Hand-built days meant hand-built quirks. You wanted a car? They welded it together. Then came the monocoque. Stamping sheets into shells is efficient, yes. But it kills the ghost. Making a one-off now is an expensive exercise in madness. Sometimes for marketing. Sometimes for ego. Sometimes because someone had too much money and a weird idea. Here are the cars that had no siblings.
Peugeot 404
Peugeot started with a convertible. Then they added a fixed narrow roof. Why? Aerodynamics, mostly. It ran diesel. Low power. Only 69bhp in this stripped-out record breaker. But at Montlhéry, it ran for 72 straight hours. It set 22 speed records. Three of them were absolute world firsts. Fast doesn’t always mean high horsepower. Just stubborn.
Ford Supervan 1
Ford debuted the first Supervan in 1971 at Thruxton. It looked like a Transit van. It acted like a GT40. Under the body was a 5.0-litre mid-mounted V8. Pure insanity. They gave it to a delivery truck. It made 435bhp.
We drove one. From zero to 100mph took 21.6 seconds. It hit 102mph in second gear. They said 168mph was the top speed, but the aero was a joke. It would’ve flipped over. Did it even feel stable at that speed? Probably not. It was terrifying. Ford scrapped the first one in the seventies. A tragedy.
Fiat 130 Familiare
Gianni Agnelli owned Fiat. He got what he wanted. He wanted practical luxury. So Fiat built a five-door estate version of their 130 sedan. 3.2-litre straight-six. 165bhp enough for Italian roads.
His family actually had four built. Small details differed between them. Agnelli took one with wicker panels on the side. A roof rack too. That one is still out there somewhere, privately owned. Umberto, his younger brother, got another. That specific car sat in a FCA heritage museum. Practicality for billionaires is a different animal entirely.
Aston Martin Bulldog
This thing looked like it arrived from 1985. Designed by Williams Towns, it sat on the floor with dramatic angles. Electric gullwing doors. Twin-turbo V8 making 700bhp. Just one. Aston talked about making twenty-five. The market could probably handle it. They didn’t. We got the one.
