In the eye of the beholder
The way the car looks is at the very cornerstone of its appeal. A fact which hasn't made the subject of beauty any less subjective
When the Rolls-Royce Phantom VII was launched, the SoB bought twelve of them, costing a grand total of £5m. Besides the regulation fitment of gaze-thwarting bulletproof glass and body armour, each SultanaPhant came with a bijou encrustation of real diamonds on the dashboard.
But do you really think Jaguar would risk glueing half a mill's worth of ice onto the nose cones of two F1 cars driven by (a) a 21 year old and (b) an Aussie, at (c) the world's tightest race circuit? If you were Jaguar's insurers, what do you suppose your response might be? Believe me, those so-called sparklers were made of paste, and were nothing more than a costume jewellery distraction from the cringingly unsparkling performance of the race cars.
The whole idea of glamming-up a pure tool such as an F1 car was, and still is, peculiar. Surely a car is either beautiful or it isn't.
I once received a email from the Autocar test team asking me and about 300 other nonentities for our lists of the 100 most beautiful cars of all time. It was clearly something dreamt up to fill a space when the staff were off on holiday.
For me, this thoughtless volte-face meant a sad goodbye to the Triumph Acclaim, holding a strong 84th place on my list, a fond farewell to the Ford Anglia (89th), and of course a sobbing arrivederci to the Fiat Multipla, utterly unchallenged in 99th position.
Anyway, the main list ended up featuring globulous monstrosities like the bulbous Jaguar XKSS, the Handy Andy-built Porsche 917 and the extremely Marmite-ish Porsche 904GTS. I never understood why some of my other suggestions didn't make it onto the list, such as for example the languidly brutish Bizzarini Stradale, the mattock-honed Bond Bug, and the perky, not to say pinky, Volvo 340.
But the Capri? My one was a shed. Its front bumper was missing, in tribute (I would insist) to the thundering RS3100 touring car racers. The truth of course was that it had fallen off. I never found a credible race-inspired reason for the peeling vinyl roof, or for the matt red paint on its sadly twisted bonnet.
Eventually, a mate of mine put my Capri out of its misery by parking it under a tree which, after a couple of centuries of standing up, decided it fancied a bit of a lie down. I swear I heard the council tip compactor gagging as bent bits of the World's 61st Most Beautiful Car went in.
The raging forums of PH indicate that the number of universally-accepted 'beautiful cars' can probably be counted on half a hand, but can we at least agree on one thing - that curves are better than angles? Even if, nowadays, curves don't always grace the lines of the best handling cars?
Too true
Too true
Too true Too true
They were a bit...woah...at the time. But i think they still look good now.
Same to the BMW Z4 of that era, IMO.
Look at where the fool put the bonnet & boot shut lines
Compared to the previous BMs which were dull looking but had a certain class, that thing looked like they'd drawn the shape & then thought about opening panels some time later. Or put the shut lines there to prove how clever the panel pressers were at achieving consistency - which is worse.
They were a bit...woah...at the time. But i think they still look good now.
Same to the BMW Z4 of that era, IMO.
Look at where the fool put the bonnet & boot shut lines
Compared to the previous BMs which were dull looking but had a certain class, that thing looked like they'd drawn the shape & then thought about opening panels some time later. Or put the shut lines there to prove how clever the panel pressers were at achieving consistency - which is worse.
Plus, it had two different steering systems (r&p / rb), unlike the E60 (r&p).
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