The 60 most beautiful cars ever made

We now have more than 120 years’ worth of cars to enjoy now – some memorably ugly ones too – and that, very obviously, makes it ever harder for new models to break into this list which we produce every few years.

We note the year the car was first introduced, and wherever possible use our own exclusive photography, so prepare to feast your eyes: 

It looks a little long of body these days – perhaps it always did – but the XJ220 remains a swoopily arresting machine, besides carrying the unmistakable contours of a Jaguar.

Lamborghinis are about drama of shape and motion, and the Sian delivers both by the container-load. As it should given its seven-digit price. Cuts, curves, slots, hexagons, blades, grilles and fins litter this design, yet it coheres with surprising elegance.

The older it gets, the more of a triumph this total rework of the 1959 original seems. It’s unmistakably redolent of its inspiration, yet entirely modern and like its forebear, perfectly proportioned.

Still one of the most handsome two-seater sports cars ever, and purest in its early, folding windscreen form that turns it into a speedster. Crude mechanicals are part of the charm.

As glamorous as any pre-war Alfa Romeo, Hispano-Suiza or Mercedes, Auburn’s straight eight series reached its lofty design zenith for the 1935 model year. Despite this achievement, Auburn ceased manufacture in 1937.

A particularly accomplished reimagining of the 1969-74 original, to the point of arguably being the better-looking car. The rightness of the design has allowed it a 13 year life, and counting.

The 2001 V12 Murcielago modernized Lamborghini’s look, but it was the Gallardo that realized the new form language to most satisfyingly handsome effect. That its crisp lines differentiated it from Ferraris was another bonus.

BMW’s boldest car yet, exploiting the package of its plug-in hybrid drivetrain, introducing fresh sculptural shapes, unusual two-tone detailing and the drama of dihedral doors.

There are several front-engine Ferraris of the 1960s in this list, and it’s Ferraris of this era that the Roma evokes with its long bonnet and fastback-tail. But it also presents spare, clean sculpted, big-wheeled modernity. It’s Ferrari’s prettiest car.

It’s big, huge even, and thus has presence, but size isn’t the Toronado’s only arresting feature. Exquisite proportions, pillarless elegance and spare detailing are as much a triumph as its front-drive powerpack.

The perfectly realised pre-war sports car. What made it right then – the long bonnet, short tail masses, the stance, the face created grille and lights – are just as relevant today.

The “if it looks right, it is right” cliché surely applies to the first Elan, whose form and detail were perfect enough to heavily inspire Mazda’s MX-5.

The beauty of functional form is clear to see in the original Range Rover. View the prototypes before and after the design process, and you’ll see that the finishing touches were applied with ground-breaking flair.

It’s almost toy-like, its easily seen steering wheel begging you to drive it. The Speedster’s soap-smooth contours are uniquely distinctive, besides evolving into another beautiful car: the 911.

A mild evolution of the DB4, the fared in headlights the main change. Glamorous even before a certain spy was handed the keys, the Bond franchise sealing its fame.

Clean-sculpted to the point of utilitarianism, the original TT combined modernity with an irresistible flavour of avant garde 1930s design, a theme abandoned in subsequent generations.

Is the car still the moment of peak elegance for a post-war Mercedes? Its just-so body appears simple of line and lightly decorated with that minimalist grille, those bowl capped headlights and the perfect hardtop.

Launching this 2.0 V8, mid-engine race-based beauty a year after the Miura shouldn’t fail, but the Stradale cost over 25percent more than the Lambo, and just 18 were made.

There’s nothing quite like the sheer-flanked, chrome-capped elegance of the ’61 Continental. It was a formal car – formal enough for fateful duty under President John F. Kennedy – yet there’s something rakish in its length and lack of height.

A quintessential ‘60s muscle car, but one of finesse, from the clean-flanked Coke bottle waist to the sleek, fat-pillared fastback and hidden headlamps, the Richard Sia-designed Charger is a handsome legend.

A shapely meld of shapes modern and historic, the 8C demonstrated that buyers are happy to pay big money for an Alfa it’s truly beautiful, and never mind the impure Maserati motor.

The smooth-formed, subtly voluptuous contours of a Jaguar as applied to a mid-engine V12 ‘60s supercar, the XJ13 is one of that decade’s great what-might-have-beens.

An exquisite blend of subtle, shapely lines and hints of potency from the air scooped bonnet, the front wing air extractors and the faired headlights.

For noisily eruptive spectacle the Aventador is hard to top. Yet there’s real beauty in the shape and proportions of its dipping glasshouse, short bonnet, arcing roof and long tail, the visual draw of it all heightened by those blade-sharp bone lines. PICTURE: 2015 Aventador SV

Few cars exude other-worldly glamour as completely as the SM. Part of its promise lies in that low-rider stance when dormant, but much too in its glass nose, its tapering body and the lush interior.

The ground clearance of a dachshund, a roofline not much higher and a pram-handle spoiler made the F40’s road-racer mission unmistakable. Yet there’s alluring grace in its lines.

GM design chief Bill Mitchell’s ’59 Stingray concept car turned showroom eye magnet. Developed in secret because GM had banned racing, it saved the ‘Vette from early extinction.

An almost shockingly elegant contrast to all those fins slicing up American highways, the Riviera was part-inspired by a Rolls-Royce GM design chief Bill Mitchell saw parked outside the Claridges hotel in London.

Spare of line, curvily aerodynamic with a hint of raw power from its exposed exhaust, the C-Type was built to race and looked it.

Italy’s Touring coachworks designed the DB4’s body, a compelling blend of rakish grace, aristocratic bearing and velvet power. It soon evolved, but the series 1 DB4 was the purest and lightest.

It looks light on its feet and fast, it’s pretty and, suggests the noble three-piece grille, has breeding. This small car embodied the values of Alfa’s mighty pre-war machines, and in a Bertone body just as stylish.

The dramatic arc of its lateral air intakes are the visual signature of a hugely fast car that gobbles air like a jet. The Chiron’s softly contoured curves belie its potency and yield a shape of unexpected elegance.

A perfectly formed 1920s race car, from horseshoe radiator to tapered tail, its fuselage of body slung between wheels of sculptural beauty. Exquisite.

A curving, visor-like slice of glass, a tapering wedge of body and a pair of big, glowering taillights made a beautiful beast of the Stratos on both rally stage and road.

Few cars demonstrate the appeal of clean, addenda-free bodywork as the original Countach, which did without the wings, arch and sill excresences of later models. The LP400 left Marcello Gandini’s striking sculpture pure and unadorned.

Once one of the fastest production cars on earth, the V12 Daytona looked the part with its chisel nose and abruptly cut tail. Between these extremities lay a coupe of refined grace.

BMW has developed so many models since this E9 coupe, but few have achieved such arresting elegance. Recent BMWs have hinted at the reverse rake nose, but the thin-pillared glasshouse isn’t possible today.

The odd detail apart the F1 still looks contemporary now, the subtle packaging of its aerodynamic features allowing it a calm fluency of lines missing from most modern supercars.

Originally a showcase for the new XK engine, Jaguar was inundated with enquiries for a car that became a fine symbol of post-war recovery and a favourite of Hollywood royalty.

Front-wheel drive packaging allowed a floor low enough to eliminate running boards, the headlamps were hidden pop-ups and the Cord’s elegantly boxy prow produced a beautiful car of tomorrow. Unreliability killed it, but the shape was repeatedly revived by others.

Albrecht von Goertz’s 1956 507 was as handsome as any contemporary Ferrari, but a costly build pushed its price too close to these exotics, killing the car after only 252 were built, and bankrupting BMW.

The Testa Rossas was a repeat Le Mans winner that continuously evolved over the five years and 33 cars produced in the quest for a racing edge. All are beautiful, aerodynamics only lightly touching their shapes.

The first of two 911s here, the earliest quite different from the latest. And yet, of course, they’re recognisably the same car. It’s got too big but it’s as sexy as ever, more so as a Targa, that brushed aluminium band maintaining the drama of its pert rump.

Aston Martin often scores the beauty bullseye, the DB9 a magnificent follow-up to the 2001 Vanquish. That it still looks sensational 17 years after it saw daylight confirms the design’s excellence.

An elegant frenzy of sensuous curves and finely wrought chrome, the Dino’s shapes are more suggestive of balletic agility than sledgehammer power. Just right, given its V6.

It might be low in height at 40inches, but it’s high in stature with its multiple Le Mans wins and like the Lamborghini Miura, this Ford shaped the direction of supercar development.

Much car design of the 1950s was American influenced. Not the DS, which was shaped by an Italian sculptor and the wind. It levitated as well, to the accompaniment of space age clicks and whirrs.

The race version of Ferrari’s 250 is barely any less beautiful, it lower, longer nose, extra air intakes and upkicked Kamm tail mixing aggressive intent with beauty.

Extravagant, fantastical, sculptural and suggestive of exotic lives lived by the few, the Atlantic borders on the mythic. And the intrigue continues with the clamshell doors and the vertical fin continuing the split screen’s vee.

Refined lines and spare decoration disguise this car’s potency in spite of the long bonnet and softly muscled wings. It has manners to match, too.

It isn’t only the doors. The slender blisters crowning each wheelarch, the fine metalwork of the grille, the air extractors in the front wings and above all, the low, long-bonnet proportions make an arresting beauty of this car.

The car that revived Aston (again) its look defining design themes that have endured for two decades. The Vanquish has aged well. It’s still hugely handsome now.

These were almost unsalable new, skewered by astronomical prices despite their lightweight beauty. Prices eventually hit the millions for the 19 originally made, prompting the 1990s build of four more utilizing unused chassis numbers.

Brawn on wheels, the Cobra appears to be bursting with power and indeed, usually is. It’s because the AC Ace from which it swelled was so well-proportioned that the Cobra works.

An almost preposterously long bonnet, voluptuous wheel fairings, a rakishly compact cockpit of a cabin – this was rapid transit, 1930s style. Rapid, indulgent transit from eight cylinders.

It gives pleasure from every angle you inspect, its delicacy of line ever more appealing in this age of perpetually enlarging cars. And that includes the 911.

A mere variation on the handsome 308 GTB you may think, but no, this was a new car, and a better proportioned version of the fabulous sculptural theme begun with 1969 Dino 206.

At first sight its lines seem simple, but the more you look, the more complex it becomes, from the fuselage front wings to the haunched rear, from slashed air extractors to delicate front quarter bumpers. Exquisite.

Not quite the first mid-engine road car, but the Miura fired the gun on a half-century’s supercar development. Few of this breed has since matched its voluptuous beauty, though unlike the Miura most remain glued to the ground at speed.

It’s six decades since this car’s beauty robbed us of our breath, and still the E-Type is widely considered to be the most beautiful car ever. That it appeared roughly half-way through the evolution of the car to date perhaps begs questions of car design since.

Jaguar’s Malcolm Sayer takes much credit for the roadster’s shape, but it was metal craftsman Bob Blake, an American from North Dakota, who fabricated the coupe.