I owned one car on this list. A Renault Twingo, 2006, first generation, Gris Boréal. Initiale Paris, all the premium. I treated it well and it served me well during my single days when I moved to France. Then I got married, we had a first child, then a second. My wife kept driving it for a long period, because it was hers by then. Eventually two children in a Twingo becomes something you manage rather than something that works. We chose something bigger. The Twingo didn’t fail us. We outgrew it.
The rest of this list I’ve only ever wanted. Carried in my head since I was a kid. What they share: a shape you can sketch from memory, and a reason to exist beyond getting from one place to another. They’re mostly from before 2000. That’s not nostalgia. Post-2000, aerodynamic optimisation and safety regulation converged the industry onto a single optimal form. The physics made them better cars but made them harder to tell apart.
