Sure, you can flex your car knowledge by rattling off a list of odd or forgotten cars like the Mitsubishi Tredia, Gordon-Keeble, Laforza or Cadillac Cimarron–but what about when it comes to driving them?
What’s the most obscure car you’ve ever driven–or even owned?
We had a customer at our tire business who was a car collector. He brought them to us for tires and various repairs.
I remember driving a 1940 Ford and a Rolls Royce I think from the 30's or 40's.
My father and I did the Rally for the Lane years ago and we drove this:
Simca Weekend Prototype- 1954 given to Brigitte Bardot
I drove a brand new Pontiac LeMans GSE once. Absolutely not mine.
I was a kid so I didn't drive, but I rode in a Chrysler TC by Maserati.
Alfa Romeo 159 Sportwagon diesel. It was odd trucking along the autobahn at 130 mph and the tach reading some ridiculously low RPM.
I think an X-body Pontiac Phoenix is the most obscure vehicle I've ever driven. Not exactly that high on the obscure scale.
Vauxhall Viva HA and a Standard Vanguard Estate back in my youth.
Maserati BiTurbo or VW thing.
Edit: rereading the responses realizing mine are E36 M3 compared to the obscurity surrounding my post. My apologies....
1949 Hudson convertable. What nice ride, if only I was rich & SWMBO could park. =~ (
1933 Datsun Firetruck on the street.
Sherp ATV off-road.
Rampage would be the most obscure, not sure how high that rates
Probably several new Cadillac Allantes with the northstar engine. I worked at a Cadillac dealer at the time and I drove them home from time to time to exercise them. They were sitting on the lot for a long time waiting to be sold.
Suzuki Cappuccino
AMC Gremlin 4x4, it was a loaner car when I wrecked my 280zx
Lotus Carlton, arguably the coolest sedan I've ever driven.
Shuffled a Daimler sp250 around in a parking lot, it would be a stretch to say that I drove it though. (British Daimler, not Daimler Benz)
Not a photo of the actual one I moved:
Drove my 1969 Rover 2000TC around a bit before it wound up as a long term project car. I think they only sold a couple thousand of them in the States. Almost no one (in the US) knows Rover made cars, so that's pretty obscure.
The Wartburg, the same one that Patrick now has, 1958 Wartburg 311. I drove it when it was stock after we got it running at the Lemons race when we picked it up and had it running on a bottle of gas with no brakes, and then later on in rear engined Subaru powered form. Never so much as seen another one.
My example is parked in front of the house. A combination of rarity and undesirability, my 04 Lancer Ralliart wagon.
1958 Willys Jeep FC 170. This one, in fact:
The guy driving it in the picture was the father of my son's friend, and when he passed away a few years ago, we got the opportunity to get it going again.
Probably a Dodge Colt with the twin stick option.
2cv.
For me, a '63 Buick Riviera. What a beautiful car. It was December'87 and I was looking for a first car for my final semester of high school and then college. This one was in white primer and had some mods. 401 nail. Side pipes...hey it was the '80s. Great interior. But it shifted and braked like poo even in comparison to my parent's two Grand Wagoneers. He wanted $1500 and dad talked me out of it considering its issues. The man also had the one we really wanted, both my dad and myself, a '65 Wildcat with factory dual quad 425 nail and, the piece de resistance, its original 4 speed manual. But he wanted $2500 for that one and, well, we were poor then.
I have driven a '40 Cadillac. This had the very first implementation of the Hydra-Matic transmission, which had four forward gears, and did not have a torque converter (the "turbo" in Turbo Hydra-Matic), just a fluid coupler, which is *why* it had four forward gears. Another thing it did not have was a shift brake, or whatever it was called, and it was quite a process to shift the vehicle into Reverse. You had to be rolling forward slightly for the gear to engage, or a very rapid shift into Reverse, but it took a real knack to do it without grinding. If it started grinding it would not go into gear at all. This was by design.
Then the war happened and GM re-engineered it to be more user friendly for 1946 or so by adding a brake, or synchro, or something, so you could shift into Revese without theatrics.
IIRC the shift pattern was something like PNDLR. Not what we are used to. I am probably wrong as it has been a while.
I've also driven a DeLorean, an apparently high volume (as these go) kit car based on the Chevette whose name I cannot remember, a right hand drive Rolls from the 60s (that was scary, knowing what it was worth), two different GEMs, a Riviera T-Type convertible (1 of 100), a Stage III Belvedere, a brooch, a pterodactyl...
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