Items18The creator’s order
  1. 1Cord 810/812Cord 810/812Cord 810/812, designed by Gordon Buehrig, 1935 Buehrig did away with the upright radiator grille most cars of its day still wore and ran horizontal louvers around the nose instead, which is why it earned the nickname "coffin nose." The fenders hid the first retractable headlights on a production…0
  2. 2Volkswagen BeetleVolkswagen BeetleVolkswagen Beetle, engineered by Ferdinand Porsche Few shapes have been asked to do so much for so long. Ferdinand Porsche drew up the people's car in the mid-1930s, and its rounded body stayed recognizably the same until the last one left the Puebla plant in Mexico on July 30, 2003, after…0
  3. 3CisitaliaCisitaliaCisitalia 202 coupe, body by Pinin Farina, 1946 This is the car that taught the world to treat a car body as sculpture. Pinin Farina gave the small grand-touring fastback taut lines and a low hood, a clean break from the bulky, upright shapes most cars still wore just after the war. The Museum of…0
  4. 4Citroën 2CVCitroën 2CVCitroën 2CV, by André Lefebvre and Flaminio Bertoni The brief is the design. Citroën wanted a car that could cross a freshly plowed field with a basket of eggs on the back seat and break none of them, and boss Pierre-Jules Boulanger described what he was after as an umbrella on wheels. Chief…0
  5. 5Mercedes-Benz 300 SLMercedes-Benz 300 SLMercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing, styled by Friedrich Geiger, 1954 Here the famous feature was forced by the structure. Engineer Rudolf Uhlenhaut gave the car a tubular lattice spaceframe, one of the first true spaceframes on a road car, and its sides ran so high that conventional doors would not…0
  6. 6Citroën DSCitroën DSCitroën DS, styled by Flaminio Bertoni, 1955 If one car on this list looks as though it arrived from a later decade, it is this one. Chief stylist Flaminio Bertoni gave it a low, tapering body that sat on hydropneumatic, self-leveling suspension, so the shape and the ride were conceived…0
  7. 7Fiat 500Fiat 500Fiat Nuova 500, designed by Dante Giacosa, 1957 Dante Giacosa, an engineer who spent 43 years at Fiat, worked out how to make a real car in almost no space, and the friendly rounded shape follows from that packaging rather than from styling for its own sake. Launched in 1957, it became a symbol…0
  8. 8Mini (Mark I)Mini (Mark I)Mini, designed by Alec Issigonis, 1959 The original Mini is a design you read from the inside out. Alec Issigonis, chief engineer at BMC, turned the engine sideways and put the gearbox in the engine's sump to save length, then pushed tiny 10-inch wheels out to the corners so almost all of the car…0
  9. 9Jaguar E-TypeJaguar E-TypeJaguar E-Type, shaped by Malcolm Sayer, 1961 The long hood and tight tail were not drawn by a stylist in the usual sense. Malcolm Sayer was an aerodynamic engineer who worked the curves out with slide rules and log tables, which is why the shape feels inevitable rather than decorated. Jaguar…0
  10. 10Chevrolet Corvette (C2)Chevrolet Corvette (C2)1963 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray split-window coupe, by Larry Shinoda under Bill Mitchell Detroit's own answer to the European coupes. Larry Shinoda drew it under the direction of GM styling chief Bill Mitchell, with pop-up headlights and a spine that ran down the roof and split the rear window…0