Iconic Cars

The car I learned to drive in. Fond memories. 🙂 In my humble that was a truly fantastic design and marketing niche too and had a very long production run with a few mostly cosmetic changes throughout. The bodyshell lasted a lot longer than the first Mustang body that it was a European rip off of. A "sporty" couple you could actually fit four adults into and had a decent boot, with a hatchback after the series 1 and could be fixed with a hammer and gaffa tape. Agricultural as feck under the skin, but still... Again in my humble if that had an Alfa Romeo badge and they only made a few thousand of them their values would be many multiples of what they are.

Look fantastic and were very successful in motorsport. They look lovely on the inside too. Until you drive one. The driving position is appalling, unless you're some lab escaped human mutant. The dials look great only they're kinda upside down and wobble like a bugger. They're also about as reliable as a baby's arse. Sooner or later it will shít itself and when it does working on them is a curse. Very chuckable though and makes you look like a better driver than you are. Real mile eaters. Until it shíts itself...

Cars like the Model T and the Beetle are icons. Citroen has had her fair share; the 1930's Traction Avant, the first mass market car with independent suspension all around, front wheel drive, monocoque chassis, even got a hatchback later on. The 2C another icon that was in production forever. And the Citroen DS. A space age car that still looks like the bloody Future(c) today.

Lotto win? Some of my choices would be:

Citroen DS. Obvs.

Though I might feck a leccy motor into it. For the greenness. And the engines were the least innovative part.

Renault 5 Turbo. Series 1 with the aluminium doors and roof and the wackiest interior ever. A car that will try to kill you. You hear guys say things like "my car went out of control". No sunshine, you did. However, park one of these up for the night and you're likely to wake up to find it upside down in your neighbour's hedge, a lit gauloises hanging out of it's radiator grill and your neighbour's wife looking disheveled and more satisfied than usual. Homologation specials are always a good bet. The companies cared not a jot for costs as a general rule.

Honda NSX series 2. Insane in the membrane. A stripped down racing snake for the road(barely). The base NSX being the car that proved you could build a thing like this, that was easy to live with, cheap to service and didn't fall apart like a clown car every 5000 miles, unlike the Italians at the time...

And sure I may as well throw a Fiat into the mix... Though one of the brand new ones made by that GTO crowd in the UK.

That said, they had pretty much the same chassis/underpinnings as the Escort Mk 2, so you could get a lot of go faster aftermarket bits that would bolt straight in. Bigger anti roll bars, beefed up shocks/springs and a single leaf spring setup in the back with an A frame to tie it down and they handled pretty well. Crappy brakes by modern standards or any standards at all really let them down(I was convinced the brake pedal's function was to turn on the brake lights and little else). IIRC you could get a kit that would allow "bigger" Austin Princess brakes to fit.

Fantastic car Mr C. In the dictionary under "solid" read down and you'll find a pic of one of those, along with a pic of granite. A few years ago a mechanic mate of mine had one in. The owner kindly let me drive it. The doors are like closing a bank vault. No sportscar of course, but it was very nice to drive indeed, a really easy car to drive, if you know what I mean and at speed[redacted for Garda purposes] as stable as the Great Pyramid. I asked him what weaknesses it had and he said rust(in the front sills IIRC?). I asked what about mechanicals. His reply was that if all cars were built like this he'd need to find another job. Bombproof according to him and you could still get parts, if you needed them, but you probably wouldn't.

And you have the coupe? Dead fancy altogether. Lord Muck here. 😁 Niiice and fair play.