suddenly got it. This is a showpiece, not for mere mortals like me, but for those who can afford to buy something like a six-figure angular supercar-fast electric pickup, a combination so absurd that it has to be seen to be believed. As for something more pedestrian, I have a special place in my heart for the economy cars of the 1980’s, a combination of light weight, excellent practicality, and nowadays rarity. Something like a Honda CRX or an E90 Toyota Corolla will never be made again, for reasons of safety, market desires, and emmissions, so we must value the valiant, dependable, and occasionaly even brilliant vehicles of years past, and preserve them.
I’ve only ever stood in the presence of one other Lancia that isn’t my own, a reddish orange Stratos in the Petersen Museum. The entire museum could have collapsed around me and I wouldn’t have noticed. The moment I spotted it was pure heaven, and it was absolute agony to walk away. I was extremely aware that it could be the only time I ever see a Stratos and I was determined to absorb every millisecond of the experience
Yeah 🙂 Would you mean the Stratos Zero, the concept car from 1970? That one is indeed a lovely reddish-orange. I actually got to see the Stratos Zero up close and personal in an exhibition of Italian automotive design at the Nashville Art Museum in 2016. I was indeed moved by that particular car. Despite being with some annoyingly impatient people I took as much time as I could looking at it. So if the Zero is the one you’re referring to, I get it!! 🙂 However, I knew even then that it would still not compare to how I would most likely feel if and when I ever see a 1973-’75 Stratos HF (Tipo 829) in person. And if you mean a Stratos HF, then I count you lucky (which still holds if you meant the Zero.)
Nah, just a regular stradale flavor. If I saw the Stratos Zero there is an 83% chance I would weep with joy.
Lol, “regular.” Yeah, I’m 100% sure of that 83% chance, as the Zero is indeed quite something to behold in person. Pictures (& video) just. do. not. do. it any justice, one has to see it in person.
And both the Zero and the HF have the same logo in one of the greatest typefaces of all time (errant apostrophe notwithstanding):
http://mccauleycreativellc.com/blog/2012/03/jalopnik-lancia-stratos-typeface
1967-74 Alfa Romeo Giulia, GTV Beautiful we owned a pumpkin 67 Giulia Sprint GT and a red 72 GTV 2000, would post a pic, but…..
I saw a Citroen DS in person and it was amazing. It was just in a driveway in some Tampa suburb, not at a car show. I just got out of my car and walked around it for like 10 minutes.
I was hitch hiking from Reading to London on the M3 in the 80’s and a DS 21 Pallas picked me up… I was speechless. I still remember it with a strange clarity and I said to the driver I would buy it whenever he wanted to sell it, though I had pocket change for savings.
Early cars that people rode on, rather than the enclosed things we use today. My grandfather had many Model Ts & As over the years. They are just so built-to-purpose: what you need to get down the road—and nothing else. And, to me, many of the cars from the teens & 20s still had a bit of the Victorian esthetic: there are often little flourishes on cast parts that are aesthetic only. I love that dichotomy.
Right.
The Stanley Steamers were cool too.
Any of the full removable roof SUVs of the 70s.
Such a poignant reminder of what we aren’t allowed to have anymore. A vehicle that can both do work and be fun on a summer day for the whole family. Large convertibles are the thing I miss most among new cars.
Or the rare convertible pickups of the ’80s. Like something out of a boys adventure novel (which I’m sure we don’t have anymore either)…you can almost hear some guy with a mustache saying “the treasure should be there, we’ll get as close as we can and then go on foot.”
I believe studebaker had a rare wagon which had a removable roof of sorts
Toyota 2000 GT. A perfect car from a smaller planet.
The 2000’s Mercury Marauder always turns my head. The way the headlights are accented is menacing. A subtle exhaust growl in a panther body, not too different from its Crown Vic cousin. The fact that a person would go as far as to get one and stand out just a bit from the other panthers.. respect.
FD RX-7 does it for me. That car is too sexy for its own good. I prefer them stock, but even highly modified ones still catch my eye.
It’s design is the E-type of the 1990s.
Go ahead, try to name another car that fits that analogy better.
It has to be the MKV Supra, I wouldn’t necessarily call it good looking but man do they always catch my eye and hold my attention. I guess striking would be the word.
Geo Metro convertibles.
They’re just so wonderfully silly, even when they were new. The entire concept itself appears so alien to us here in the states, a very barebones economy car being able to be had in a droptop version. And a droptop version that clearly required not-insignificant changes to the regular model to accommodate that top.
That quixotic attempt to associate “fun” with a car that even in its prime was considered a too-severe example of practicality just hits me in all the right ways.
I passed up an opportunity to own a pink one a few years back. It even had leopard print interior! But as my fiancee reminded me, my 1972 Super Beetle is more than enough for me to have to deal with. I don’t really regret it, but it would have been a fun little car to have around.
I really kick myself now for back then not appreciating all the colors we got in the ’90s; I just assumed it would always be like that.
I also have a weird affinity for Metros! Mine is for the 3-door hatch, 2nd generation, though. And I love it because it’s just baaaaarely a car, but it looks kinda fun!
The first gen seemed to get all the fun colors, the Swift performance models, and the convertible, but there’s something about the 2nd gen that does it for me.
I like the hatches as well. When the Mazda 2 first (and briefly) came on the scene, I was like “hey the Metro styling is back!”
The last Holdens, in particular the VF Utes. Was back in Australia earlier this year and it really got me when I saw one.
The death of an Australian icon – a vehicle of unique character, style and presence. The death of Australian auto manufacturing as a whole. GM, you’re fucking dead to me.
Bogans, love your utes, when they’re all gone they’re all gone and they’re not coming back.
I think there’s a rarity bias in my thinking. One Corvette can a beautiful, powerful thing. Going to a racetrack and seeing 200 Corvettes leaves me looking for the weirdo that drove the Isetta to the BMW corral. Same for 911s.
Because of this, the ones that really smack my gob anymore are Rolls-Royces. I have no particular affinity. I don’t think they’d make my top 20 wishlist cars. But they’re rare, and they have that ineffable presence. They’re what a 300 wishes it was, had it only come from Old Money. They’re what the rappers rent for videoshoots. They’re the car of leather shoes that are never dirty, crisp white suits that have never known so much as the shimmer of sweat, the rich dark flavors of cigars and scotch you’d only ever pretend to taste.
It says a lot that I keenly remember the sound of the door of one closing in a Lowes parking lot – what did the driver want? What did he need, and why did he bring the Rolls to do it?
Barring that, a Ford GT will consistently rustle my jimmies.
The Series I Jaguar XJ. Perfection.
How ’bout a Series II XJC?
Morgan three wheeler.
I love looking at SAAB Sonnets. They always make me smile.
E38’s have this effect on me. They’re already pretty rare, so seeing a clean one that someone cares about, well, you’re more likely to see a McLaren around here. And they’re just so fucking classy. I get butterflies like seeing your crush or something. It’s kind of absurd.