11/30/2022 0 Comments Back to the future 3 carIn short, the car you drive today can probably trace its roots back to the Traction Avant.įind a used Citroen on Auto Trader Enfield 8000 The Citroen Traction Avant wasn’t the world’s first front-wheel drive car, but with its low centre of gravity and all-steel monocoque aerodynamic body, it set the standard for ride and handling. “The most complicated car made anywhere in Europe the most comfortable car made anywhere in the world.” This quote from Motor in 1956 encapsulates all that was great about the DS, a car so groundbreaking, Citroen had taken 12,000 orders by the end of the first day of the 1955 Paris Motor Show.įind a used Citroen DS on Auto Trader Citroen Traction Avant The Cisitalia would have looked contemporary in the 1960s, yet it was unveiled in 1947. For Pininfarina, this was a turning point in car design – an effortlessly elegant car, with no reliance on fins, chrome or excess. How useful would that be in 2018? Sadly, the project was abandoned, and all but a handful of examples were scrapped.įind a used Chrysler on Auto Trader Cisitalia 202 BerlinettaĪs the first car to go on permanent display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Cisitalia 202 has secured a paragraph in the big book of motoring history. It could run on any fuel that would burn with oxygen – peanut oil, perfume, tequila, for example. It’s a fair question, because even today, the idea of jet-powered cars sounds futuristic and exciting. “How different would America be now if we all drove turbine-powered cars?” ponders Steve Lehto in his excellent book on the Chrysler Turbine Car. Nobody had seen anything quite like the Chrysler Airflow, but the combination of its radical design and the effects of the Great Depression resulted in weak sales.įind a used Chrysler on Auto Trader Chrysler Turbine Car The year was 1934, and for the first time, a car had been designed with aerodynamics in mind. Here we see the world’s first streamlined car pictured alongside the world’s first streamlined train: the Union Pacific M-10000. According to the book Fifty Cars That Changed The World: “Between them, Nader and the Corvair launched consumerism and changed forever the relationship between customer and manufacturer.”įind a used Chevrolet on Auto Trader Chrysler Airflow In his book, Unsafe at Any Speed, Ralph Nader argued that GM wasted several years refusing to acknowledge the problem, delaying vital modifications. But the combination of a rear engine and a swing axle resulted in unpredictable cornering characteristics, leading to a series of fatal single-vehicle accidents. Launched in 1959, the Corvair was GM’s answer to the new wave of imported cars and a cost-effective alternative to the larger US saloon cars. Put simply, the technology is advancing at such a rate, the laws of the road cannot keep up.įind a used Audi A8 on Auto Trader Chevrolet Corvair The flagship saloon is the first production car to be developed specifically for Level 3 autonomous driving, with self-driving technology so advanced, it cannot be used in the UK due to current legislation. The Audi A8 represents the future, right now. Except, maybe, the BMW i3.įind a used Audi A2 on Auto Trader Audi A8 For Audi, it was an unmitigated disaster – the firm reportedly lost £4,000 on every A2 it sold – but the thinking was so far ahead of the curve, we haven’t seen anything like it since. It’s hard to believe that it’s nearly two decades since the lightweight, low drag and highly-efficient aluminium A2 went on a tour of the London Eye, promising to herald the dawn of a new breed of superminis. The A2: a car so advanced, Audi could launch it today, and it would still feel fresh and relevant. So, the invisible touch controls and plasma screens were dropped in 1980, but the twin decks and digital instruments remained.įind a used Aston Martin Lagonda on Auto Trader Audi A2 Touch-sensitive controls and plasma displays were unheard of in the late 70s, and back then, Aston Martin engineers couldn’t WhatsApp NASA for some advice when things went wrong. Launched in 1976, the wedgetastic Series 2 Lagonda featured a dashboard so futuristic, even the 1980s refused to let it in. The Eagle was, if you like, a golden example of the kind of forward-thinking we can all applaud, even if the world wasn’t bold enough to accept it. MotorWeek described it as a car that was “put together by a committee”, designed to carry passengers in comfort, in the foulest weather, and on the roughest roads. The AMC Eagle landed in 1979 and arrived at a time when a crossover was merely something you did to get to the other side of the road. Here’s a list of those ahead of their time, in easy-to-digest A-to-Z order. There are times, however, when free-thinking prevails when it comes to cars. It feels like everything is slowly melting into some sort of SUV or crossover. Almost every niche has been filled, and some exhausted, in today’s car world.
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