The top 20 most beautiful cars
We reveal the top 20 most beautiful cars as chosen recently by readers of The Daily Telegraph
- Ferrari 288 GTO
Homologation special built to comply with regulations for a race series that was abandoned almost before it started.
- Bugatti Type 57 Atlantique
So expensive by the standards of the mid 1930’s that only three were sold.
- Ferrari 250 GT SWB
Shortened wheelbase sweetened the handling and spawned a racetrack colossus.
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Further proof of the style and substance with which the British car industry was once infused.
- AC Cobra
Its purposefully muscular features have been replicated by countless manufacturers. There is a good reason for this.
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This 1960’s version is the one voters cited for its aesthetic allure.
- Alfa Romeo P3 8C
Think Tazio Nuvolari. Think Targa Florio. Think back-to-back victories in 1931-32.
- Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing
Door design makes it slightly easier to get in… but impossible to escape if you are upside down. Nice-looking car, though.
- Jaguar Mk2
Favoured by crims when up against the late John Thaw as The Sweeney’s Jack Regan. Favoured by Thaw when he morphed into Morse. Unmistakably lovely.
- Jaguar D-type/XK-SS
Three-times a Le Mans winner in the 1950’s. Jaguar had built only 16 examples of the road-going XK-SS version when the moulds were destroyed in a factory fire.
- Ferrari 250 GTO
A paragon of balance, on road or track. The downside? Ferrari built just 36 of them.
- Lotus Esprit
Forget the patchwork switchgear, poached from Triumph, Hillman and elsewhere. Savour the shape and the chassis… then keep your fingers crossed that nothing breaks.
- Aston Martin DB9
Many cars at the top of this list look contemporary. Uniquely, this one actually is.
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A lighter, curvier version of its progenitor, with a (claimed) extra 74bhp. You might pick up a nice for £80,000 today. In the 1990’s, one Zagato went for £1.54m.
- Aston Martin DB4/5/6
Could have become a cult car without Bond, but the ejector seat, machine guns, tyre shredders, rotating number plates and so on probably helped.
- Lamborghini Miura
As befitting a car with eyelashes around the headlamps, it was astonishingly seductive when new in 1966. The same holds true 42 years later.
- Ferrari Dino 206/246 GT
Pretty Pininfarina-styled sports car named after Enzo Farrari’s son. Launched in 1967, it was never actually marketed as a Ferrari but became the company’s first significant seller when engine was uprated to 2.4 litres two years later.
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Lumped together because they look the same – and this list is all about aesthetics, not power output or fractional adjustments to front and rear track. Optimism made metal in immediate postwar Britain.
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Timeless poise and style, as favoured by getaway drivers in all black-and-white French gangster movies. Did we expect to find a family saloon breaking the sports car stranglehold at the top of the list? None bar this.
This car received almost four times as many votes as any other car. Also name-checked by quite a few who didn’t choose it, as in: “I would have picked the but the narrow track ruins its proportions.” A minority view, it seems!
Just count how many of these Top 20 are timeless policy.
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