What makes an ordinary car become legendary?
09-18-11, 10:08 PM
#1
Lexus Test Driver
Thread Starter
What makes an ordinary car become legendary?
I've watched this for decades. A car comes out, sells well for several years, blends into the scenery, serves it's purpose, and then something unique happens 6-7 years later down the road. Once the popular model is redesigned (or dropped), suddenly it gains a new status. Those who have an original start documenting the car closely, fixing it up, possibly showing it off, and in turn this encourages others to do the same thing. Often, this entails a parent handing down a car to a son, who treats it like the biggest and best gift in the world (which it is). This helps give a car some "coolness," which helps build the car's status. Soon enough, over the distance of many regions and cultures, groups form, the car becomes a collector's thing, and you have a classic or a legend.
But what exact recipe makes this happen for a particular model? I'd take a few cars that have gone through this and analyze it. A great example would be the first Lexus GS. A unique design that did not look like anything else at the time. Exclusivity, reliability, clean, conservative lines, and a dash of style I believe is what raised this car up. I believe the first generation IS and LS walked the same path. I'd also throw in the 1991 Acura Legend. To a lesser and cheaper extent, the 1991 Honda Civic and Accord sedans could also be in this group. Nearly all these cars have a low hood, clean side windows, a true formal trunk (no droopy butts), and stellar reliability. This seems to be the common pattern for the 4-door models. I also believe the current IS will fall into this catagory as a few more years slip by.
While this topic has surfaced before, I'd be curious to learn and read up on what others feel makes a car reach legendary status.
But what exact recipe makes this happen for a particular model? I'd take a few cars that have gone through this and analyze it. A great example would be the first Lexus GS. A unique design that did not look like anything else at the time. Exclusivity, reliability, clean, conservative lines, and a dash of style I believe is what raised this car up. I believe the first generation IS and LS walked the same path. I'd also throw in the 1991 Acura Legend. To a lesser and cheaper extent, the 1991 Honda Civic and Accord sedans could also be in this group. Nearly all these cars have a low hood, clean side windows, a true formal trunk (no droopy butts), and stellar reliability. This seems to be the common pattern for the 4-door models. I also believe the current IS will fall into this catagory as a few more years slip by.
While this topic has surfaced before, I'd be curious to learn and read up on what others feel makes a car reach legendary status.
09-18-11, 11:23 PM
#2
I think the 2GS is more legendary than the 1GS because it was truly a worthy rival to the E and the 5 at the time.
I think a car that leaves its mark in history as being important to SOMETHING can become legendary. Like the 2nd Gen Prius is the first widly-accepted hybrid vehicle, and I think it could be legendary in that way. And of course the MKIV Supra, a car made in 1992 that, after 20 years, can still be made the fastest thing on the road.
I think a car that leaves its mark in history as being important to SOMETHING can become legendary. Like the 2nd Gen Prius is the first widly-accepted hybrid vehicle, and I think it could be legendary in that way. And of course the MKIV Supra, a car made in 1992 that, after 20 years, can still be made the fastest thing on the road.
09-19-11, 12:04 AM
#4
Lexus Test Driver
Thread Starter
Do you think the coupes should be seperated from the sedans? Or does it work the same way for both body styles? I'm thinking coupes seem to be designed from the start to have more of the collectable image built in. Where as many of these sedans accidently develop it over time. (?)
09-19-11, 09:26 AM
#5
Lexus Fanatic
The Mazda Miata has to be one of the most "legendary" cars of my lifetime (though it is too small and cramped for me, especially the earlier models). But, like it or not, the fact is......it took most, if not all, of the best attributes of the classic inexpensive British sports cars of the 50s and 60s (missing only the nice wood-paneled dashes) and actually delivered some reliability.
09-19-11, 09:39 AM
#6
Out of Warranty
"Legendary" can be a loaded word. Certainly there have been important cars on the automotive scene in the past twenty years, but I'm not sure how many of them will become truly "Legendary".
A "legend" is seldom based on truth, but on perception. There are several classes of cars that loom large in automotive history, including the classics, the cults, and the legends. Few were attainable by the average buyer, some were far above the realistic aspirations of the masses, and a handful were revered as legendary despite their being totally impractical anywhere but at a car show or a track. For the most part, time creates legends because only the perspective of years can separate the truly historic from the merely “popular”. Breakthrough engineering counts for a lot in legendary status, although it’s a little unfair to compare a postwar Porsche to a present-day Civic or even a four-door Camry that will handily stomp it into the tarmac at your local sports-car club course. There is no substitute for horsepower.
Legends – To be truly legendary IMHO, a car has to transcend time, it has to be the stuff of magazine covers rather more than actual production units. This is the exalted realm of the Ferrari Tesstarossa, California Roadster, and GTO of the late fifties and early sixties, cars that so redefined the term “sports car” as to forever place them in a separate category. In the days when Porsche was still building upscale Volkswagens, Alfa and Mercedes were trying to recreate their prewar glory on the tracks of Europe, and Jaguar and Lotus were producing on-track miracles out of postwar spare parts, America had been building the same cars for nearly 30 years . . . until 1957 when everything changed. If you look at the Ford, Chevy or Plymouth of 1956, there seems to have been a leap of about 20 years in styling and innovation between these most popular American cars and those of 1957. Maybe it was incorporation of alien technology gleaned from Roswell, but Plymouth’s tag line in their 1956 rollout ads “Suddenly it’s 1960!”, was clearly an understatement.
Cults – During the fifties, the cult of the British roadster captured hearts and minds this side of the pond. MG, Triumph, and Austin-Healey landed on our shores, not as conquerors, but as game-changers. Nevermind that they were crude, poorly constructed, and even worse engineered little wheezers for the American road environment, they captured the attention of the motoring public over here and put the Big Three on notice that there was a market for something other than the family sedan or the business coupe . . . cars would be fun. Eventually America responded with first the Corvette and the Thunderbird, that in their initial forms were anything but performance cars. In time Corvette became the more sporting ride, while Thunderbird, after 1958 drifted off into gentlemanly luxury.
Later came the “compact” cars, an answer to the VW Beetle, the Renault Dauphin, Volvo 544, and the Fiat sedans that arrived here in 1958 - our first glimpse of an "small" car that could deliver well over 25 mpg. This was a contest for bragging rights only, because with gas under 30¢/gal. 15 mpg was not an excessive hole in your wallet. They may not have all been successful (the Volvo was my personal favorite), but they got Detroit's attention by 1960.
First came the Ford Falcon, Plymouth Valiant and the Chevrolet Corvair. The Falcon was a ¾-scale cheapo Galaxie, ditto the far more exotic looking Valiant, but the Corvair was a distinctive clean-sheet-of-paper engineering tour de force. In only a few years the Corvair would succumb to overreaching its development, but the lowly Falcon would give birth to the 1964 Mustang, the first legendary car to be produced on these shores since the prewar Deusenbergs and Packards. Plymouth cobbled together the Barracuda out of its parts bins to produce a competitor to the Mustang, but its rather odd styling overshadowed the goodies within and it never enjoyed the cult status of either the Corvair or Mustang.
The Pony Cars, the Mustang and Chevrolet’s late answer, the Camaro, were in a horsepower race. Before coming up with the Camaro-sister Firebird, Pontiac raided the parts bins to produce their own Frankencar, the GTO, that turned out to be a real gem. Buick and Oldsmobile followed that success with clones that proved to be more or less successful, but all of what would become known as the “muscle” cars were really good for one thing: straight line acceleration. Chevy got into the act with the 396 Chevelle that became a classic in its own right following the same formula of the biggest engine in the inventory stuffed into a mid-size coupe. They may have been single-purpose cars, but after a little factory hot-rodding they carried out that purpose exceedingly well. Now the pony cars were being muscled aside by the “big iron”.
At the peak of the era, even large coupes could be purchased in near-NASCAR trim. Notably, the Plymouth Roadrunner, with its hulking 426 cid Hemi took the supercar crown from the option list checkoff kings, the Galaxie 500 and the 409 Chevy that only the grease-stained cognoscenti knew were available down at their local Ford and Chevy dealers. Plymouth put together what was basically a taxicab – rubber floormats, really cheap bench seats, no radio (you’d never hear it anyway off idle), with a clutch out of a dump truck and a heavy-duty four-speed from a similar source, and turned it into a marketing phenomenon. Here was a race car you could buy direct from the showroom floor – without spec’ing it out on an option’s list out of police interceptor parts and “special purpose” (racing) components.
By the ‘70’s the muscle cars had gotten porky trying to keep up in the horsepower race. No longer the pony car, the Mustang was stretched, widened, and weighted to take the big Ford 427. The 289, even in 271-Cobra trim, wasn’t enough to keep it in contention, just don't try to put the helm down at speed with that big 390 block up front and you wouldn't like the result. If the front end could get a bite at all, the whole car was going to roll. By dint of either good or poor engineering, it didn't and it didn't . . . proceeding onward on its original course, if not its original heading, with Sir Isaac at the wheel. If the pony cars and muscle cars had done anything in their years of popularity, they proved that Americans wanted "useful" power - that applied from one stoplight to the next. Turning corners or stopping was for losers. Sexual dominance was measured a quarter-mile at a time.
It all ended by 1974 and the gas lines pretty well put an end to performance for the next ten years. Since then there have been a few bright spots from domestic manufacturers, the re-emergence of the Mustang in the guise of the 5.0 found hidden performance in the old 289/305 block and a host of aftermarket developers allowed buyers to recreate a mini muscle car, if only in their own garages.
In the years since there have been a few candidates for legendary status, all from overseas. Ferrari, Lamborghini, Aston-Marton, and a variety of marques that produce only a handful of überexotic cars per year tend to be the subjects of our automotive dreams. The Supra, for sure, and the NSX (both presently discontinued) and even the CRX from Honda have become somewhat more affordable contenders for the title downmarket near the reality where most of us live. Also from the Far East, we have to consider Mitsubishi as fielding some extraordinary pure performance automobiles, particularly the thinly disguised rally cars based on the EVO that can be had in a variety of trim and price packages. Mazda had fielded some amazing cars, from the RX-7 to the Miata. One a clean-sheet design with a wobble-motor, the other a modern interpretation of a British roadster. All of these will be among my candidates for legendary status.
Lexus has yet to field a legend, except possibly with the LS that successfully matched, then exceeded the Mercedes S-class. Add to that the RX, that has defined the CUV for the entire market. Look around on the freeway or in a shopping center parking-lot, Everything from the Chevy Traverse to the Porsche Cayenne is a Lexus RX in steel. What about a Lexus performance legend? Concentrating on luxury, Lexus has not produced anything legendary – at least out of the factory IMHO. I have to add a very large "YET" to that statement, because with the LFA and maybe the ISF, are on the cusp of rivaling the legendary European marques over at BMW and Mercedes, both in performance and cost . . . but let's give them a few years in production before we declare them legends.
A "legend" is seldom based on truth, but on perception. There are several classes of cars that loom large in automotive history, including the classics, the cults, and the legends. Few were attainable by the average buyer, some were far above the realistic aspirations of the masses, and a handful were revered as legendary despite their being totally impractical anywhere but at a car show or a track. For the most part, time creates legends because only the perspective of years can separate the truly historic from the merely “popular”. Breakthrough engineering counts for a lot in legendary status, although it’s a little unfair to compare a postwar Porsche to a present-day Civic or even a four-door Camry that will handily stomp it into the tarmac at your local sports-car club course. There is no substitute for horsepower.
Legends – To be truly legendary IMHO, a car has to transcend time, it has to be the stuff of magazine covers rather more than actual production units. This is the exalted realm of the Ferrari Tesstarossa, California Roadster, and GTO of the late fifties and early sixties, cars that so redefined the term “sports car” as to forever place them in a separate category. In the days when Porsche was still building upscale Volkswagens, Alfa and Mercedes were trying to recreate their prewar glory on the tracks of Europe, and Jaguar and Lotus were producing on-track miracles out of postwar spare parts, America had been building the same cars for nearly 30 years . . . until 1957 when everything changed. If you look at the Ford, Chevy or Plymouth of 1956, there seems to have been a leap of about 20 years in styling and innovation between these most popular American cars and those of 1957. Maybe it was incorporation of alien technology gleaned from Roswell, but Plymouth’s tag line in their 1956 rollout ads “Suddenly it’s 1960!”, was clearly an understatement.
Cults – During the fifties, the cult of the British roadster captured hearts and minds this side of the pond. MG, Triumph, and Austin-Healey landed on our shores, not as conquerors, but as game-changers. Nevermind that they were crude, poorly constructed, and even worse engineered little wheezers for the American road environment, they captured the attention of the motoring public over here and put the Big Three on notice that there was a market for something other than the family sedan or the business coupe . . . cars would be fun. Eventually America responded with first the Corvette and the Thunderbird, that in their initial forms were anything but performance cars. In time Corvette became the more sporting ride, while Thunderbird, after 1958 drifted off into gentlemanly luxury.
Later came the “compact” cars, an answer to the VW Beetle, the Renault Dauphin, Volvo 544, and the Fiat sedans that arrived here in 1958 - our first glimpse of an "small" car that could deliver well over 25 mpg. This was a contest for bragging rights only, because with gas under 30¢/gal. 15 mpg was not an excessive hole in your wallet. They may not have all been successful (the Volvo was my personal favorite), but they got Detroit's attention by 1960.
First came the Ford Falcon, Plymouth Valiant and the Chevrolet Corvair. The Falcon was a ¾-scale cheapo Galaxie, ditto the far more exotic looking Valiant, but the Corvair was a distinctive clean-sheet-of-paper engineering tour de force. In only a few years the Corvair would succumb to overreaching its development, but the lowly Falcon would give birth to the 1964 Mustang, the first legendary car to be produced on these shores since the prewar Deusenbergs and Packards. Plymouth cobbled together the Barracuda out of its parts bins to produce a competitor to the Mustang, but its rather odd styling overshadowed the goodies within and it never enjoyed the cult status of either the Corvair or Mustang.
The Pony Cars, the Mustang and Chevrolet’s late answer, the Camaro, were in a horsepower race. Before coming up with the Camaro-sister Firebird, Pontiac raided the parts bins to produce their own Frankencar, the GTO, that turned out to be a real gem. Buick and Oldsmobile followed that success with clones that proved to be more or less successful, but all of what would become known as the “muscle” cars were really good for one thing: straight line acceleration. Chevy got into the act with the 396 Chevelle that became a classic in its own right following the same formula of the biggest engine in the inventory stuffed into a mid-size coupe. They may have been single-purpose cars, but after a little factory hot-rodding they carried out that purpose exceedingly well. Now the pony cars were being muscled aside by the “big iron”.
At the peak of the era, even large coupes could be purchased in near-NASCAR trim. Notably, the Plymouth Roadrunner, with its hulking 426 cid Hemi took the supercar crown from the option list checkoff kings, the Galaxie 500 and the 409 Chevy that only the grease-stained cognoscenti knew were available down at their local Ford and Chevy dealers. Plymouth put together what was basically a taxicab – rubber floormats, really cheap bench seats, no radio (you’d never hear it anyway off idle), with a clutch out of a dump truck and a heavy-duty four-speed from a similar source, and turned it into a marketing phenomenon. Here was a race car you could buy direct from the showroom floor – without spec’ing it out on an option’s list out of police interceptor parts and “special purpose” (racing) components.
By the ‘70’s the muscle cars had gotten porky trying to keep up in the horsepower race. No longer the pony car, the Mustang was stretched, widened, and weighted to take the big Ford 427. The 289, even in 271-Cobra trim, wasn’t enough to keep it in contention, just don't try to put the helm down at speed with that big 390 block up front and you wouldn't like the result. If the front end could get a bite at all, the whole car was going to roll. By dint of either good or poor engineering, it didn't and it didn't . . . proceeding onward on its original course, if not its original heading, with Sir Isaac at the wheel. If the pony cars and muscle cars had done anything in their years of popularity, they proved that Americans wanted "useful" power - that applied from one stoplight to the next. Turning corners or stopping was for losers. Sexual dominance was measured a quarter-mile at a time.
It all ended by 1974 and the gas lines pretty well put an end to performance for the next ten years. Since then there have been a few bright spots from domestic manufacturers, the re-emergence of the Mustang in the guise of the 5.0 found hidden performance in the old 289/305 block and a host of aftermarket developers allowed buyers to recreate a mini muscle car, if only in their own garages.
In the years since there have been a few candidates for legendary status, all from overseas. Ferrari, Lamborghini, Aston-Marton, and a variety of marques that produce only a handful of überexotic cars per year tend to be the subjects of our automotive dreams. The Supra, for sure, and the NSX (both presently discontinued) and even the CRX from Honda have become somewhat more affordable contenders for the title downmarket near the reality where most of us live. Also from the Far East, we have to consider Mitsubishi as fielding some extraordinary pure performance automobiles, particularly the thinly disguised rally cars based on the EVO that can be had in a variety of trim and price packages. Mazda had fielded some amazing cars, from the RX-7 to the Miata. One a clean-sheet design with a wobble-motor, the other a modern interpretation of a British roadster. All of these will be among my candidates for legendary status.
Lexus has yet to field a legend, except possibly with the LS that successfully matched, then exceeded the Mercedes S-class. Add to that the RX, that has defined the CUV for the entire market. Look around on the freeway or in a shopping center parking-lot, Everything from the Chevy Traverse to the Porsche Cayenne is a Lexus RX in steel. What about a Lexus performance legend? Concentrating on luxury, Lexus has not produced anything legendary – at least out of the factory IMHO. I have to add a very large "YET" to that statement, because with the LFA and maybe the ISF, are on the cusp of rivaling the legendary European marques over at BMW and Mercedes, both in performance and cost . . . but let's give them a few years in production before we declare them legends.
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09-19-11, 10:15 AM
#9
Lexus Fanatic
Originally Posted by Lil4X
– During the fifties, the cult of the British roadster captured hearts and minds this side of the pond. MG, Triumph, and Austin-Healey landed on our shores, not as conquerors, but as game-changers. Nevermind that they were crude, poorly constructed, and even worse engineered little wheezers for the American road environment, they captured the attention of the motoring public over here and put the Big Three on notice that there was a market for something other than the family sedan or the business coupe . . . cars would be fun. Eventually America responded with first the Corvette and the Thunderbird, that in their initial forms were anything but performance cars. In time Corvette became the more sporting ride, while Thunderbird, after 1958 drifted off into gentlemanly luxury.
At the peak of the era, even large coupes could be purchased in near-NASCAR trim. Notably, the Plymouth Roadrunner, with its hulking 426 cid Hemi took the supercar crown from the option list checkoff kings,
You had to cough up a lot of extra cash, though, to get the Hemi version (the four-barrel 383 was standard, and, later, the 340 four-barrel). And the double-four-barrel 425 HP version (like with other dual-quad Hemi Chrysler products) was not sold right out of the showroom unless the buyer showed some evidence of taking a driving-course in high-performance work...Chrysler was concerned about rising insurance-rates and the potential of inexperienced drivers with a machine like that.It's a shame that Plymouth folded some years ago......but, like with the PT Cruiser and Prowler, I still hope to see a retro-Road-Runner under the Chrysler name. And, of course, the new Charger R/T, mechanically, comes close....Chrysler even recently did some in Plum-Crazy purple like the 1970-71 models.
No longer the pony car, the Mustang was stretched, widened, and weighted to take the big Ford 427. The 289, even in 271-Cobra trim, wasn’t enough to keep it in contention, just don't try to put the helm down at speed with that big 390 block up front and you wouldn't like the result. If the front end could get a bite at all, the whole car was going to roll. By dint of either good or poor engineering, it didn't and it didn't . . . proceeding onward on its original course, if not its original heading, with Sir Isaac at the wheel. If the pony cars and muscle cars had done anything in their years of popularity, they proved that Americans wanted "useful" power - that applied from one stoplight to the next. Turning corners or stopping was for losers. Sexual dominance was measured a quarter-mile at a time.
, but I don't think the Mustang ever got the 427 like the Galaxie and some larger larger Fords. Mustangs (including the Shelby Mustang GT500KR) got, as the top factory-engine, either the 428, 428 CL (Cobra Jet), or the 429 in the Boss Mustang....the 429 was also used in the sister Mercury Cougar Eliminator, and the 428 CJ in Torinos and Mercury-Cyclones. The Shelby KR, if my memory is right, got a 1Gen 428, before the 428CJ came out.
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