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!
Triumph TR7.
Sometimes one in just the right color, say Persian Aqua, will be at a car show, and I am drawn to it.
I would say the Bizzarrini 5300 GT Strada. I have seen a few in my younger days living near the Bruce Canepa dealership in Santa Cruz, CA. However, my favorite viewing of one is in the mid 80s in Monterey (it wasn’t Concourse week!) and it was parked in front of a laundromat and some bloke came out and threw his bag of dried laundry in it and took off but not before we discussed this magnificence. What struck me is that it was a “driver” and not some garage queen and he used it every day.
The second car would be one of Bill Thompson’s Cheetahs… odd and curvy lines and menacing in the flesh!
And… the original Avanti is still in my bucket list!
Interesting the comments on the Avanti and the Riviera which were both used extensively as “cars of the future” in the movie Gattaca. Truly timeless designs
I had the privilege of seeing an Alfa Romeo Tipo 33 Stradale at the Amelia Island Concours years ago. That car was unbelievably lithe and petite. It was honestly achingly beautiful to see in person. Hearing the 2.0 liter race derived Alfa V8 come to life was probably the most moving automotive experience I’ve had in life.
I’ve always been stricken by the Buick Reatta. A clean Roadmaster Estate will also stop me in my tracks.
I practically grew up at Studebaker club meets, so I’ve seen my fair share of Avantis. They’re still utterly striking, to me. As they started to deplete the Studebaker body and chassis components and base them off various Ford and GM platforms, they got a little sad, kind of like a peak athlete that stopped working out the second he retired. But the original and Avanti II… still a thing of Raymond Lowey mastery.
+1 on the Reatta. Lovely form, tho I’ve always found the coupes a bit of a bait and switch…it just feels like that top is waiting to be peeled off.
Citroën DS
It lives in my head full time. I think about it when I have no reason to be thinking of any car, much less a specific car. If I see one in person it’s hard to tear myself away from just sitting and looking at it. It’s like someone made a cartoon of a car into a real car, but not in an ironic way, in a very serious way, and it’s well done. It manages to be stately and silly at the same time. It’s baffling. I can’t believe anyone made a thing like this, and it was not an odd one-off, it was a regular production car. It’s fascinating.
Last year I found myself in the presence of an exquisitely restored 1st-gen Riviera in a kind of salmon color. It’s always been one of my favorite designs, and this was not a case of “never meet your heroes.” It was even more transcendent in person, all the little details of the interior, the circle-R logo sprinkled about. Sigh.
1978 Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL (W116) that my father hired for our two-week Christmas holiday in Germany. Nothing else would supersede the 450 SEL for me.
I walked out toward my work van this morning, and the light was just right. I looked at the shabby Bugeye & the still-dirty Roadster that I just put a motor in sitting in my driveway and thought, ‘Man, even 10 years ago I wouldn’t have dreamed I’d have two fun cars like this!’
I’m still a little sheepish about the BMW, but, after years of driving $200 fwd shitboxes I’m happy to have something rwd w/ >200 lb-ft of torque
Daimler SP250. In black. Only black. No idea why the weirdo appeals to me so very much, but it does.
Also, Citroen DS. Any of them. All of them. ::drool::
And the Avanti.
Another one that makes me feel funny is the Nissan Pulsar NXx with the Sportbak shell on.
https://i0.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/nissan-pulsar-nx-sportbak_100352784_m.jpg
The Mercedes R107 did that and still kinda does now that I have one. It gives me butterflies.
Porsche 993. Air cooled perfection; integration of 959esque headlights, aggressive (but not cartoonish) flares, and svelte overall proportions.
Ferrari 308 GTS. I grew up watching Magnum.
8N Audi TT. One of the most complete automotive designs (interior and exterior) I’ve experienced in adulthood. I still need to regularly convince myself that buying one of these would be a terrible idea.
1962 Lincoln Continental hardtop (black on black). Straight up evil on wheels.
Saw my first one yesterday. Don’t like it, but it did cause a moment. Didn’t look real, like seeing a movie prop.
’67 Jag E-Type convertible. As I was looking it over, the owner asked me if I wanted to sit in the seat. Oh hell yes! It was glorious. And it was blue.
Avantis (Avantii?), yeah, like a auto magnet drawing me in. From the same family, the Silver Hawks as well, earlier pre-fin models preferred but even with fins they are a draw for me. How the hell did Studebaker fail when they had Stevens and crew?
Coffin nosed Cords make my knees all wobbly. Such presence.
General rule for me I guess is if it looked like what cars would eventually end up looking like 5-10+ years down the road from them, I like and respect.
Maserati Birdcage, Concours D’Elegance in Orlando back in the earlier 2000’s. Any 1950’s Euro racecar really, but that frame……
My neighbor from about a million years ago (1980?) had a beautiful 1963 burgundy Avanti that got driven once a month. Was always a treat!
Citroën DS. Gazing upon one recalls the girl you had a crush on who was somehow both too weird and unattainably out of your league…but you couldn’t get her out of your head.
DS and also the SM… 2cv… really any old Citroen.
I think actually driving one might break the spell though.
BMW 3.0CS. Ever since I saw that first one in the Southland Mall in Hayward CA, back in the day.
That mall is one of the most depressing places i’ve ever visited.
1971 maserati ghibli ss spyder
Back in 1984, I was driving my functionally restored 71 Karmann Ghia convertible past an exotic car dealership that I had interviewed at six months prior, and Holly Gobsmacked, the entire front lawn was loaded with the finest! Pulled a turnaround ASAP and pulled in, and parked around back. It was a wine&cheese open house that I certainly was not invited to, and I didn’t see the sales manager that had interviewed me, but no one asked for my ID or invite so spent over an hour there soaking it all in! A Dino, and a Daytona Spyder are the others that left seared memory. THAT was a very good day!
Ferrari Dino 246GT. I wouldn’t change a single thing about it. Adrian would, but he likes to watch the world burn.
Citroen SM. The DS too, of course, but the SM just feels more like something from an alternate automotive universe.
Also any surviving American land barge from the 60/70s. A ‘68 Conti will stop me dead, while a modern supercar will merit barely a glance. There’s a certain respect for something mechanical that has been around longer than I have.
Great take on the SM and DS. The 61-69 Continentals with the suicide doors are special.
Ah, yes, the Avanti, in all its iterations over the years, is indeed one of those cars that have to be seen in person to be truly appreciated. Several years ago there was a lovely metallic blue ’63 Avanti, at a local Cars and Coffee, which had been well-restored. The owner had a placard detailing all the specs, the restoration process, and the family history. The placard mentioned that the owner had originally fixed it up with the intention of giving it to his grandson but that the grandson turned it down because he wanted a Corvette. When I read that my loud audible reaction made some strangers around me jump. I can only hope that those strangers then read the placard and understood my reaction, ha.
And I’ve taken a few road trips to New Orleans but one stands out in my memory partly because of a well-used and street-parked square-headlight Avanti in the French Quarter which I insisted on walking around and ogling much to the derision of the people I was road-tripping with (perhaps needless to say I am no longer friends with those people for various reasons which includes the aforementioned derision. Life’s too short to spend with people who don’t get it about one’s interests.)
I saw a Lancia Stratos in the flesh a decade or so ago. Amazing, tiny little beast. Remember watching them in rallys back when they were new.
Angry Italian Rally Wedge, top 10 even if I’d never fit into one.
Same, I’d need height reduction surgery.
Happily, I’m short. Sadly, I’m poor.
The one and only time that I saw an Avanti actually driving down the road, it definitely stopped me and my wife in our tracks. It was in a pride parade back before such events were well publicised, so there was kind of a double-whammy of “Wow! That ragtop Avanti is super cool!” and “Huh, why are there so many drag queens walking down the street?”