Some cars arrive at exactly the right moment. The public understands them, dealers know how to sell them, and everyone has a lovely time.
Others turn up early.
Not slightly early, either. Properly early. The sort of early where buyers peer at the thing, frown politely, and decide they’d rather have something with fewer ideas in it.
These are the classics that predicted the future before the rest of the world had finished reading the present.
When the Citroën DS appeared at the Paris Motor Show in 1955, it must have felt like someone had quietly skipped a decade. Possibly two.
This wasn’t just a handsome saloon with a few clever details. It had hydropneumatic self-levelling suspension, high-pressure brakes, a semi-automatic gearbox without a clutch pedal, aerodynamic bodywork, and front disc brakes at a time when many rivals were still very much in the “that’ll do” phase of development. Later versions even added swivelling headlights, because apparently being dramatically futuristic already wasn’t enough.
The magic of the DS was that its technology wasn’t hidden away. You could see and feel the difference. It rose up on its suspension like some elegant French creature waking from a nap, then floated down the road in a way that made conventional cars feel agricultural.
Was it complicated? Oh yes. Very. In the way only a brilliant French car can be complicated, where you admire the thinking while quietly wondering whether your local garage will pretend not to be in.
The Jensen FF is one of those cars that makes you wonder why more people don’t talk about it.
From the outside, it looked broadly like a slightly stretched Jensen Interceptor: handsome, Italian-styled, British-built, and powered by a big Chrysler V8. All very agreeable. Then you discover what was going on underneath and the whole thing becomes much more interesting.
Launched in 1966, the FF was the first non-off-road production car to combine four-wheel drive with an anti-lock braking system. That means this West Bromwich grand tourer was playing with ideas that wouldn’t become familiar on performance road cars until much later. It predated the Audi Quattro by well over a decade, which is the sort of fact worth keeping in your pocket for high-quality pub smugness.
Naturally, there were drawbacks. The system was expensive, the car was complex, and the FF’s layout made right-hand drive production far easier than left-hand drive, which rather limited its global prospects.
Still, as an idea? Magnificent. A fast, luxurious GT with all-weather traction and anti-lock brakes in the 1960s. That’s not just ahead of its time; that’s impatient with it.
The NSU Ro 80 should have been the beginning of something huge.
When it arrived in 1967, it looked clean, modern and slippery in a way that made many contemporary saloons feel instantly elderly. Claus Luthe’s styling was crisp without being fussy, and the technology underneath was just as adventurous: a twin-rotor Wankel engine, front-wheel drive, semi-automatic transmission, four-wheel disc brakes, independent suspension and rack-and-pinion steering. It won European Car of the Year for 1968, which seems fair enough given it had apparently turned up from 1978 by mistake.
Then came the awkward bit.
Early rotary engines had durability problems, and the Ro 80 became notorious for engine replacements. Owners reportedly greeted each other by holding up fingers to show how many engines their cars had been through, which is funny until you remember someone at NSU had to pay for quite a few of them.
That reputation hurt the car badly, and NSU itself was eventually absorbed into Audi. But the Ro 80’s shape, layout and engineering thinking were deeply influential. It was a glimpse of the modern executive car, just burdened with the sort of mechanical bravery that accountants tend not to enjoy.
Before turbocharging became normal, it had a reputation for being a bit exotic, a bit laggy, and often associated with racing or specialist machinery. Saab looked at all that and decided what it really needed was a sensible Swedish saloon.
Which is very Saab.
The 99 Turbo arrived in the late 1970s and helped make turbocharging feel usable in an everyday road car. It wasn’t just about bolting on boost and hoping for applause; Saab worked hard to make the power delivery manageable, giving the car strong mid-range performance rather than turning it into a peaky little nuisance.
And visually, it was perfect. The 99 Turbo looked purposeful without becoming silly, especially in three-door form, with just enough menace to suggest the owner had read the manual and understood more of it than you.
It predicted an entire era of turbocharged performance cars, but did so in a typically Saab way: practical, intelligent, slightly odd, and absolutely not trying to impress people at traffic lights.
Four-wheel drive existed before the Audi Quattro, of course, but largely in off-roaders, specialist vehicles and occasional oddities. Audi’s masterstroke was making it central to a fast road car and then proving the point very loudly in rallying.
Shown in 1980, the original Quattro combined a turbocharged five-cylinder engine with permanent four-wheel drive, then went off and changed the World Rally Championship almost immediately. Once rally rules allowed four-wheel drive, Audi realised it had a weapon on its hands, and everyone else was left looking slightly underdressed.
The road car mattered because it made all-wheel-drive performance feel desirable, not agricultural. Suddenly, traction wasn’t just something farmers needed. It was something that helped you deploy power on wet roads, gravel stages and, if you were Gene Hunt, the streets of 1980s television Britain.
Plenty of performance cars are fast. The Quattro changed what fast cars were expected to do when the weather turned nasty.
The best ahead-of-their-time cars always seem obvious later. At launch, though, they usually looked brave, strange, expensive, risky or all four. That’s what makes them worth remembering.
