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!
Aston Martin Lagonda, in Soho NYC.
The white one? Haven’t seen it in over a decade.
In Taegu South Korea, Ford Fairmont and a Opel GT
Silverstone England, Nick Mason’s Ferrari GTO sitting out in the rain
I get to see lots of production exotics in Houston, and when in Pittsburgh I got to see the personal garage of a person I believe is a billionaire now (he owned a Porsche dealership for fun, and parked his Veyron, assorted Ferraris, Benzes, and whatnot on the 2nd fl) but those don’t count because they aren’t in the wild.
What caught my attention most to date was pulling into a parking spot at a grocery store across from a Jaaaaaag with the longest gorram bonnet I have ever seen on a car. Pretty sure it was a series 3 E-type. Not the most impressive car in the world, but I swear you could park another car on the bonnet. All other cars have a hood, this one has a bonnet. It was a driver, not perfect, but that amazing design the Brits could do so well.
I have a tie. The NASA crawler that brings out rockets at .5 mph and the Oscar Mayer Weiner Mobile. The crawler is a 1 off and i heard the OM was 1 of 7.
Most amazing based on chance: BMW Z1, it was on the opposite side of the highway. catching sight of it, seeing it long enough to ID it, being able to ID it (it was pretty “current” at the time)..
Most amazing based on fulfillment; the Weinermobile, while I saw it many times, it was always going the opposite way I was. Like I must have seen it 10 times on the road. Then one day we returned to our hotel and it was parked in the lot. My wife still remarks that no car has ever gotten me that excited to see. We see all sorts of exotics around the Phoenix metro; her: “what’s that?” me: some special edition Lamborghini (yawn).. her: “it’s not as cool as the weinermobile huh?” me: nah..
Most amazing based on all factors: Sir-Vival, out on the streets in somewhere Mass.
A 1957 Desoto Fireflite, 4 door hardtop. Red over white , huge tailfins and triple taillights and all.
And this was in Northern Norway (Bodø) in the mid to late 90’s, late fall, early winter, with some snow on the road. I was sitting on the left side of a city bus leaning against the window when this amazing otherworldly creation passed us on the left, and stayed right in my sight long enough to be ingrained into my memory to this day.
Aside from the rarity of the car up here, this was not the usual season or road conditions you would normally see a classic American car at all. (these cars were not sold over here at all when new btw, the ‘Desotos’ that were exported to Europe in the late 50’s were usually Plymouth bodies with Desoto front sheet metal, and no signature triple stacked tail light.)
I was already a fan of late 50’s Chryslers thanks to Stephen Kings/John Carpenters Christine before that happened, but that year and model has been my favourite since that day.
DeTomaso Mangusta in a Mercury dealership in Scranton, PA. It had been left unlocked, and Dad and I sat in it. When we got out, the salesperson locked it.
I’m old enough that there are plenty more, but this one was mad. Also, a Ferrari 275 GTS out front.
Others have been at motorsports events or outside car shows (the Kirk White ‘Cannonball” Ferrari being my very favorite.
I see too many cool and interesting cars, just once, to count. I saw the new Rimac Nevera during it’s US tour late last year. They were demoing it for a few potential clients right outside of my office as I walked outside. Actually, I also saw the De Tomaso P72 in the same manner.
But, going back about 10 years, I believe I saw a Tucker 48 making a right at a light. Before anyone says “no way, they’re rare, in museums blah blah blah” at the time, the Tucker registry of owners indicated that one in a similar color (a brownish, orange copper type color IIRC) was owned by a person in my city. Mind you, I come from a relatively affluent SoCal area, it’s not weird to see rare unobtanium driving around. I never confirmed I saw one, and it could have easily been one of the thousands of other classics I regularly see driving around, but there was something off about it that didn’t register as your standard 40/50’s era sedan.
It wasn’t really by chance, since they were at the Henry Ford museum, but I got to see a Tucker and an EV1 in the same day. Two cars I’d always wanted to see in person but never figured I would.
Porsche Carrera GT. Revved like an F1 car.
300sl gullwing this summer.
Northern BC on the Alaska Highway. Euro plates on what looked to be an around the world journey.
Maybe less amazing but rather notorious? Someone living near the upper end of the 4th Ave. bridge (Olympia, WA) drove a DeLorean, pretty much daily. (This was a very pre-Back to the Future sighting.)
I was walking down a side street in Paris and saw a car being unloaded from a plain white box truck. Just to be nosy I crossed the street to get a closer look, and the car was the Renault Dezir concept car, which was going to be unveiled at the Paris motor show a few days later.
– 300SL Gullwing parked at an outlet mall in Kenosha WI.
– Also saw a Gullwing I can only describe as a beater in early morning rush hour traffic on the Interstate in Chicago. It was smoking from the exhaust and it was leaning over on one side like it had a soft suspension. It was being driven by what looked to be a mechanic.
Both of these 300SL sightings would have been in the 1980s to 90s.
– Aston Martin Lagonda on the south side of Chicago in a rough neighborhood.
– Yellow Iso Grifo on the Interstate by O’Hare Airport.
– Black Enzo in the middle of nowhere Utah, in 2002.
– Maroon Ferrari 275 GTB on the highway close to the airport in Nice, France, in 2019.
– Porsche 918 Spyder driving down a side street in a suburb west of Chicago.
A few years ago I passed a Chrysler Airflow just cruising down I-40 in central NC.
An Alfa Romeo Montreal in Eureka CA. A gorgeous car, tragically marred by the overwhelming stench of its exhaust fumes.
Mine was when I saw a ’93 Honda Today Associe parked out in the Hamptons, a really uncommon four-door sedan kei car (NOT a hatchback, trunk like an old Mini) only built for about two years.
13 months later I owned that very car.
You’re guaranteed to see something you haven’t seen before at my local Cars & Coffee in Birmingham, Michigan. Lots of current and retired car company engineers and creative designers will bring their pride and joys. Last year some time I saw someone’s Ferrari Monza SP2. It was a rolling sculpture on wheels.
Pasteiners? Is yours the brown-ish/tan-ish MG? I know someone there was selling an MG with the black bumpers, and I called about buying it for a project with my son. The seller was very honest when I asked “Before I waste anyone’s time, is there any chance that my kid, all 6’5″ of him, is going to fit in that car?” There’s always something interesting there, and since we are the Motor City, I’d say maybe 1 in 5 people in Oakland County have some kind of an interesting car…
Nitpick: The Facel III in the illustration is not a V8-engined beast, but the Volvo B18-engined Facel III (successor to the Facellia).
Glickenhaus P4/5 Competitzione at Lime Rock about 8ish years ago.
Dad and I were walking into the paddock, and I notice there’s a little crowd gathered. Curiosity gets the best of me and I walk over. I see the wing, and the NY license plate that said “P 45 C” and froze. No effing WAY. Sure enough, there’s James Glickenhaus himself, chatting away with Skip Barber while a small crowd ogles his car. My father walks over and I just start blurting out all sorts of info/stats on the car. This car had shown up to the 2011 24 Hours of Nurburgring, and placed 39th overall…..while still road legal AND with its NY plates still mounted.
I had the absolute pleasure of speaking to Mr. Glickenhaus for a few minutes, as I had been a HUGE fan of the original P4/5. I asked why this car came about, and his response was “I love the P4/5, and wanted make it into a race car. Turns out a Ferrari 430 is a great bed to build on.” He went on further to talk about how he really disliked how people (referring to many at the Historic Festival that year) keep these cars in pristine condition, and drive them maybe 1-2 times per year. Cars are for DRIVING, not showing off to some stuffy old people. He wanted a car he could drive to the racetrack, be competitive, and turn around and drive home, all with very minimal modification.
They say “never meet your heroes”. 10 minutes of his time made a forever fan out of me. I want nothing more than for SCG to win overall at Le Mans AND Nurburgring.
In the early 1960s my family lived in a suburb of New York City. While walking to school, I saw one of the fifty turbine cars Chrysler was loaning to various people (I guess they’d call them influencers today) driving through our neighborhood. The black-over-copper color scheme was unmistakable, and it sounded like a jet plane heard from a distance. My father – a serious car enthusiast – had given me a dealer promo model of the car just a few days earlier, so I new exactly what it was. I was so excited I told all my friends at school, none of whom believed me. Oh, well…
In the late 1970s, while living in London, I was out walking early one beautiful springtime Saturday morning when a Bugatti Type 35 cruised by. Seeing a mid-1930s-anything in London traffic was rare, but a Bugatti was totally unexpected.
And lastly, while travelling through North Carolina in the late 1990s, I was passed by a silver 1941 Lincoln Continental coupe. Seeing one “in the wild”, taking in how beautifully proportioned it was, I could see why the New York Museum of Modern Art put one on display.
Where I work, I run across a few lambos and classics, but the most one-off thing I randomly came across was one of the cars from The Blues Brothers on a trailer headed through somewhere random. I think it was Kansas, but we were on the road from Washington to Texas, so it might have been any number of places.
My father in law and Uncle in law had a service station. They were the Romanian “Click and Clack” from Car Talk. Anyway, one of their friends, maybe 20 years ago, gave them a Trabant. I was at the station one day, saw it, and they were stunned that I knew what it was. I BEGGED them to let me buy it. They told me stories of how awful they were, etc., but that was the point. Can you imagine a better car for the Woodward Dream Cruise? I could get some friends, and we could dress up as the swinging Czechoslovakian brothers from SNL… I said “I married your daughter, I love her so much, don’t you love me?” The response was “I do love you, and that’s why you can’t have this car!” Of course, the next time I went to the station, it was gone. They gave it to one of their other friends…
I saw a green Ford GT40 parked in the lot of the Candy Dancer restaurant in 1976. Ann Arbor, Michigan.
I had three amazing car experiences when I lived in Switzerland:
-Saw a Miura driving just outside of Bern.
-Saw an Enzo driving just outside of Montreux.
-Was passed by an MC12 on my way home from Geneva Airport.
Switzerland is definitely cool for exotics, but I’ll also never forget walking down the street in Geneva in the 2000s when a Porsche 917 blasted past.
I was shocked and momentarily confused, as one doesn’t expect to see an actual race car driving on city streets, but there it was.