I probably should be asking what you’re wrenching on or how your summer plans are going here in an Autopian Asks, but I’ve got more important business: I want to use these posts to help spread real knowledge about car history and dispel the miserable (often AI generated) misinformation and outright crap that’s out there in tiresome clickbait slideshows.
Today, I want to hear what open-minded enthusiasts have to say about hidden gems and unfairly maligned bargains in the car world. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty tired of hearing about how the BMW 2002 was the greatest thing ever produced since the first wheel. I’m well aware that the Miata is “always the answer,” and if you’re more old school, you’ll give the Datsun 240Z automotive sainthood. Hey, our family owned a rusting S30 Z-car for a decade, so I already know the undeniably good things about it. What I want to know about are great cars that didn’t quite get the day in the sun that they deserved. I’m talking about cars that you could get a dozen of for the price of a perfect-condition painfully overvalued old Acura Integra Type R. Here are just a few to get you going.
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The Lexus LS400 might have received endless accolades when it was introduced in 1990, but many enthusiast magazines preferred the more sporting nature and unique styling of Nissan’s rival Infiniti Q45 instead.
This thing easily out-accelerated the Lexus and handled sharper; the LS400 channeled a mix of Cadillac and Mercedes but Infiniti wasn’t having any of that. The Q45 even featured a version with the first active suspension system sold in the United States to make it respond even more quickly. Wow, my old W126 420SEL looks like it’s about to roll over below!
Maybe it was the strange television and print ads that showed trees and rocks instead of cars that alienated potential buyers. Perhaps people wanted a fake Benz grille on their car instead of the cool cloisonne Hulk Hogan belt buckle up front (which I flat-out love and Jason proudly displays an example of in his basement “museum”). Whatever the reason, the Q45 didn’t even come close to getting the sales and recognition it should have, but it deserves your attention today.
Later big V8 Infinitis like the second-generation Q were the same story as well; the somewhat frumpy when new looks are actually ageing better than I thought they would:
Honestly, even the smaller boxy-looking M45 you totally forgot about are worthy sport sedan entries that the market unfairly ignored.
Not that Lexus wasn’t without hidden, underappreciated gems. Early stickshift IS models seem to fall in that category (or the automatic-only SportCross wagon), but a true masterpiece might have been the new-for-1992 SC coupes, particularly the super-rare manual transmission-equipped SC300s.
I liked the mechanicals of the fourth-generation Supra but never warmed to the looks, even before it got overexposed in the Fast & Furious movie franchise; too bulbous and over-the-top for my tastes. The sculpted-in-clay (literally) SC300 solved that; it featured a 2JZ-GE drivetrain similar to Toyota’s GT but in spirit sort of traded Vin Diesel for Daniel Craig; it’s like a Supra in an Armani suit, with a far more polished interior and better ride/handling compromise.
The public didn’t seem to agree, though, as only 3,883 five-speed SC300s found buyers. It always looks delightfully incongruous seeing a manual shifter in the traditional leather-and-Yamaha-violin-sourced-wood interior.
Sure, maybe I’d rather have an early-nineties BMW 850i like the one I see near my house. Sadly, like the vast majority of them, that local example has sat on four flat tires with a bed of leaves under the chassis for years, so if I want an actual functioning car and not driveway “decoration,” that Lexus seems like a great far more usable forgotten alternative choice.
You Autopians have to be bristling at the seams with examples of cars that shoulda-been-hits that are now dark-horse outstanding values. Let’s hear them!
The post What Cars Are ‘Hidden Gems’ That Everyone But You Seems To Have Forgotten About? appeared first on The Autopian.
