Cars that looked slow but were surprisingly fast

At a glance, the Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL 6.3 looked like exactly the sort of thing you’d expect outside a smart hotel in 1968. Big, upright, respectable and faintly stern, like a car that disapproved of loud shirts.

Then Mercedes engineer Erich Waxenberger had the bright idea of fitting the 6.3-litre M100 V8 from the huge 600 limousine into the W109 saloon. This was not an official grand marketing vision at first; it began as the sort of internal engineering experiment that makes you wonder whether Mercedes workshops in the 1960s were more fun than we’ve been led to believe.

The result was extraordinary. The 300 SEL 6.3 became one of the fastest four-door cars in the world, combining limousine smoothness with the sort of pace that made sports car drivers suddenly develop an interest in the scenery. It could reach around 137mph, which in a dignified Mercedes saloon of the late 1960s was bordering on indecent.

The best bit? It barely looked different from the standard car. Wider tyres and extra lamps gave the game away if you knew what to look for, but otherwise it was pure Q-car. Very polite. Very expensive. Very capable of ruining your day.

The Lancia Thema was not, in normal form, the sort of car to make anyone spill their espresso.

It was a smart executive saloon, handsome in that crisp 1980s Italian way, but still fundamentally sensible. The kind of thing a successful architect might drive while pretending not to care about German cars.

Then Lancia created the 8.32, and things became delightfully silly.

The name stood for eight cylinders and 32 valves, which sounds like something from a brochure written by someone wearing sunglasses indoors. Under the bonnet was a V8 derived from the Ferrari 308 Quattrovalvole, modified to suit a smoother, more civilised saloon-car role. The result was around 215bhp, a wonderfully exotic soundtrack, and one of the great “wait, what engine has that got?” moments of the 1980s.

It even had a powered rear spoiler that rose from the boot lid, because apparently fitting a Ferrari-derived V8 to a Lancia saloon still wasn’t quite enough theatre. Rowan Atkinson owned one, too, which feels fitting: a clever car with a slightly absurd punchline.

For years, Volvo estates carried a certain image. Safe, square, dependable, and usually driven by people with large dogs or an unusually serious attitude to roof boxes.

Then came the 850 T-5R, and the wardrobe started moving rather quickly.

Launched in the mid-1990s, the T-5R took Volvo’s already brisk turbocharged 850 and added a sharper edge. It still looked like an estate car drawn with a ruler, but underneath it had enough punch to make it one of the great surprise packages of the decade. Especially in yellow, which did slightly undermine the whole “discreet” thing, but in the best possible way.

The wider story is even better because Volvo had already turned the 850 estate into a touring car. In 1994, two blue-and-white 850 estates rolled onto the BTCC grid at Thruxton, and plenty of people assumed it was a publicity stunt. It was partly that, of course, but it also made the point beautifully: Volvo wasn’t just building safe boxes anymore. It was building quick ones.

The T-5R wasn’t a homologation special for that BTCC estate, despite what pub folklore sometimes suggests, but the association did it no harm at all. It gave Volvo performance credibility without losing the brand’s wonderfully sensible image. Safety first, yes. But not necessarily slowly.

The Rover SD1 already had a bit more visual drama than your average executive saloon, thanks to its long fastback shape and Ferrari Daytona-ish nose. Still, in everyday Britain it became familiar as a police car, company car and slightly faded executive express, which meant people often forgot how rapid the right version could be.

The Vitesse changed that.

Arriving in the early 1980s, it gave the SD1’s 3.5-litre Rover V8 fuel injection and a more purposeful setup, tying neatly into Rover’s touring-car efforts. This was British Leyland trying to make an executive car feel exciting again, which is a sentence that contains both optimism and danger.

It worked, too. The Vitesse was quick, charismatic and genuinely desirable, especially in later Twin Plenum form. It was also still an SD1, which meant ownership could involve a certain amount of British Leyland character-building. Let’s call it emotional engagement.

But as a fast car hiding in relatively ordinary saloon clothing, it absolutely earned its place. One minute it was outside a regional office. The next, it was giving much posher machinery something to think about.

The Saab 900 Turbo didn’t look slow exactly, but it certainly didn’t look like a conventional performance car.

It looked intelligent. Practical. Slightly professorial. The sort of car owned by someone who used the word “ergonomics” before anyone else knew what it meant. And then the turbo came on boost and the whole thing developed a rather wicked sense of humour.

Saab’s aviation roots are often mentioned to the point of cliché, but in the 900 Turbo’s case the cockpit-like feel really was part of the appeal. Deep windscreen, wraparound dashboard, upright driving position, and that wonderfully odd ignition placement between the seats. Everything felt considered, even if some of it felt considered by people who had never once asked a German rival for permission.

The 900 Turbo helped make turbocharging feel intelligent rather than merely aggressive. It wasn’t a shouty car; it was a clever one. And that made it very appealing to a certain type of buyer who wanted speed, but didn’t particularly want to dress like they wanted speed.

Few cars hide speed quite as magnificently as the Bentley Turbo R.

It did not look like a performance car in the normal sense. It looked like a private members’ club had grown wheels. Big grille, leather, wood, deep carpets and the general sense that someone called Giles might be waiting in the back with a folded newspaper.

But the Turbo R had serious shove. Introduced in the 1980s, it took Bentley’s traditional luxury formula and added turbocharged urgency, transforming the marque’s image from stately to surprisingly muscular. The “R” stood for roadholding, which was Bentley’s way of reassuring everyone that this was not merely a large drawing room with boost.

That’s what made it so delicious. It didn’t advertise its pace with wings, stripes or spoilers. It simply surged forward in a way that felt faintly inappropriate for something so large and formal.

Fast cars are fun. Fast cars that look as if they should have a drinks cabinet are better.