The Art of the Automobile

Gearheads don't often consider cars they love to be the sum of their parts. They obsess over the finer details, a little crease here, a little dimple there. If car enthusiasts ever became art critiques though, they'd have a hard time justifying their love for abstract notions of metal and the way they are shaped. But worry not, we're here. We've boiled down a huge list of cars we consider to be rolling pieces of art, so you know what to use as reference. Enjoy.

LAMBORGHINI MIURA
The Miura is perhaps the most Italian of things. It was absolutely useless, and quite unlike the GT40, it was all about the form. But what a form it was. It had eyelashes, and curves that would set the hearts, minds, and eyes of anyone afire.

CHRYSLER TURBINE
It had gas turbines for propulsion and sounded like a vacuum cleaner. Like most American things that dared to step out of the norm, it was a resounding flop. It looked utterly beautiful though, with turbine design elements, and with just 50 made, its rare enough to be called an art piece.

Citroen DS –Le Deesse, La Reine
Lovingly called "Le Desse" ("The Goddess") by the French, the DS has been and forever will be the ultimate form of artistic expression through automobiles. Pablo Neruda, poet, romantic and Nobel Prize winner, had one. An excerpt from his poem "The Queen" sums it up:

tALBOT-LAGO FIGONI-FALASCHI COUPE
Some say its droopy, some think it's the most beautiful of the 30's teardrop coupes. It was wonderfully aerodynamic and it was properly fast, too. If F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby after 1938, Jay Gatsby would've probably driven this.

Ferrari 330 p4
Monza winning extraordinaire and as revolutionary as the original Star Wars, the 330 P4 was a racing prototype that took aerodynamics way too seriously. What resulted was a raked back machine that looked better than any modern hypercar can ever look.

JAGUAR E-TYPE
It was an exercise in aerodynamic efficiency that lent the E-type a voluptuous figure that was earth shatteringly gorgeous. It was meant to be driven, and it was very much a driver's car, but that didn't stop people from treating it like a rolling piece of art.

PAGANI HUAYRA
A hypercar with many horsepower and an unpronounciable name. When you open up all the bits with hinges, you get a transformer. It has active aero and sounds like a hyperventilating teenage god. Every part of it is art. Pure art.

PHANTOM CORSAIR
It looks like a dung beetle, but that's what designers get when they try to be too forward thinking. The Corsair was super sleek, previewing automotive design decades down the line.

Spyker C8
Spyker drove themselves bankrupt building cars like the C8. From the steering to the gear linkage to the steering column, wheels, dials, dash – beautifully hand-crafted.

Bugatti type 57sc atlantic
The brainchild of master engineer Ettore Bugatti, the Atlantic was made completely out of magnesium, which meant the two halves of the body had to be riveted together with bolts. Its so art-deco, it was actually valued like a proper art-piece: last time one of the 3 remaining was sold, it fetched…THIRTY EIGHT MILLION DOLLARS.