25 most Beautiful Cars Ever

1935-1939 Alfa Romeo 8C2900
Designed by Amedeo De Micheli and Giovanni Rossi
Considered by many to be the first supercar, the Alfa Romeo 8C 2900 was a grand prix winner you could buy for yourself. At the outbreak of World War II, this was the ultimate sports car, powered by a twin-supercharged straight eight. Most of the cars wore bodies by Touring or by Alfa Romeo itself. Here we honor the Alfa-bodied spiders, but all 8C 2900s are held in such esteem by collectors that on the rare occasion when one comes on the market, a seven-figure sale price is virtually guaranteed.


1952-1955 Bentley R-type Continental
Designed by J.P. Blatchley
The graceful lines of the two-door fastback Bentley R-type Continental are the result of a close collaboration between the Crewe, England, factory (principally chief project engineer Ivan Evernden and stylist J. P. Blatchley) and coachbuilder H. J. Mulliner, which provided the coachwork for 193 of the 208 cars built. Aerodynamics and light weight were high priorities; the R-type was constructed with aluminum body panels, window frames, and bumpers. Reserved exclusively for export from Britain, the R-type Continental was one of the fastest--and most expensive--cars in the world when new.


1971-1975 BMW 3.0CS/CSi/CSL
Designed by Wilhelm Hofmeister
The CS coupe was styled in-house by Wilhelm Hofmeister (of the eponymous Hofmeister kink) and his team, but it appears to have been heavily influenced by the Bertone-designed 3200CS. Unfortunately, the complex, Karmann-built bodies were known for rusting almost immediately. The CSL version (Coupe Sport Light) saved more than 400 pounds over the standard CS through the use of an aluminum hood, trunk lid, and doors; Plexiglas windows; and less sound insulation, among other details. The first and perhaps the most attractive of the famed BMW Art Cars was Alexander Calder's CSL--which actually raced in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1975.


1937-1938Bugatti Type Atlantic
Designed by Jean Bugatti
The Type 57S Atlantic coupe was based on the Arolithe show car, which was built of magnesium and aluminum. Since those materials couldn't be welded or brazed, Bugatti externally riveted the Arolithe's body, creating the signature seam down the middle of the car. The three production Type 57S Atlantics were built solely from aluminum, but the seams along the roof and the fenders were retained for style.


1963-1965 Buick Riviera
Designed by Bill Mitchell, Ned Nickles
In Jerry Flint's The Dream Machine, Bill Mitchell recounts the inspiration for the Riviera: "It was in London, a foggy night. I was in front of the Claridge, and out of the fog comes this Rolls." The sharp-edged corners coming up through the mist suggested the outline of a new car: the Buick Riviera. The Riviera was initially proposed as the La Salle II, for Cadillac. When Cadillac didn't want it, it was offered to Buick, Oldsmobile, and Pontiac. Buick fought hardest and won.



1938-1941 Cadillac 60 Special
Designed by William Mitchell
Compared with the tall, rounded, stodgy sedans of its day, the Cadillac 60 Special was lithe, clean, and elegant. Its flat roof and thin, chrome-outlined window frames were influenced by the French Panhard 6CS Panoramic, but shorn of running boards and with an extended, coupelike trunk blended into the body, the 60 Special was far more interesting. When design boss Harley Earl first pitched the radical car to the GM board, they resisted. CEO Alfred Sloan wasn't in the meeting, but he was known to like the car, according to Michael Lamm and Dave Holls' A Century of Automotive Style, so an exasperated Earl at last turned to them and said, "What will I tell Mr. Sloan when he asks me?" With that, Earl got the 60 Special approved.


1963 Chevrolet Sting Ray
Designed by Lawrence Shinoda
The 1963 Corvette coupe, the Cindy Crawford of sports cars, would be just another fair fastback without its cleft rear window. GM design boss Bill Mitchell used the thin band of bodywork to sweep his signature windsplit from the top of the windshield to the tail--and to assert his dominance over Corvette chief engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov, who hated it. (It was gone for '64.) The split rear glass was considered a radical design gesture in its day, but Corvette stylists experimented with even more extreme proposals. One sculpted in 1957 by Peter Brock, code-named the Q-Corvette, featured doors that hinged up and forward from a split windshield.



1947-1952 Cisitalia 202 Coupe
Designed by Pinin Farina and Giovanni Savonuzzi
Cisitalia founder Piero Dusio gave the following instructions to his engineer Giovanni Savonuzzi: "I want a car that is wide like my Buick, low like a grand prix [racing car], comfortable like a Rolls-Royce, and light like our single-seater D46." The talented Savonuzzi sketched out the 202 coupe, and the project was then given to Pinin Farina. The production design was so well received that in 1951, only four years after first coming to market, the Cisitalia 202 entered the Museum of Modern Art. It remains part of MOMA's permanent collection.


1936-1937 Cord 810/812
Designed by Gordon Buehrig
Gordon Buehrig was working for General Motors in 1933 when design chief Harley Earl staged a competition to style a futuristic four-door sedan. Buehrig came up with a coffin-nosed sedan with headlights hidden in the pontoon-shaped front fenders and no conventional grille--directly contradicting Earl's belief that the face of a car was its most important aspect. Buehrig finished dead last in the competition. Shortly thereafter, Buehrig went back to work at Duesenberg (where he'd been employed between 1929 and 1933) and used his rejected design as the basis for the Cord 810. Introduced in November 1935, the radical, front-wheel-drive, V-8 810 (called the 812 for 1937) went on to win several design awards.


1964-1968 Ferrari 275GTB,GTB/4
Designed by Francesco Salamone
In 1922, Battista "Pinin" Farina beat Enzo Ferrari in a hill-climb. Decades later, the old rivals began one of the auto industry's most fruitful collaborations. Pininfarina--after 1961 the legal name of both the man and his carrozzeria--ended up contributing striking coachwork to many of Ferrari's road cars. The Ferrari 275GTB, designed by Pininfarina's Francesco Salamone, was panned by critics as dull and dreary when it debuted at the 1964 Paris show, but time has proven them wrong. The last Ferrari grand tourer to be blessed by Pinin's touch is now revered as one of the sexiest car sculptures ever created.


1968-1974 Ferrari 365GTB/4 Daytona
Designed by Leonardo Fioravanti
Leonardo Fioravanti was responsible for many splendid Ferraris as design director for Pininfarina, but his masterpiece was surely the Daytona. As a racing car, it placed well at Le Mans, and it also distinguished itself as a rally car, although the big machine must have been a handful on narrow roads. In both open and closed form, it was genuinely practical for touring. Its lines were aped by Rover for the SD-1 sedan and by Chevrolet for the Vega-based Monza coupe, but only the original has the grace, tempered aggression, and suave beauty that make it a classic.


1968-1979 Jaguar XJ6
Designed by William Lyons
Great cars do not necessarily spring forth from a designer's imagination fully formed like some kind of Greek goddess. When the Mark X sedan flopped in the States in the early 1960s, Jaguar chief executive Sir William Lyons, as always, looked around to see what people were buying instead. He took the 1963 Buick Riviera as the inspiration for a four-place GT car, which he later turned into a sedan, adding mix-and-match Jaguar styling elements. When the XJ6 launched in 1968, it garnered almost universal acclaim as the most beautiful car in the world. The car's gorgeous shape endured in production until 1979, and its lithe elegance has influenced every Jaguar since.


1949-1954 Jaguar XK120
Designed by Sir William Lyons
Although clearly influenced by the Touring-bodied BMW 328 Mille Miglia, the Jaguar XK120 is nonetheless a remarkable achievement. Jaguar boss Sir William Lyons also was the company's chief designer for most of his tenure. But he was neither a draftsman nor a modeler--instead, he worked with a panel beater to put his ideas directly into sheetmetal. The results were often stunning, as is the case with the XK120.



1961-1966 Jaguar XK-E
Designed by Malcolm Sayer
The Jaguar E-type (XK-E in America) was done by Jaguar aerodynamicist Malcolm Sayer, who had learned to calculate low-drag shapes from a German P.O.W. while serving in the Middle East during World War II. Like the racing D-type (another Sayer design) from which it was derived, the XK-E ended up looking the way it did solely because of aerodynamic requirements--and yet it was still achingly gorgeous. The slippery body helped the E-type approach a top speed of 150 mph, an awesome achievement in 1961.


1966-1972 Lamborghini Miura
Designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro and Marcello Gandini
When the Miura prototype made its debut at the 1965 Turin auto show, it did so without its shapely body. Even as a naked chassis, the car caused a stir, with its transverse-mounted V-12 and its unified cylinder block and transaxle. Before the show was over, Lamborghini had hired Italy's Bertone coachworks to drape a body over it. At Bertone, the job was started by Giorgetto Giugiaro and finished by Marcello Gandini. The bodywork was completed just in time for the 1966 Geneva show, where the car was revealed in stunning red-orange livery. Bob Wallace, one of Lamborghini's triumvirate of young engineers who built the car, remembered, "People went stark, raving mad over it." They still do.



1940-1941 Lincoln Continental
Designed by Eugene T. Gregorie
Ah, the perks of being the boss's son. Edsel Ford, son of Henry, was the president of Lincoln and often had custom-made cars built for his personal use. For his 1939 winter vacation in Florida, Edsel wanted a car built to reflect the influence of European design. Eugene Gregorie sketched--in crayon--a proposal over a blueprint of a Lincoln Zephyr chassis. The car was built, and Edsel's wealthy friends in Hobe Sound and Palm Beach were so enamored of it that Edsel decided to put it into production as the Continental. It remained in the lineup through 1948, but, with their more elegant grille and headlamp treatment, the '40 and '41 cars are the prettiest.



1961 Lincoln Continental
Designed by Elwood Engel
Elwood Engel's staff had just developed a Ford Thunderbird model that picked up on themes from the Continental Mark II. Ford president Robert McNamara happened upon it, and he was so taken that he asked Engel to create a four-door to be the new Lincoln. Two weeks later it was done, and it beat out a rival worked up by Lincoln studio chief Gene Bordinat, who attempted to maintain continuity with the huge, garish '58-'60 models. Engel's car went into production almost unchanged, won an Industrial Design Institute award, and established Lincoln as a design leader for the first time in decades.


1957-1963 Lotus Elite
Designed by Peter Kirwan-Taylor
Bean counters are often accused of screwing up car design, but the opposite is true here. Peter Kirwan-Taylor was an accountant in the City of London when he styled the Lotus Elite, a car for which he also arranged financing. The Elite's fiberglass unibody was revolutionary and provided for an absurdly low curb weight of just a bit more than 1000 pounds. But it also meant that electrical grounds tended to be in short supply (leading to the occasional fire), and the flexing of the body material sometimes caused suspension mounting points to fail. Although it was fast and light, the Elite's fragility led Lotus to build the Elan roadster that followed on a more conventional steel-backbone chassis.



1967-1973 Maserati Ghibi
Designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro
In the late 1960s and early '70s, the Maserati Ghibli competed for customers with the Lamborghini Miura and the Ferrari 365GTB/4 Daytona, both also on this list, during what was clearly a golden period in Italian automobile design. Penned by a young Giugiaro when he worked at Ghia, the classically proportioned, V-8-powered grand tourer has stood the test of time. "The Ghibli is one of the definitive Giugiaro masterpieces," says Stewart Reed, chair of transportation design at the Art Center College of Design. "Everything is restrained and simple, but the car is beautifully tailored and balanced. It's a car for the ages."


1954-1957 Mercedes 300SL
Designed by Friedrich Geiger and Walter Hacker
The Gullwing was the road-car evolution of the Mercedes-Benz 300SLR racing cars. Because conventional door cutouts would have weakened their tube-frame chassis, those first racers used top-hinged doors consisting of a side window and a roof section only. Mercedes was worried that the unconventional doors might be challenged if the car won, but racing chief Alfred Neubauer had scrutinized the rules and concluded, "Nowhere is it written that a door can open only sideways."


1936-1938 Mercedes -Benz 500K/540K
Designed by Friedrich Geiger
In the mid-1930s, the 500K and then the 540K reigned atop the Mercedes-Benz car line, and their most fabulous iteration was the Special Roadster. Casting a shadow greater than a Ford Expedition and sitting astride a ten-inch-longer wheelbase--yet effectively seating only two people--the Special Roadster was both elegant and extravagant. After driving a 1937 example, our own Phil Llewellin dubbed it the "Colossus of Roads." But it's a testament to the loveliness of the Sindelfingen coachwork that the Special Roadsters look graceful instead of massive. The cars embody elegance on the grandest scale.



1990-1996 Nissan 300ZX
Designed by Isao Sono and Toshio Yamashita
Japan has been making really good cars for a long time, but few have measured up to world standards for styling. Of those, Nissan's crocodile-faced 300ZX is arguably the best, and it has been almost universally admired by designers from other companies for its refinement, elegant surface development, and painstaking detail design. Of several variants, the best is the plain two-seat coupe with a fixed roof--a symphony of pure lines with no extraneous breaks. The rare long-wheelbase model is a practical two-plus-two, but, like the convertibles, it lost the magic appearance.


1966-1967 Oldsmobile Tornado
Designed by David North and Stan Wilen
A real breakthrough," says former Ford design chief Jack Telnack, describing the 1966 Olds Toronado. Indeed it was, with its hidden headlights, true fastback body style, flared wheel openings, and completely smooth integration of the B-pillar into the body side. It was also front-wheel drive, a first for an American car since the Cord 810 (the front end of which is echoed in the Toronado). Remarkably, the Toronado shared much of its underbody structure with the also handsome but completely different looking--and rear-wheel-drive--Buick Riviera.


1953-1954 Studebaker Starliner
Designed by Bob Bourke
In 1951, Studebaker boss Harold Vance had Raymond Loewy's studio work up a two-door, four-seat show car. Vance showed a keen interest in the coupe and green-lighted the car for production after a late-night visit to the studio with board members. The Champion and Commander series Starliner coupes arrived in 1953 with a shape that was lower, had cleaner lines, and was more beautifully detailed than most show cars of the day. But production delays kept the car from dealers until months after the initial launch, and the lost momentum was never regained. The body, however, has enjoyed a second life as the basis for numerous Bonneville speed record cars.


1937-1939 Talbot -Lago Figoni-Falaschi coupe
Designed by Joseph Figoni
Genius stylist/designer Joseph Figoni and Ovidio Falaschi, the accountant who kept him solvent, created some of the most exotic and sensuously beautiful cars of the late 1930s. Their coups amricains were popularly called Teardrops, a name Figoni despised. There were both racing cars and grand tourers, each a masterpiece of aesthetic form and aerodynamic function. There have been numerous counterfeits and kit-car rip-offs, but the real thing commands seven figures whenever one becomes available. Figoni-Falaschi body construction was exceptionally sound, so some nearly seventy-year-old cars are as good--and as beautiful--as new.