There are great cars, and then there are those that are truly great. Cars that have not only withstood the test of time but steadfastly defied it and have remained desirable and valuable for decades, to become the most treasured automotive object d'art of our time. Many of the automobiles on this website are here because they are exemplary examples of the motorcar and require no further credentials. Others have been selected because they were benchmarks in the history of the automobile.
It's safe to say that many rare American and European motorcars have become virtually irreplaceable, And, that the longer they survive the more collectable and valuable they will become. While rarity and wear and tear may be the basis for determining what is and is not collectable, the true deciding factor is best summed up by the words "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
Beauty in an automobile is something that is difficult to define. What one person finds to be exceptional, another might consider as distasteful and maybe even vulgar. Choosing what might be considered to be a great car is purely a subjective exercise and the cars shown on this website fall into this category, cars that ExoticCarGuys consider as beautiful.
Within the collector car world there are certain marques that have always stood out, cars that have always seemed larger than life. There is a clear separation between the great versus the almost great. The cars that are the most sought after today are likely the same makes that were sought out in the past and will always be considered the greatest cars ever built. They were built in very limited quantities, usually less than 250, sometimes as few as a half-dozen, and occasionally only a one-off.
Collectors who own a variety of cars, from antiques and classics to postwar big steel, muscle cars and early Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Porsches usually have a bias toward models that represented the best cars of their time. Every automobile selected was chosen for its exceptional styling, its advanced engineering, or its influence on the automotive world.
The truth is that there are more great cars behind us than there are ahead. Many of the cars chosen were built before 1950, and one need only view the first half of the twentieth century to realize that the greatest advances in engineering and design occurred between the turn of the century and the beginning of World War II.
This is not to say that there haven't been some wonderful automobiles built in the past 30 years. In fact, some remarkable cars have been introduced in just the last few years, such as the Ferrari 550 Maranello, the Jaguar XK-81 and the Dodge Viper GTS, but they have yet to prove themselves in the greatest test of all, the test of time.
While you're scrolling through the pages of this website think about which automobiles you'd like to own. And, without further adeu, we present our list of great cars.
hollywood@exoticcarguys.com
