On Beauty

I often tell people that I'd never buy a car based on looks alone. At the same time, I'd never buy a car that I felt was ugly.

Frequently, a company will build a real stunner of a car. When it's released for sale, the car is shown to be unrealiable, or a bad value for your money. No one buys it, and the beauty of design fades into the pages of history.

Today, I'll ignore the usual talk of build quality and ride integrity and fuel efficiency. No, this is a strict triumph of form over function. I'll be listing in a pretty concise manner what I feel are some of the most dazzling and gorgeous cars built in the past thirty or forty years. Occasionally, I'll rationalize my choices. Not very often, mind.

• Lotus Esprit, 1976 - 1986: Giuguaro's "folded paper" sports car spawned a slew of cheap copy-cats from other companies, but the earliest Esprits were, and are, stunningly beautiful, simple cars. Bond drove one twice, and took an Esprit under water in The Spy Who Loved Me.
• Maserati Quattroporte, 2004 - present: The latest Quattroporte is now a few years old, but I feel it remains one of the finest looking four door cars on the market today. The Quattroporte looks particularly good in GTS trim, finished in black or a dark chocolate brown.
• Aston Martin DB7, 1994 - 2003: Jeremy Clarkson praised it on Top Gear, and the DB7 is already widely recognized as being a classic in its own time. Sure, the chassis was a little old, but I personally far prefer the eye candy that is the DB7 to the sheet metal of its DB9 successor -- which, fairly, isn't bad looking either.
• Saab 900 (hatchback coupe models), 1979 - 1993: Not everyone will agree with me on this one, but, being a Saab fan, I can't help but love the awkward profile of the classic 900. An SPG 900 finished in black or silver looks great on the roady even today, and the status of these Saabs as 1980s cult cars should ensure that they'll be regarded as classics a few short years down the road.
• Chevrolet Corvette C2 (especially after 1958): I'm not fond of the Stingray, or the C4, or most Corvettes for that matter, but I do have a soft spot for the original 'Vette. I saw a silver-blue '58 model at a car show recently and couldn't get over how beautifully organic the design was.
• Alfa Romeo 159, 2005 - present: This is arguably the finest looking small luxury car around today. Sadly, we can't get it in America. The 159 is now four years old, but there's still something taut and agressive and a tad enigmatic about its exterior design. Win.
• Alfa Romeo Spider, 1966 - 1993: This is a car I'll always like the looks of. Immortalized by Dustin Hoffman, it was on sale for twenty seven years and even the 1993 model now looks better than most, more modern '93 models built by other car companies.
• Bentley Continental R, 1991 - 2003: All big Bentleys actually, but I like the Conti R in particular because you get the feeling, just by looking at it, that it's the kind of car that could bust through the Berlin Wall and still look good afterward. Perhaps even more magnificent is the convertible Conti, the Bentley Azure, which remains on sale today.

Of course, there are many others. The original Mustangs, a whole wack of Ferraris, the Citroen DS, a few Jaguars, the original Volvo C70, the Rover SD1, the current MB C-Class, the BMW Z8, the boat-tailed Buick Rivieras, and the classic Porsche 911(s) are all beautiful in my eyes.

The question is, what do you think?