The Most Beautiful Car of All Time (Part 2)

Further to my previous post on ‘What’s the Most Beautiful Car of All Time?’, The (London) Telegraph has finally published the results of its survey.  Click HERE to read, and view their Top 100.

It also asks for nominations for ‘The Ugliest Cars of All Time’, but I really don’t think I want to go there…

 

 

Oddly, the bottom end of their Top 100 ‘Most Beautiful’ seem to be in reverse alphabetical order, so I suspect a lot of lumping together rather than actual counting of votes.

Needless to say I am devastated and disappointed that NO HONDAS made it into the top 100!  Pah!  Or that Renault Floride.

And no vintage Bentley?? 

Still, it’s good to see many of the ones I fancied, including Facel Vega, Cord 810, and various iconic Aston Martins. 

Plus the Lancia Stratos, a little gem I’d forgotten about. 

And I was delighted to see the Citroen DS at No. 2 (The Telegraph comments:  ‘Did we expect to find a family saloon breaking the sports car stranglehold at the top of the list? None bar this.’) 

 

And at Number One… the E-type Jaguar!  Of course.  What else?

 

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pictures stolen from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ and various other unackowledged sources — sorry!

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What’s the most beautiful car of all time?

 

The (London) Telegraph has been inviting suggestions for ‘the most beautiful car of all time’.  If  you are at all interested in cars, or aesthetics, or the history of design, it’s worth a look — here’s the link:  What’s the most beautiful car of all time?

There is obviously a UK bias, but American cars and exotics are in there too (Cord 810, Facel Vega…).  I must say I was genuinely surprised to find myself (so far) in a minority of one for proposing the name of Honda;  the general consensus seems to include Citroen DS, Jaguar E-type, vintage Bentleys. and various Aston Martins, Lotuses (Loti?) and Alfa Romeos (Romei?) past and present – none of which I would disagree with.

What emerges is that it’s difficult to separate abstract ‘beauty’ from other factors such as nostalgia, envy or pride of ownership.  One or two commentators point out that there are very few new cars in the list, in this age of computer-aided design.  Speaking as someone who likes to drive a car that ‘looks like a car, not a jelly-mould or a steam iron’, I second that. 

That new Alfa does look nice though.

There are some odd, and downright silly, suggestions (Morris Minor?  Renault 4?), and some that stir forgotten memories.

Oh – I’ve just thought of that beautiful Renault in the 1960s – what was it called?  Floride?  Caravelle?

But I think my favourite has to be ‘Any car driven by my wife!!’

Aaaahh…

Honda — perpetual motion machine

(tempting fate, I know!)

Just got the Huge Friendly Giant back from its MoT ( = annual roadworthiness test) which it passed without a hitch, with well over 101,000 miles on the clock.  (As the man at Elite Motors said:  ‘It’s a Honda… if it fails, it’ll be on something silly like a light bulb.’)

This is just to express my admiration to Honda for making such a beautifully engineered and reliable machine.  When I bought this Prelude two years ago, I was worried about its high mileage:  ‘What do you call high mileage?’ said a friend. ‘83,000 miles.’  ‘My Honda’s done 140,000 and it NEVER goes wrong!’  (Famous last words… eventually hers lost its brakes and shunted the car in front.  But she had already decided she’d like a new one by then anyway.)

 

For its 100,000th birthday I treated it to a service and a new pair of chrome exhaust trims (the previous ones having, er, mysteriously disappeared).

Of course there are