Your Top 3 Beautiful F1 cars

stupot94 · Post by **stupot94** » 12 Aug 2011, 22:02

Here put 3 of your favourite best looking F1 cars ever!

1:

2:

3:

FullMetalJack · Post by **FullMetalJack** » 12 Aug 2011, 22:23

3rd place

2nd place

1st place

ADx_Wales · Post by **ADx_Wales** » 12 Aug 2011, 22:36

Gold:

Silver/Frankensence/Frankenstein:

Bronze/Myrrh/Grrr:

Aerospeed · Post by **Aerospeed** » 12 Aug 2011, 22:49

3rd

2nd

1st

FullMetalJack · Post by **FullMetalJack** » 12 Aug 2011, 23:01

ADx_Wales wrote:Gold:

Silver/Frankensence/Frankenstein:

Bronze/Myrrh/Grrr:

Gold, Frankenstein and Grrr. Bottom by any chance?

Phoenix · Post by **Phoenix** » 12 Aug 2011, 23:36

ADx_Wales wrote:Gold:

This, ladies and gentlemen, is my new wallpaper.

As for the classification...it's quite difficult. I'd rather classify them by decades, but I'll do my best...

AdrianSutil · Post by **AdrianSutil** » 13 Aug 2011, 02:12

That Jordan 191 is just awesome.

3rd - Arrows 2002
http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9 ... dZcQrWiaGQ
2nd - Lotus 2010
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9 ... U84P1gH-1l
1st - Prost 2000
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9 ... hko7udfVJ1

DOSBoot · Post by **DOSBoot** » 13 Aug 2011, 02:48

1. Brabham BT52
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... _1983.jpeg

2. Williams FW14C
http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj12 ... SGP-17.jpg

3. Lotus 72
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... 72_JPS.jpg

dinizintheoven · Post by **dinizintheoven** » 13 Aug 2011, 09:32

These are the top two:

...but I've got a dilemma with the third. Is it the Brabham BT52? It spelled the end for the slab-sided, cab-forward ground effect cars, but still looks very odd to this day (as did anything else with a similar design). Is it a 1960s Lotus, pre-wings and Golf Leaf sponsorship? That's got to be a candidate. Or maybe it's the 80s JPS models, most specifically the 97T and 98T, but I've always had trouble telling the difference between those, so should they be automatically disqualified? Maybe let's go back even further than the shark-nose Ferrari and nominate the Maserati 250F? What about Dan Gurney's Eagle-Weslake with its all-American blue and white livery? What about the 1970s? No, wait a minute, that entire decade was an aesthetic black hole. Those late 80s (well, 1987-90) Benettons with their bonkers colour scheme are also candidates, as are (controversial choices ahoy) Lola's last two utter clunkers, because at least they looked interesting despite their catastrophic design flaws. I'm also tempted to nominate the Tyrrell 019, and the Simtek S941, despite what happened in it...

The third choice is one of those. Maybe.

shinji · Post by **shinji** » 13 Aug 2011, 11:11

From when I started watching:

3.

2.

1.

I'm weird.

the Masked Lapwing · Post by **the Masked Lapwing** » 13 Aug 2011, 11:22

Here's mine:

3.

2.

1.

eagleash · Post by **eagleash** » 13 Aug 2011, 11:39

250F

Eagle-Weslake V12

BT52

Sorry about rubbish pics. I blame Image Shack!

Pointrox · Post by **Pointrox** » 13 Aug 2011, 12:28

1st place - Jaguar R1

British Racing Green looks good, but with golden BBS rims - even better.

2nd place - Minardi M02

My favourite among the rejects - lime with white and blue... lightning thingy or whatever it is. No matter what it is, it goes great with the car and you could spot those cars even from the last row. Any idea if this paint was fluorescent?

3rd place - Prost JS45

Last F1 car designed by Ligier. Apart from the all blue livery (which is my favourite colour) it has a very sleek design, especially on this photo. And somehow that pointy nose caught my attention - designed to spear through the air... or other cars

AdrianSutil · Post by **AdrianSutil** » 13 Aug 2011, 13:05

shinji wrote:From when I started watching:

3.

2.

1.

I'm weird.

Virgin? Really? It gives me a headache looking at it. Black and red can work, but not like that.

shinji · Post by **shinji** » 13 Aug 2011, 13:08

AdrianSutil wrote:Virgin? Really? It gives me a headache looking at it. Black and red can work, but not like that.

I like the swirls.

The Mountain Man · Post by **The Mountain Man** » 13 Aug 2011, 13:25

3rd

2nd

1st

TomWazzleshaw · Post by **TomWazzleshaw** » 13 Aug 2011, 13:36

shinji wrote:
AdrianSutil wrote:Virgin? Really? It gives me a headache looking at it. Black and red can work, but not like that.

I like the swirls.

Well it worked brilliantly before they put the shark fin on it.

FullMetalJack · Post by **FullMetalJack** » 13 Aug 2011, 17:27

Wizzie wrote:
shinji wrote:
AdrianSutil wrote:Virgin? Really? It gives me a headache looking at it. Black and red can work, but not like that.

I like the swirls.

Well it worked brilliantly before they put the shark fin on it.

It's the one car where the shark fin looked good.

WeirdKerr · Post by **WeirdKerr** » 13 Aug 2011, 22:05

cretoxyrhina · Post by **cretoxyrhina** » 14 Aug 2011, 11:29

3.

2.

1.

Nessafox · Post by **Nessafox** » 14 Aug 2011, 22:36

YELLOW ferraris

Phoenix · Post by **Phoenix** » 14 Aug 2011, 23:20

Three more nominees:

(this one's my favourite of all FW07s).

David AGS · Post by **David AGS** » 15 Aug 2011, 09:13

1. The Black and Silver McLaren's
2. The Arrows from 1998 A-19, the one just in Black and white decals
3. Jordan 191, 7 up livery

James1978 · Post by **James1978** » 15 Aug 2011, 11:22

I gotta totally agree about the FW07, especially when it first came out in 1979. I remember watching a 1979 race on the BBC's classic feature (I think it was Belgium, its second race), and thinking how much more modern the car looked than the other cars in that race, especially the Ferrari which won that year's championship!

Post by **mario** » 15 Aug 2011, 19:59

James1978 wrote:I gotta totally agree about the FW07, especially when it first came out in 1979. I remember watching a 1979 race on the BBC's classic feature (I think it was Belgium, its second race), and thinking how much more modern the car looked than the other cars in that race, especially the Ferrari which won that year's championship!

The 312T4 did essentially look like what it was - a quick and dirty work around to try and fit a shaped underbody around an engine and transmission system that was ill suited to the task. Ironically, though, the saving grace of the 312T4 was the fact that it relied on older, but well proven and reilable technology - the FW07 were a much better package overall but lacked the reliability to mount a serious title challenge until too late in the season.
Speaking of the 1979 season, I would say that the Ligier JS11 was also not too shabby looking, it must be said:

And dinizintheoven, I dispute your claim that the 1970's was an aesthetic black hole for the cars - to be more precise, I'd say that the middle part of the season was a little dodgy, but there were some good looking cars at the beginning and end of that decade, like the Ferrari 312B, for example:

I also have to say that the McLaren M23 was not that bad either:

midgrid · Post by **midgrid** » 15 Aug 2011, 20:45

I think the period c. 1968 - 1972 was a bit of a "black hole" as far as looks are concerned, as the cars evolved from elegant cigar-shaped tubes to bewinged monocoques. There are plenty of cars from this period that look ungainly, most of which resemble an irregular squashed cylinder with wings bolted on. Of course, there are exceptions, such as the Lotus 72, but the majority leave me cold. I think the 1973 cars were a big improvement, as the rear wing could be placed a lot further back than in 1972, and I loved the huge airboxes that subsequently appeared. The next problem is that once the first wing cars appear, all of the conventional cars look ugly and primitive by comparison.

Of course, many of the crude, slabby flat-bottomed turbo cars also look ugly to me, but there were also many beautiful cars competing in this period. One of my favourite comparisons is between the Brabham BT52, Ligier JS21 and Osella FA1E from 1983 - all three cars had a similar aerodynamic design philosophy of a narrow monocoque with minimal sidepods, but whilst the Brabham is one of my favourite F1 cars of all time, the other two are hideous!

My favourite period of car design is probably from 1989 to 1997, with wide, elegant cars and fat, slick tyres. The period from 1998 to 2008 is also good, although I think this is more due to attractive colour schemes than the cars themselves, and I wasn't a fan of the winglet era overkill (2005 - 2008). The current aero-specification cars look good from certain angles, but I don't think I'll ever get used to the front and rear wings being different widths. I'm glad that the front tyres were narrowed in 2010, as the 2009 cars look very odd to me now.

Oh, and I can't nominate a top three, as it will turn into an essay on why every single car that ever competed is beautiful in its own right.

nome66 · Post by **nome66** » 15 Aug 2011, 21:46

the more i read this thread, the more my top 3 grows. lol
right now i'm at a top 12.

dinizintheoven · Post by **dinizintheoven** » 15 Aug 2011, 22:24

mario wrote:And dinizintheoven, I dispute your claim that the 1970's was an aesthetic black hole for the cars - to be more precise, I'd say that the middle part of the season was a little dodgy, but there were some good looking cars at the beginning and end of that decade, like the Ferrari 312B... I also have to say that the McLaren M23 was not that bad either...

Dispute it all you like, but I've had this conversation before on the finalgear.com forums, where the relevant thread was "best looking car from each decade". Most of them were easily picked (for the record: Maserati 250F, Ferrari 156, Brabham BT52, Jordan 191, Williams FW22), but I had a headache picking anything from the 1970s I liked the look of. The one that I see most on this thread is the Lotus 72: yes, it was successful, but I'd find it very hard to argue that it was good looking, whether it was in the 1970 Gold Leaf livery or the JPS that followed - in comparison to the rounded, "flattened cigar" cars of the 1960s, the flat and square 72 was a gargoyle. I'm not even convinced that the 79 is good to look at, either - viewed head-on it looks like the driver's head is emerging from a tall chimney that reminds me of that Burmese tribe where the women have foot-long necks. It was the decade of the airbox that was two feet above the driver's head, the decade where the design was done with a ruler and a set square. Lotus, Ferrari, Brabham, they all had some innovative designs, but they weren't exactly easy on the eye.

I'll have to concede what you say about the beginning and end of the decade, though, mainly because in 1970/71 there was still a hint of the 1960s car shape around, but bolting those huge wings onto the suspension was not a great sight to behold - as midgrid also says. With the Ferrari 312B, there's the huge hole in the nose and the complete lack of sidepods, and it's still quite rounded - other than those wings at the back and on the nose, it looks like a 1960s car. I looked up the 312B2 as well and I'm amazed that it still has some of the 1960s design features, despite just making it into the first few races of the 1973 season. Then again, Old Man Enzo never was one to rush through a new design, was he? Usually he'd bury his head in the sand and say "no, I will not run with the pack!" and it needed his team to take an absolute thrashing to get his to change his ways - think of the Ferrari 246 as the last of the front-engined cars in 1960 (so, still a 1950s design, then...) and the less said about the trouncing that the 312T5 took in 1980, the better. So I looked up how the 312B2 did in 1972, and fourth in the Constructors' isn't exactly stunning by Ferrari standards... but that first attempt to make a 1970s car (in 1973!) was truly hideous.

As for the end of the decade... that's where my final choice for the best looking car of the 1970s came along, because in the end I went with the Renault RS10 of 1979, which I would say was the best looking of the original Renault cars, even more so than those that competed in the 1980s.

FullMetalJack · Post by **FullMetalJack** » 15 Aug 2011, 23:10

Pointrox wrote:And somehow that pointy nose caught my attention - designed to spear through the air... or other cars

It's probably designed to spear through Virgins :lol:

RainierSassetti · Post by **RainierSassetti** » 16 Aug 2011, 01:18

RWR FW19, What a piece!

March 881, clean and still so Newey :lol:

641. Gorgeous stuff. Oh my v12/god. :twisted:

Faustus · Post by **Faustus** » 16 Aug 2011, 08:44

Most of my favourites have already been mentioned and I find it very hard to pick specifically 3, so I'll post another few that I like a lot.

Lotus 88B:

Fomet 1:

Ferrari F92A:

Tyrrell 018 (in pre-Camel livery):

Post by **mario** » 16 Aug 2011, 19:43

dinizintheoven wrote:
mario wrote:And dinizintheoven, I dispute your claim that the 1970's was an aesthetic black hole for the cars - to be more precise, I'd say that the middle part of the season was a little dodgy, but there were some good looking cars at the beginning and end of that decade, like the Ferrari 312B... I also have to say that the McLaren M23 was not that bad either...

Dispute it all you like, but I've had this conversation before on the finalgear.com forums, where the relevant thread was "best looking car from each decade". Most of them were easily picked (for the record: Maserati 250F, Ferrari 156, Brabham BT52, Jordan 191, Williams FW22), but I had a headache picking anything from the 1970s I liked the look of. The one that I see most on this thread is the Lotus 72: yes, it was successful, but I'd find it very hard to argue that it was good looking, whether it was in the 1970 Gold Leaf livery or the JPS that followed - in comparison to the rounded, "flattened cigar" cars of the 1960s, the flat and square 72 was a gargoyle. I'm not even convinced that the 79 is good to look at, either - viewed head-on it looks like the driver's head is emerging from a tall chimney that reminds me of that Burmese tribe where the women have foot-long necks. It was the decade of the airbox that was two feet above the driver's head, the decade where the design was done with a ruler and a set square. Lotus, Ferrari, Brabham, they all had some innovative designs, but they weren't exactly easy on the eye.

I'll have to concede what you say about the beginning and end of the decade, though, mainly because in 1970/71 there was still a hint of the 1960s car shape around, but bolting those huge wings onto the suspension was not a great sight to behold - as midgrid also says. With the Ferrari 312B, there's the huge hole in the nose and the complete lack of sidepods, and it's still quite rounded - other than those wings at the back and on the nose, it looks like a 1960s car. I looked up the 312B2 as well and I'm amazed that it still has some of the 1960s design features, despite just making it into the first few races of the 1973 season. Then again, Old Man Enzo never was one to rush through a new design, was he? Usually he'd bury his head in the sand and say "no, I will not run with the pack!" and it needed his team to take an absolute thrashing to get his to change his ways - think of the Ferrari 246 as the last of the front-engined cars in 1960 (so, still a 1950s design, then...) and the less said about the trouncing that the 312T5 took in 1980, the better. So I looked up how the 312B2 did in 1972, and fourth in the Constructors' isn't exactly stunning by Ferrari standards... but that first attempt to make a 1970s car (in 1973!) was truly hideous.

As for the end of the decade... that's where my final choice for the best looking car of the 1970s came along, because in the end I went with the Renault RS10 of 1979, which I would say was the best looking of the original Renault cars, even more so than those that competed in the 1980s.

It also didn't help that in the early 1970's Ferrari was more interested in sports car racing than Formula 1 - the sports car division was relatively successful in the early 1970's, whilst the Formula 1 division was not really getting the resources that it needed. The slightly archaic look of the F312B was probably in part because of the fact that Forghieri was overstretched, having to focus on development of the 312PB sports car as well as the 312B - it might have made the car more beautiful in that sense, and the engine was capable of making the car competitive to begin with, but the problems soon started showing up (that said, to be fair to Ferrari in 1971 and 1972, their problems were also exacerbated because Firestone changed the construction of their tyres - they tried to modify the front suspension system on the F312B2 to cope, but they still struggled a lot with the tyres).

The problem, though, is that the mid 1970's was an era where the principle of aerodynamics was known about but not necessarily that well understood, which is why you end up with cars that have a profusion of oddly shaped wings (the infamous March 711 comes to mind) and weird and wonderful body shapes. It was a sort of inevitable, if ugly, development phase of F1, and it means that we won't have more cars like the Spazzaneve.

leywso · Post by **leywso** » 22 Aug 2011, 21:26

I must first say that I have deliberately not chosen the Jordan 191, which while I think is the most beautiful F1 car ever, has been spoken of by many others in this thread. So these are mine...

Benetton 188. Someone once claimed this livery "game the name of the sponsor (United Colours Of Benetton) without having to use words". Classy paint job and well suited to the unconventional car shape.

Not sure why I love the 1989 Larrouse Lola so much. The car is a slick design but the paint job, for a general mismash of colours and sponsors, just seems to work. I love the gushing stripe of green along the engine cover.

The nicest Minardi design, from when their cars were boldly painted to stand out before they transgressed into solid white/black designs in the death row seasons.

nome66 · Post by **nome66** » 22 Aug 2011, 23:54

ok so i've narrowed my 12 down to 4
i like the simtek ford

the color scheme is cosmic and awesome. teams should use it today.
plus the Jordan 191....i like 7up

also the '88 benetton and Senna's MP4/4.

stupot94 · Post by **stupot94** » 23 Aug 2011, 00:15

To be honest the best looking Simtek is the 94 Test Car. I was watchiing the short footage of it on the 94 Season Review. And just thought its one of the best looking cars in that season. Along with the Williams, Ligier and Tyrrell

Dj_bereta · Post by **Dj_bereta** » 23 Aug 2011, 06:07

My favorites:

1 - "Buzz Hornet" Jordan EJ198

2 - "Golden" Jordan EJ196

3 - Benetton B197

leywso · Post by **leywso** » 23 Aug 2011, 17:45

stupot94 wrote:To be honest the best looking Simtek is the 94 Test Car. I was watchiing the short footage of it on the 94 Season Review. And just thought its one of the best looking cars in that season. Along with the Williams, Ligier and Tyrrell

I agree. During 1994-5 there was a major switch to raised noses, however several teams resisted (Ligier, Simtek, Tyrrell, Ferrari, Larrouse and Williams in '94), and all of these cars looked far slicker and simpler because of it.

Row Man Gross-Gene · Post by **Row Man Gross-Gene** » 23 Aug 2011, 18:24

I think the current generation of cars is underrated. I'll give a few reasons.

1. They are longer and thinner (more cigar-shaped) than the previous few incarnations. Rather like the old 60s race cars.

2. They are smooth and curvy with only a few straight, hard-edged lines.

3. They don't have a million little winglets and aerodynamic doodads.

4. Most every part looks as though it was designed to be there, rather than bolted on as an afterthought.

Also, addressing the major issues that are brought up as negatives, the front and rear wings. The front wings don't look that different from the previous front wings other than being wider. In fact if looking at it from anywhere other than dead-on the front, they don't look much different from the old ones. The rear-wing endplates are a bit more obrusive than the previous iteration, but if that's the worst you can say, then it seems like a worthy trade-off.

stupot94 · Post by **stupot94** » 23 Aug 2011, 18:33

Row Man Gross-Gene wrote:I think the current generation of cars are underrated

As much as I like the cars since 2009 I think these will be the best we are going to get until the dreadful future we are coming up to.

But to be honest the best years for the most great looking cars

1994
1998
2008
2010

ADx_Wales · Post by **ADx_Wales** » 23 Aug 2011, 19:21

The reason nobody rates the "modern" designs is because the restictions on design are sufforcating aesthetics aswell as innovation.