25 Greatest Cars of all Time

Automobile

Could this be the greatest?

I think I've just driven the greatest car of all time. There's a chance that, had I driven Gordon Murray's triumphant McLaren F1 when it first exploded onto the scene at Monaco in 1992, my memory of the most remarkable car ever built for public consumption would have melded over the years into glut of once-in-a-lifetime experiences with which I have been blessed.
Or maybe I would have always cherished the fresh, new memory that I now cherish. Who could imagine that a car conceived several lifetimes ago in terms of today's automotive technology could still dominate - no, obliterate - virtually every experience that has come before or since?
Ralph Lauren decided that it would be nice to share one of his three F1s with us, the one that lives on his estate north of New York City. (Not to belabor the point, but there were only 100 built. Lauren bought 2 of the 64 "regular" million-dollar F1s, and he also bought one of the 5 LMs built to celebrate McLaren's success at LeMans in 1995. McLaren also built 3 GT and 28 GTR models.) It was such a magnanimous offer that even the towering black thunderheads surrounding his vast estate left a magic circle of dry weather for our test drive. To whom do we send that thank-you note?
Formula 1 genius Murray did not set out to build the fastest production car in the world (a title he wanted the F1 nevertheless held for 7 years), but he wanted the F1 to be "the finest driver's car ever built." To achieve that, it needed to be light, so the F1 was the first production car with a carbon-fiber monocoque chassis and body panels, and the materials list included both magnesium and titanium.
It needed power, a 550 hp reckoned Murray, but by the time BMW's M division finished, the 48-valve, 6.1-liter 60-degree V12 (with an aluminum block and heads) registered 627 hp at its 7,500-rpm redline, with a robust 480 lb-ft of torque at 5,600 rpm. The engine bay is lined in gold foil to reflect heat.
The factory numbers are as follows: 0 to 60mph in 3.2 seconds. 0 to 100mph in 6.3 seconds. and a 240 mph top speed.
Peter Stevens was called in to design its bright, shining wrapper, a stunner that can still stop a crowd 15 years on. Low, wide, and mean, the F1 is ruthlessly devoid of extraneous ornamentation. The doors scissor up in menace, leaving maximum entry and exit space from the perfectly packed, three-place cabin.
It is less claustrophobic than you would imagine. The windshield is wide and rises past your forehead, offering a panoramic view from the middle driving perch. Control zones are cut out of each of the longitudinal carbon-fiber structures running on either side of the driver. A tiny shifter sits on the right. Above it, a small, ridged flap of spring-hinged metal covers the tiny red button that will set my world on fire.
This car doesn't scare me, which might mean I'm stupid. I slip my finger under the hinged flap and press the red go button. Wheeeee! it screams, then a very loud wub-wub-wub! that calms into a strong rumble. Cool air surrounds me as the fan kicks in hard for a few seconds as I sit idling, feeling like I drank too much coffee. With a press of the accelerator, we are off like a shot. Whammo. Second, third, and fourth gears come in between heartbeats with barely enough time to think about how the driveway of the Lauren estate resembles a very fine road-racing circuit. Perfect.
The seating position is ramrod stiff against the padded leather seatback, and once you reorient your body to the middle of the lane in line with your central command post, the Nardi steering wheel is a formidable tool that keeps the F1 flying low and true. With 2 turns lock-to-lock, it's unnecessary to remove your hands from their nine-and-three cross-spoke position on the wheel, except to shift. But the exercise of shifting is so much fun - the downshifts so perfectly effected with a flick of the wrist - that I look forward to the usually monotonous panning exercise for the photographer.
Ther is a one-mile sinuous stretch outside of the estate. We line up the F1 and then I nail it, shooting past lensmen Tim Andrew in third gear at a speed too fast for the camera to capture the car clearly. I turn off the ignition while he gets ready and thrill to the sequence of starting the engine again. WHEEEE! WUB-WUB-WUB! rumblerumblerumble. And again. And again.
Ralph Lauren has this particular garage packed with 2 Porsche Carrera GTs, a 911 Turbo, and a Bugatti Veyron keeping the F1 company. It's no surprise that the McLaren F1 is his favorite closed car. Mine, too. - Jean Jennings

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Automobile

Improbable fantasy made real.

The Lamborghini Miura P400 was a motor-show star before it was even a car. When it appeared in chassis from at Turin in November 1965, it was throught to be a racing car - and an impractical one at that. Yet only a few months later, with a fully trimmed and beautifully finished Bertone body, the Miura was the star of the 1966 Geneva show, and production began at what was, for a supercar, a prodigious rate. More than 100 were made and sold in 1967, with production continuing through 1972. About 765 were built, an astonishing number for a car with no luggage space, little rearward visibility, no competition potential, and decidely precarious stability at high speeds.
Certainly one of the most beautiful cars ever built, the body was the work of not one but three undisputed Italian masters: Giogetto Giugiaro, who began the project before defecting to Ghia; Marcello Gandini, who finished and detailed the car; and Giuseppe "Nuccio" Bertone, who inspired, goaded, directed, and edited his designers. Unlike his contemporaries, who would imply that the head of house did all creation therein, Bertone was always willing to acknowledge his designers. He also pushed them hard enough so that, to this critic, the best work of their professional careers was achieved when they were under his discerning eye.
There are numerous outside influences on the Miura's form - the Ford GT40 racing cars being one, and the 1963 Chevrolet Corvair Monza GT concept with its venetian-blind slats over the backlight being another - but the Miura's exquisite proportions are purely Italian and have never been surpassed, let alone equalled. The very word "supercar" was coined by the late L. J. K. Setright in Car magazine to describe the Miura, first of a distinguished breed still recognized by the term.
The "super" in its performance came from New Zealander Bob Wallace, who shepered the Miura from initial development through the full production run. Apart from its beauty, the Miura had a few of what today are called, "issues." As the front-mounted fuel tank emptied, the front end tended to rise and wander a bit, enough to unnerve the most sanguine driver. In traffic, fuel tended to accumulate around the transverse V12's Weber carburetors, and roaring fires occurred much too often for the equanimity of owners.
The issues didn't keep buyers awaym and a second series, the P400 S, was introduced in 1969, with a final run of P400 SVs carrying to '72, before the Lamborghini Countach superseded the Miura. As is too often the case, the successor was heavier, less elegant, and less refined, but it was a better practical proposition, if one can use that designation for vehicles so extravagant.
There was a misguided attempt to create a retro version last year, but happily, Lambo parent Audi has elected not to produce it. There is, and can be, only one true Miura, the magnificent experiment of the 1960s. - Robert Cumberford

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Automobile

The accidental sports car.

The famous Mercedes Gullwing was never intended to be a road car. Initially, it was built purely for the company's reentry into motorsports after World War II. In its 1952 debut racing season, the car proved unstoppable, claiming second and fourth in the Mille Migila; finishing one-two-three at a Swiss sports car race in Bern; taking first and second place at LeMans; ringing up an incredible one-two-three-four finish at the Nurburgring; and achieving a dramatic one-two finish at the Carrera Panamericana.
The remarkable racing successes caused a sensation, and the U.S. importer Max Hoffman convinced the company that the car could be sold to the public, personally guaranteeing Diamler-Benz management that he'd take 500 for the U.S. market. A mildly revised, roadgoing 300SL entered production in 1954. The 300SL (along with its little brother, the 190SL) was revealed to the public in New York City in February 1954. It was the first Mercedes-Benz automobile to have its pulic debutin America - entirely appropriate, because it never would have been built had it not been for the urging of the American distributor and his conviction that American buyers would respond to the car. Respond they did, buying up some 80 percent of the 1400 Gullwing coupes and a similar lion's share of the 300SL roadsters that followed.
The production 300SL marked the company's postwar return to building sports cars, picking up where the awesome, prewar Mercedes SSK left off. As was the case with the SSK, the 300SL borrowed heavily from the company's top-spec sedan (the 300), adopting its front suspension (control arms with coil springs), its gearbox, and its six-cylinder engine (although to clear the low hoodline, it had to be laid over at a 50-degree angle).
But the 300SL was also a pioneer. Seeking light weight and rigidity, Mercedes' head of research and development, Rudolf Uhlenhaut, rejected a platform frame in favor of a web welded steel tubes. The tubular spaceframe required considerable depth though the center of the car. This precluded cutting out a deep section for conventional doors, so for the original racing car, Mercedes cut an entry out of the roof and side windows, giving birth to the signature gullwing doors (they later extended below the window line). Although the racing cars had an aluminum body, the production coupe - with the exception of 29 aluminum-bodied cars - used the lightweight metal only on the hood, the doors, and the deck lid; the rest was steel.
The production car was more advanced than the competition cars in one area - its fuel delivery system. In place of the racers' triple carburetors, the 300SL used mechanical fuel injection, the first series-production, gasolined-powered car to do so. With it, the 3.0-liter six made 215 hp and 202 lb-ft of torque. The transmission was a four-speed manual. Several rear axle ratios were offered; alloy-bodied cars with the highest axle ratio could achieve 161 mph, an astounding figure for 1954.
A fantastically successful racer adapted for the street, the 300SL was a tour de force for a resurgent Mercedes-Benz amd is truly one of the great performance cars of all time. - Michael Furman

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jammyozzy

This entire list makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. I think I'd agree with every single car on the list so far, although there'd better be a DS on it somewhere. Thing is, which category does the DS fit in better than 'Innovation?'.

Also, the supercars list needs a 288GTO on it.

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*McLaren*

There's something relatively close to the 288 GTO coming up next.

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*McLaren*

There's something relatively close to the 288 GTO coming up next.

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Automobile

Doing more with less.

Racing has always been integral to Ferrari. Much of the technology used in Formula 1 trickles down to the Italian company's road cars, with today's Ferrari street cars featuring aerodynamics, paddleshif gearboxes, and traction control systems that were developed in racing. Back in the 1980s, turbocharging was all the rage in F1. Forced induction also found its way into the Ferrari-powered Lancia LC2 Group C racing car and the 288GTO that originally was built for FIA Group B rally competition. But Ferrari's work with turbochargers is best appreciated in the F40 supercar, which was built from 1987 until 1992.
To fully appreciate this manic machine, you shouldn't study the features that Ferrari fitted to the F40 but rather what this car does without. The items absent include: stability control, traction control, power windows, a radio, air bags, and even antilock brakes. Plugged into the steel, carbon fiber, and Kevlar chassis is a twin-turbocharged 2.9-liter V8 developing 471 hp and running through an old-school dogleg 5-speed manual. Yes, Enzo owners, there are no paddles here - you actually have to deal with 3 pedals and a traditional gearshift. All this adds up to an intimidating but extremely rewarding package to drive fast.
Open the lightweight door; wiggle over the tall, carbon-fiber side sill; and drop into the Nomex-covered driver's seat. To the right of the 3-spoke steering wheel, you'll find controls for the only creature comfort in the F40 - air-conditioning. Slide the key into the ignition and thumb the starter button. Dip the clutch, select first gear, and rev the glorious, outspoken V8. Dump the clutch, and the F40 rockets off with a heavy dose of wheel spin. Listen as the turbos spool up, followed by the token pop as boost pressure is released when you grab each new gear ratio. 60 mph flashes by in just udner 4 seconds (including a shift from first to second gear). Top speed, according to Ferrari, is 201 mph. To exploit this wicked performance on real roads, the F40 demands a confident and educated hand. When those dual turbo kick in, make sure you're prepared to counter the ferocious oversteer, since this lightweight supercar will easily spin its 355/35ZR-17 rear tires on dry surfaces. And in the wet? Well, you just may wish for traction control. From the firm, unassisted brakes to the clack-clack of the gated shifter, the F40 screams, "I come from a time before anyone in Europe cared about tailpipe emissions or smoking in restaurants."
The F40 did indeed come from another time. It was the last Ferrari to be developed and brought to market under the watchful eye of the man himself, Enzo Ferrari. For the company's 40th anniversary - hence the name of the car - Il Commendatore wanted to show the world that Ferrari could still build the best sports car on the planet. Enzo, then 89-years-old, even spoke at the launch of the car in Maranello in 1987. To the Ferrari faithful, that alone makes the F40 one of the greatest supercars of all time. - Marc Noordeloos

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Wolfe

The E30 M3 being first in line is no accident.

The weird thing is that the car is underappreciated these days, but the people who do appreciate it love it to death. Proof is in this thread itself, where the M3 didn't even receive another mention until post #12, where it received unadulterated praise (is that an exaggeration, Slicks?).

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Automobile

Star of the 1938 Mille Miglia.

Consider yourself a very lucky person if you have seen an Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B Mille Miglia, one of the most beautiful and mighty Alfas of all time. If you were at the right place at the right time in Montauk, New York, on the longest day of this year, you would have been that lucky. But not as lucky as the person driving it. That would have been me. And none of us is as lucky as Ralph Lauren. He owns this sparkling red, prewar beast that took second place in the 1939 Mille Miglia for its grateful (niy fractious) Alfa Corse ream manager, Enzo Ferrari. Of about 20 Alfa 8C 2900B Corto spiders built between 1937 and 1939, four special models were constructed for the 1938 Mille Miglia. The race cars are easily distinguished by their cutaway doors; simple yet elegant external metal door hinges, hood latches, and gas filler cap; and extensively louvered and ventilated hood and lower side bodywork meant to both release heat and cool the rear drum brakes. Only 2 of those Touring-bodied 8C 2900s ae operational, and both of them live in the United States. This one of the most precious cars in Lauren's vast collection, rumoured to have brought him offers in excess of $10 million. It's the first of the 4 race cars built, the car driven by Carlo Pintacuda, who led for most of the thousand miles until a brake problem near the end of the race allowed his teammate Clemente Biondetti to beat him in another 8C 2900B.
Restorer Paul Russell and Company brought this 8C 2900B back to its glorious Mille Miglia configuration once Lauren bought ir in 2004, matching the paint to a bit of red found under the fuel tank cover, and the leather for the seats to a tiny scrap of red leather found in the seat stuffing when the car was dismantled. It won first in callas at Pebble Beach in 2005.
Imagine Ralph Lauren at daybreak in seaside Montauk. He opens the small, right-hand door latch with a twist, slithers in under the big steering wheel while resting a hand on the metal seat frame behind his back so as not to leave fingerprint dents in the fragile bodywork and maneuvers his feet around the pedals. Once in the car, he presses the key into the ignition, reaches far left for the ornate brass knob of the electric fuel pump, begins to slowly pump - five times, six times - until he feels the pressure build.
The straight eight fires up with a throat-clearing WHORRL and a soft rustle of combustion, then a great woofling rumble as he holds the revs at 2,000 to clear the carbs. It is a mighty noise. Ralph is pleased.
Actually, Ralph is not there. His curator, Mark Reinwald, is pleased. He slithers out. My turn.
I have my worries. First, that little tai chi move into the driver's seat. Yes. Fits like a glove. Second, the pedals. Clutch left, brake right, and a little metal roller right between them to accelerate. I pray for divinely guided footwork. Frankly, I'm more worried about grinding the straight-cut gears, but Reinwald assures me that a decisive hand at the shift lever is all it takes. He also passes on some important advice from former owner Phil Hill. "He told me to let off the clutch without giving it gas. If it works for him..." It works for us, all right, and I head out into the dappled morning with the slightest lurch.
The eight large cylinders under the endless expanse of louvered hood are pressed into steel liners in a 2-piece cast aluminum block. While 220 hp doesn't sound like much, it was prodigious in its day and helped propel the nearly 2,500-pound roadster to a top speed of 143 mph. This day, however, I terrorize myself just south of 80 mph. The ride is surprisingly supple, thanks to a fully independent suspension with control arms in front and swing axles in back. The steering is dead accurate. My head is sticking out above the rimless windscreen, and my sunglasses are rattling.
I execute each upshift perfectly (less so the downshifts) as I roar up and down the Old Montauk Highway. "Roar" is a word that would no be disputed by the occasional morning bicyclist I passed. The sound of an approaching Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B could be mistaken for an aircraft on final approach. It's not a shriek but a mighty roar, underlined by the panicked supercharger whine. It's primal, exhilarating, and must feel a little disquieting to the pedalers to whom I give wide berth and wave. No one waves back. Pagans.
Perhaps the locals are too accustomed to Lauren's Montauk stable. But had you seen us, you'd have wept. - Jean Jennings

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Automobile

Cosworth power plus Chapman genius equals F1 glory.

Colin Chapman hatched several of the most influential Formula 1 cars ever built, from the Lotus 25, which introduced monocoque construction, to the Lotus 78, which unleashed the ground-effects revolution. The Lotus 49 wasn't a pioneer in this mold, but the component that it showcased - the Double Four Valve V8, built on the cheap by a first-time F1 engineer designer - turned out to be the most successful grand prix powerplant of all time. And with a Cosworth DFV motivating the handsome chassis, the Gold Leaf Lotus 49 helped transform racing from a genteel sport into the sports-marketing leviathon of today.
When the Lotus 49 debuted at the Dutch Grand Prix in 1967, Graham Hill qualified fastest while his teammate, Jim Clark, won going away. The car was so much faster than the competition that Clark made up an entire lap at Monza. 3 years later, it was still quick enough to win the 1970 Grand Prix of Monaco, where Jochen Rindt improbably passed Jack Brabham on the last corner of the last lap. Altogether, the Lotus 49 scored 12 wins, 19 poles, and one world championship (for Hill) during 4 seasons of front-line service.
But what makes the Lotus 49 so memorable isn't merely that it won so many races but how it looked winning them. Losing his lucrative Esso sponsorship after the 1967 season forced Chapman to be creative on more than the engineering front. So members of the grand prix circus were shocked at Jarama in 1968, when the Lotus 49s emerged from their transporter in the gaudy colors of Gold Leaf cigarettes rather than traditional British racing green. Before long, home-country racing colors were a quaint reli of the not-so-distant past.
At Monaco, 2 weeks after the Spanish GP, Chapman dropped another bomb with equally cataclysmic results. There, the Lotus 49 became the first modern F1 car to sport integral aerodynamic aids designed to generate downforce - dive plates attached to the nose cone and a spoiler at the rear. By the time the other F1 designers had caught up, the intrepid Chapman had already moved on to a coffee-table-sized rear wing so outrageousy high that is seemed to be flying on its own power. Chapman continued to push the envelope until, inevitably, the ethereal wing supports failed and a pair of Lotus 49s were destroyed at Barcelona in 1969, thereby bringing the short-lived high-wing era to a spectacular end.
Aside from aerodynamic innovations, the car's only major technological advance was using the Cosworth engine as a structural member of the chassis. The lithe, lovely looking Lotus 49 is best thought of as the apotheosis of the first generation of rear-engine formula cars, a point of demarcation before the creation of the wedged-shaped, hip-radiator template ushered in by the Lotus 72. It seems perfectly fitting that the Lotus 49 was the car that took Jim Clark - the unassuming Scotsman who was the polar opposite of his commercially savvy successor, Jackie Stewart - to his final victory. Or that the last GP won by a privateer went to Jo Siffert in a Lotus 49 owned by Rob Walker, a gentleman entrant squeezed out by the sponsors that followed Gold Leaf into the sport.
But even as the Lotus 49 closed one chapter, it opened the book on another. From the beginning, the car was designed around the Cosworth DFV, an engine that was born because Chapman convinced Ford to pay Mike Costin and Keith Duckworth to develop it. When Chapman's exclusive rights to the Cossie expired after the 1967 season, the remarkably adaptable - and affordable - engine became the default choice for most other F1 teams, and it was the foundation of a decade of competitive racing that saw fan, constructor, and sponsor interest grow exponentially.
Chapman died in 1982, and Lotus disappeared from the F1 scene in 1994, but the legacy of the Lotus 49 continues to loom over modern grand prix grids. Lots of cars make history. The Lotus 49 changed it. - Preston Lerner

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Automobile

Despite being difficult to handle, the first-of-its-kind racing car found its muse and excelled.

Can a car be made by its driver? Would a Mercedes-Benz 300SLR command the legend it enjoys today without Stirling Moss, or a Maserati 250F without Juan Manuel Fangio? But if ever the confluence of a car and a driver became greater even than the sum of their outstandingly able parts, it was the day that Bernd Rosemeyer first climbed into an odd-looking new racing car called the Auto Union.
The Auto Union was designed by none other than Ferdinand Porsche and was notable not only for its 16-cylinder engine but for the fact that its engine was placed behind the driver.
The location of the mighty V16 soon gained the Auto Union a reputation for being savage at the limit, although the real culprit was the car's swing-axle rear suspension. During the car's debut in 1934 and 1935, even drivers such as Hans Stuck could make little headway with it. And no wonder: in the Auto Union, the driver almost sat between the front wheels, with the malevolent beast of an engine stretching behind. Not only did the back end steep out with ridiculous speed due to the car's low polar moment of inertia, but when it happened, the driver didn't go with it, making it difficult to know how much corrective lock to apply.
It's possible, too, that drivers were more than somewhat cowed by the idea of hitting something in an Auto Union; a Mercedes-Benz put several hundred pounds of engine between its driver and the impact site, whereas the Auto Union provided a wispy sheet of aluminum and some thin steel tubing. Yet Rosemeyer - a former motorcycle racer - had great success in it. His inexperience actually provided the advantage: he had no technique to unlearn.
By 1936, the V16 had a 6.0-liter capacity and produced a phenomenal 520 hp and a potential top speed in excess of 200 mph when fitted with streamliner bodywork. With it, Rosemeyer won several times, defeating the might of Mercedes and claiming the European championship.
The car also was a consummate record breaker, passing the off-seasons by hurtling down closed autobahns, setting speed records for Mercedes to break and Auto Union to recapture. On one such day in 1938, a side wind blew one of those ultrastreamlined Auto Unions clean off the autobahn at more than 270 mph. Not even the most talented driver of his generation could recover. Rosemeyer was killed.
A very different sort of Auto Union emerged for te 1938 racing season, its cylinder count reduced to 12 and its swing axles replaced by a more conventional arrangement. With Tazio Nuvolari as its lead driver, this D-type Auto Union should have won more than it did, but the Mercedes opposition was too fast. War ended the Auto Union story for good. In 1945, Russian occupation forces discovered the cars in Saxony and shipped them to the Soviet Union. Once there, several cars were stripped down to parts and others were lost altogether, but some reside in the Audi Tradition collection.
Those cars remind us of the most innovative enigmatic, and just plain terrifying cars ever to lat a wheel on a racetrack. - Andrew Frankel

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*McLaren*

The remaining categories to fill for me, are Racing Cars, and Icons. Icons should be easy/hard to determine. Many have already guessed 2 of the Icons.

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Kent

Wait... Are you making this list or are you copying it from a magazine and posting it?
If it is you making it then I may have to comment a bit more on some of the choices (simply because I can talk with you but not the magazine makers).

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Automobile

A beautifully crafted jewel that dominated on the track.

The Miller 91 was the masterwork of Harry A. Miller, the transcendent engineering genius of American racing, and we gaze upon it today like medieval peasants must have gawked at the marble statuary of classical antiquity, awed by the artistry and lost skills of those who came before us.
The fundamental architecture of the engine was so ideal that it continued to underpin the Offenhausers and Offy derivatives that thundered around Indianapolis until 1980, and each piece, down to the lowliest stud, was crafted with the aesthetic rigor normally reserved for fine jewelry. The chassis came in two forms: an incomparably slender rear-wheel-drive model and a similiar-looking but lower-riding front-wheel-drive car that established the styling archetype that would be emulated until the 1950s. But the unforgettable shape was just a bonus. The Miller 91 also was the most dominant car of its era, and benchmarks that wouldn't be exceeded for decades.
The supercharged 1.5-liter straight eight was a refined version of the 3.0-liter and 2.0-liter Millers that had won the Indianapolis 500 in 1922 and 1923, respectively. In 1926, rookie Frank Lockhart went to Indy without a ride, landed one in a brand-new Miller 91 shortly before qualifying, and proceeded to win the race by two laps. The next year, Lockhart took an unstreamlined Miller 91 to the Muroc Dry Lake and ran the mile at 171.02 mph, barely 3 mph slower than the land speed record set two months earlier by a purpose-built behemoth powered by a 22.3-liter engine.
If Harry Miller had created nothing more than the rear-wheel-drive Miller 91, he would have been enshrined in the race car designer hall of fame. But he also used his 91-cubic-inch engine in the greatest front-wheel-drive racing car ever built. Designed around a patented transaxle, the low-line front driver benefited from better traction and aerodynamics that made it perfectly suited for the high-speed board tracks of the day. In 1928, Leon Duray set an Indy lap record of 124.02 mph that stood for nine years. (At the Packard proving ground, he also set a world closed-course mark of 148.17 mph.) The next year, despite brakes and a gearbox that were inadequate for road racing, Duray broke the lap record at the Monza Grand Prix.
Miller 91s won vitually every major race staged in the United States from 1926 to 1929. In the end, they were defeated not by the competition, but by the rule makers, who banned them in favor of cheaper, slower, less exotic machinery as the country descended into the Depression. Harry Miller later tried to conquer Indy with a V16, a four-wheel-drive car, and a rear-engine car. But he never again reached the heights he'd scaled with his Miller 91s. - Preston Lerner

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Automobile

An undrivable car becomes unbeatable.

It is said that there's an exception to every rule, and the exception to the rule that race car drivers don't get scared is the Porsche 917. The stories of the early days - of drivers praying it would break down so they could get out, of professional drivers point-blank refusing even to get into it, and of wheel spin in top gear at more than 200 mph on account of the back of the car no longer being in contact with mother earth - would strain credulity were they not entirely true.
I once asked Richard Attwood how he felt when his 917 retired from Le Mans in 1969 while leading the field by miles in the 21st hour. "Never been so happy in my life," was the curt, painfully honest reply. The early 917, he claimed, was the worst racing car he ever drove. That weekend was also the first time a privateer owner raced a 917; he was dead before the race was finished.
Yet the 917's potential, ever then, was clear. And once its lethally unstable aerodynamics had been sorted out, wherever the 917 went, if it ran without trouble, then the 917 would win.
But the greatest 917 story of all was not about how the car performed but how it came into being. This car, which developed into the most powerful racing car of its time, and which held the record for the fastest lap of any circuit in the world, was concieved because motor-racing authorities were trying to stop just such a car from ever being built. In an attempt to cap spiraling speeds, for 1968, all prototype race cars of the Le Mans type were restricted to a 3.0-liter engine capacity. If you wanted a bigger engine, you had to buy a production car. As defined by the rules, that meant at least 25 copies of a car had to have been built before it could race. No manufacturer accustomed to making four or five prototypes in a whole season would ever crank out 25 cars before the first one turned a wheel in anger. Except Porsche. If the head of Porsche competition department was as famous then as he is now, the rule makers might have thought a bit before making that presumption. His name was Ferdinand Piech, the 917 was his baby, he would build 25.
In 1970, the 917 won nearly every race it entered except for Sebing, including the 24-hour events at Daytona and Le Mans. In 1971, it won another seven races, and in 1972, it got banned. So, it simply headed back across the Atlantic, found itself two turbochargers, and proceeded to dominate the Can-Am scene in North America. George Follimer won the 1972 title in one, and then Mark Donohue won in 1973 in the 917/30, the ultimate 917. With 1,100 hp under his right foot, he won almost every race on the circuit - no one else even counted.
And still the 917 wasn't done. In 1975, Donohue pedaled a 917/30 - now and old and obsolete racing car - around Talladega at a record-breaking average speed of more than 221 mph.
The 917 was not just the fastest racing car of its era, it was the smartest, too - Piech knew that to finish first you first had to finish, and that the car's least reliable component sat behind the steering wheel. - Andrew Frankel

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*McLaren*

Car 18.

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3-Wheel Drive

Its from a magazine. I picked up a copy of the latest Automobile because of the list. He's going in order that the list is. No actual order, its just 5 cars under 5 categories.

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Which is what the 917 did as well.

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Kent

For racing cars... All I can say is that the #20 spot better go to the Audi R8. You just can't deny that the car dominated racing around the world and basically set the standard for prototype racers.

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Automobile

The 200-mph trump card in NASCAR's aerodynamic war.

Some cars are remembered for the races they won; others for the technology they introduced . The Dodge Charger Daytona - the aero warrior that soared over NASCAR in 1970 and the first car of any kind to circle a closed course faster than 200 mph - will be forever enshrined in the pantheon of great racing cars for a different reason: a colossal, and we mean gigantic, rear wing. Oh, and that supercool shark-nose front end didn't hurt.
Like many great racing cars, the Daytona emerged from the ashes of humiliating defeat. In 1969, despite having access to the magnificent 426-cubic-inch Hemi, Chrysler had been emasculated in Grand National competition by the Ford Torino Talladega Special and th Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II, the first stock cars to unlock the secrets of high-speed aerodynamics. Things got so bad that Richard Petty - Plymouth's most enduring icon - defected to the Blue Oval.
Despite aerodynamic modifications, Dodge Charger 500 was still a slug on the racetrack, but it was too late for a full redesign. So Chrysler engineers did the next best thing: they retrofitted it with a huge,two-foot-tall rear wing mounted on dramatic stabilizers to generate downforce, and they also sheathed the blunt grille in a slippery, wedge-shaped nose cone. The car made a spectacular debut in September 1969 at the equally new Alabama International Motor Speedway in Talladega: Charlie Glotzbach qualified on the high-banked oval at 199.45 mph, and journeyman Richard Brickhouse won the race.
It was too late in the year to catch Ford in the standings. But in 1970, the Daytona and its corporate cousin, the Plymouth Superbird, were the cars to beat. Bobby Isaac won the Grand National championship in Harry Hyde's K&K Insurance Dodge, and Plymouth took the manufacturer's title, thanks partly to the triumphal return of Petty, who notched 18 victories that year. But the Daytona's most rememorable feat was a PR coup rather than a race win. Between races, larger-than-life good ol' boy Buddy Baker lapped Talladega at 200.45 mph. To put this in perspective, the current Formula 1 lap record was a "mere" 151 mph, and the pole speed at Indy was a tick over 171 mph.
In 1971, the wing cars were hobbled by new NASCAR regulations that limited them to small-block engines. Toward the end of the year, Hyde hauled his mothballed 1970 championship winner out to the Bonneville Salt Flats so that Isaac could set a slow of FIA records, among them going 217.37 mph in the flying kilometer. But the age of the aero warriors was over, and the Daytonas never flew again. - Preston Lerner

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