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Depending on your definition of the word ‘country’, there are around 200 of them on the planet today.
Most do not have car manufacturers within their borders, and those that do are often outposts for manufacturers based elsewhere. This still leaves a few important car-producing nations, each of which has put out at least one model (and often many more) of great significance. Nominating just one per country has not been easy, but while you may question our methodology you can’t argue with our commitment:
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Australia: Holden Monaro
The third-generation coupe version of the Holden Commodore probably isn’t regarded as Australia’s most significant car by Australians, but we feel it deserves a place here because of its international reach, which far exceeded that of other Holdens.
The car was sold in the UK as the Vauxhall Monaro and in the US as the Pontiac GTO (pictured). In December 2004 alone, more GTOs were sold in the States than Monaros found homes in Australia across the whole year. The last GTO was built several weeks after the last Holden-badged car in 2006.
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China: Qoros 3
Chinese manufacturers developed a reputation in the west for producing cars which were unsafe, or used designs stolen from foreign rivals, or in some cases both. The Qoros 3 Sedan countered these claims very effectively. For one thing, it was a good-looking car without being a copy of anything else. More importantly, it was the first Chinese model ever to be given a five-star rating by the Euro NCAP safety organisation.
Emphasising the point still further, Euro NCAP declared that the Qoros was safest of all the cars it tested in the whole of 2013.
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Czech Republic: Skoda Favorit
Not a great car in itself, the Favorit is significant because it was the car which pointed Skoda towards recovery after decades of post-War financial hardship. Completely different from the rear-engined models it replaced, it was a front-wheel drive hatchback with a body styled by Italy’s Bertone.
Volkswagen Group took a shareholding in Skoda for the first time in 1991, halfway through the Favorit’s life cycle. The Felicia which replaced it, and was the first Skoda developed with VW backing, was essentially a reworked Favorit with prettier looks and better equipment. But it was the start of something big; today some Skodas are considered better and often better value than the VW cars they’re based on.
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France: Citroën 2CV
The 2CV was regarded as primitive and strange-looking from day one, but it was very popular among its original target market of drivers who couldn’t afford anything else, and later among people who favoured the eccentric.
Citroën designed it before the Second World War and – having successfully hid it from German occupiers - put it on sale in 1948, finally abandoning production in 1990. Against strong opposition from, for example, the Renault 4 (which some at Citroën regarded as an invasion of its territory), the 2CV remains one of the best-loved cars ever produced by a French manufacturer, and one of the longest-lived.
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Germany: Volkswagen Beetle
Conceived by Adolf Hitler and saved from post-War oblivion by the British Army, the original Volkswagen (nicknamed, but never officially called, the Beetle) was for a while a mainstay of the motor industry in Germany, an icon of the hippy movement in the US and a cheap, reliable and popular car almost everywhere else.
Production exceeded that of the Ford Model T around 1972 and would eventually reach over 20 million. Without this car, we would not now have the VW empire, whose other brands include Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche and Skoda.
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Italy: Fiat 500
The Nuova (‘new’) 500 replaced a previous model nicknamed Topolino in 1957. Tiny, slow and about as basic as a car could be, it was just what low-income Italians wanted. Nearly four million were sold in 18 years, not including derivatives built under licence by Neckar, Steyr-Puch and others.
Italy has produced many supercars, but has any of them inspired as much love as the Nuova 500? Its widely admired styling was surely at least part of the reason for its continued success, and was repeated very effectively in the much larger and mechanically unrelated 500 launched by Fiat in 2007.
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Japan: Toyota Corolla
Understandably, Toyota likes to point out that Corolla is the world’s most popular car name, with production heading towards 50 million. It’s also true that you could pick one Corolla from every decade since the 1960s and find almost no connection between any two of them other than the badges.
That said, Toyota is extremely good at this type of car, now more than ever. According to reliable sources, the Corolla was the most popular model on the planet in 2019, and for the first half of 2020. As a phenomenon, if not always as a car, the Corolla is Japan’s great automotive success story.
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Netherlands: DAF 600
The Dutch motor industry has been based almost entirely on manufacturing cars designed in other countries. However, it also produced DAF, a very successful truck builder which from 1958 until the mid 1970s built cars with one extraordinary feature.
All of them, from the original 600 (pictured) to the 66 which was in production when Volvo took over, featured an early form of the then almost unheard-of continuously variable transmission (CVT). No other manufacturer has committed to CVTs to quite the same extent, but more sophisticated versions have become popular alternatives to conventional automatics.
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Romania: Dacia Sandero
When it started building Renault 8s under licence in 1968, there was no sign that Dacia would ever become well-known far outside its native Romania. Now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Renault, it has become a major player, demonstrating almost single-handedly that there is still a place for cheap, simple cars in the modern world.
Despite the success of the Duster SUV, the Sandero hatchback is currently Dacia’s most popular model. According to industry analyst JATO Dynamics, it was the seventh best-selling car in Europe in 2019, and only 235 units short (out of over 224,000) of being the fifth.
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Russia: VAZ-2101
To non-Russians, this car is better known as the Lada 1200, which led to a whole series of models culminating in the Lada Riva. All were based on the 1966 Fiat 124 (though heavily modified to suit the Russian market) and were produced until 2012 at home, and for a few years after that in Egypt.
Lada was treated as an interesting oddity when it appeared in the West in the early 1970s, but became a joke brand as it failed to keep up with the rest of the industry. This was ignored completely by the many people who wanted a cheap car and didn’t care what anyone else thought.
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South Korea: Hyundai Pony
Nobody could seriously claim that the Pony was South Korea’s best car. Despite reliable mechanicals by Mitsubishi and a shape devised by Italdesign Giugiaro, it wasn’t exactly a world leader when it first appeared in 1975.
It was, however, the first South Korean model sold in export markets, initially South America, later Europe and eventually Canada. This brought Hyundai international attention, starting a process which has led to it becoming one of the world’s top manufacturers alongside its Kia associate, and South Korea becoming a leading player in the motor industry.
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Spain: Seat 600
Essentially a Fiat 600 manufactured in Barcelona, the Seat 600 was about as Spanish as a plate of spaghetti. Yet in a sense it was perhaps the most important car that ever has or ever will be built in Spain.
It was cheap enough for most Spaniards to buy, and popular enough (at one point there was a two-year waiting list) to sustain 10,000 newly-created jobs at the factory. It is regarded as being partly responsible for a boom called the Spanish miracle, which began in the late 1950s and brought Spain out of economic isolation and poverty.
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Sweden: Saab 92
Saab had to learn about making cars while it was developing its first one, but as an experienced aerospace company it already knew a lot about aerodynamics and structural stiffness. Both were evident in the Saab 92, which was launched in December 1949, a long time before such matters were considered important throughout the motor industry.
Saab was known as an innovator from its formation to its demise, but perhaps no other car the Swedish company ever produced had quite the same shock value as the brilliant 92.
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United Kingdom: Mini
Quite apart from its ingenious technical aspects, the Mini achieved a phenomenal four-part reputation during the 1960s. It was a major part of pop culture, a car for celebrities to be seen in, a formidable motorsport competitor from local to international level and a perfectly sensible choice for people who wanted a small but surprisingly roomy everyday vehicle.
No other single British model, and arguably none built anywhere in the world, has been able to combine all four attributes. Outstanding when it was launched in 1959, it would eventually seem crude, but remained popular enough to be worth producing until 2000.
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United States: Ford Model T
The fact that the Model T was named Car of the Century in 1999 was inevitable. Forget about the intricacies of mass production on a moving assembly line, and the controls which can confuse anyone attempting to drive the old Ford for the first time.
No, the significance of the Model T is that it was the car which put non-wealthy Americans, and later citizens of many other countries, on the road. Over 15 million (estimates vary) were built by May 1927, still one of the highest figures in automotive history. It was the first world car, and therefore the most significant produced by anyone.
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