Exploring the World’s Cult Classic Cars
The Vauxhall Chevette was a car ahead of its time - the first UK-built supermini hatchback and a market leader until the Ford Fiesta grabbed its crown in 1978. Along with its big brother, the Cavalier, the Chevette played its part in dragging Vauxhall’s reputation off the floor in the mid 1970s, with the rally-inspired 2.3-litre HS a genuine hot
For years, Nissan had failed to replicate the raw thrills of the original Z-car, the legendary 240Z of 1969, producing a series of bloated replacements that pandered to the American market. But then came the 300ZX, which - via two distinct incarnations - evolved to restore the lustre to the tarnished Z range that still shines brightly today.
It was the car that looked “as if it had fallen from the sky”. In 1955, the Citroen DS stunned the motoring world when it was launched at the Paris Motor Show. Aerodynamic, futuristic, with a huge raking bonnet and pioneering self-levelling suspension, the French car-maker took 12,000 orders on the first day alone.
It was far from the first supermini, but for more than 40 years the Ford Fiesta has held an iron grip on the small car sector. Britain’s best-selling car for nine years on the spin up to 2017, as well as five times before that, the Fiesta has seduced more buyers than any other car on these shores since it
It was the car that breathed new life into Vauxhall, a mile-eating motorway cruiser with sharp handling and a smooth, refined engine. The Cavalier may not have knocked the Ford Cortina off the top of the sales charts, but it probably deserved to.
The Ford Anglia is a rarity among classic cars - it’s immediately recognised all over the world by children and young people, even if it’s as “the Harry Potter car” and not by its given name. But among the older generation, the Anglia was already a well-known and well-loved family car long before J K Rowling plucked the forerunner to
Toyota’s first Supra was little more than a badge on a Celica, at 110bhp a world away from the fire-breathing budget supercar it was to become. It wasn’t until 1986 that the Supra became a model in its own right, and the car had to wait until the A80 generation in 1993 to truly catch fire.
Few big saloons of the 1970s had the cool factor in quite the swaggering way of the Ford Granada. A bold move away from the boxy Zephyr and Zodiacs, the handsome Granada vindicated Ford’s pan-European strategy to build a car as popular in London as Berlin.
Few cars hold such an iconic place in European history as the humble Trabant, the East German people’s car that became a symbol of freedom at the fall of the Berlin Wall. Derided in the west as the very essence of communist inefficiency and incompetence - noisy, smoky, slow and uncomfortable - the car is the subject of more myths
The iconic bruiser from Japan has gone down in performance car folklore, as popular in video games and on the big screen as with its legion of devoted fans. Originally a luxury saloon manufactured by the Prince Motor Company in 1957, the car evolved into the legendary Nissan Skyline GT-R, a tuner’s favourite dubbed “Godzilla, the monster from Japan” by