The cool factor, what is it? And how do carmakers end up with a cool design anyway? If anyone has the formula to answer these questions then they rightly deserve to be rich.
Coolness, like so many fads these days, comes and goes as surely as the sun rises each day. To maximize the possibility of buying a cool sports car, you'd best head to your nearest European car dealer. For most gearheads, older cars are more preferable to their modern counterparts, the '90s, in particular, are a favorite decade for collectors, providing enough modern features without spoiling the fun factor.
10 Aston Martin DB7 Volante
Already a crowd stopper, Aston Martin's DB7 launched in 1994 boasted the kind of looks that even James Bond would have approved of, surely Aston's new baby couldn't get any cooler. However, a mere two years later, going topless the DB7 Volante did just that
Ordinarily, anything built using a hodgepodge of parts from older cars would have been frowned upon, the underpinnings coming from Jaguars XJS. None of this mattered to buyers. Here, at last, was a new breed of cooler, sexier Aston sports cars.
9 Bugatti EB110 SS
Poor Jaguar, having briefly held the world's fastest production car title with their XJ220, only to be well and truly trumped by a new breed of hypercar, Bugatti not only beat the UK carmaker in speed, but they also out-engineered it too.
Bugatti's first new model in decades, reviving one of the coolest names in automotive history, its new owners knew nothing short of perfection could live up to the carmakers racing heritage. Perhaps this explains the reasoning behind the 3.5-liter V12 engine installation, where other brands stopped at two turbos, Bugatti opted instead for four, a practice that only reappeared with the follow-up Veyron.
8 Audi RS2 Avant
The family man's wagon or shooting brake, on appearances alone, there isn't much to get excited about, even Audi's RS2 Avant looks pretty uninspiring. In fact, to find anything out of the ordinary you need to take a peek under the hood, where Porsche branding marks this motor out as different.
Audi had quietly given gearheads a sleeper car, the RS2 Avant boasting 311 HP was only marginally slower than the 911 Turbo, hitting 60 MPH in 4.4-seconds before reaching its restricted top speed of 163 MPH. Understated the RS2 may have been, but what could be cooler than a supercar disguised as a wagon.
7 TVR Cerbera
Indirectly, BMW is responsible for the TVR Cerbera. Owner Peter Wheeler proclaimed that nothing German will go into TVR cars after the sale of Rover to BMW. Thanks to this very English approach, TVR produced one of the fastest and coolest British-built sports cars ever.
Yes, it was flawed and had suspect electrical build quality, but it was also incredibly unique. Every component was made in-house with seemingly little in the way of logic, but it looked and sounded fantastic. In a drag race, thanks to a naturally aspirated 4.5-liter pumping out 440 HP in later cars, the only sight most other drivers would see is a rapidly disappearing set of rear lights.
6 Volvo 850 T-5R
Wait, how can a Volvo wagon be cool? Well, normally we'd agree with any misgivings of how a brand known for being boring and safe could be anything other than mundane. This though is no ordinary Swedish wagon, Volvo had jumped on the performance bandwagon.
Big and boxy it might have been, but the 850 T-5R delivered quite a punch, the later 850 T-5R models boasting five-cylinder turbocharged motors pumping out 240 HP. Buyers loved the unique combination of performance and usefulness, so much that Volvo really did team up with TWR for the Touring Championship in 1994, scoring a handful of top-five finishes before switching to sedan in 1995.
5 Alpina B8 4.6
Bored with the average performance 3-series and wanting a little more under the hood without shouting modified from the rooftops is where Alpina comes in. Subtle, until you step on the loud pedal.
The Alpina badge alone makes this E36 cool, the German-based tuner is famous for turning out fast BMWs long before M-sport got serious. Shoehorning a 4.6-liter V8 into the 3-series body required extensive modification to the engine bay, but we think the results speak for themselves, with 333 HP and a top speed of 174 MPH.
4 Ferrari F355 Berlinetta
Without question, a much-needed reversal of fortunes for Ferrari, the Italian carmaker's F355 quickly erased gearheads memories of the appallingly bad 348 that preceded it. Most enthusiasts will be unaware the two are very closely related, thankfully Ferrari gave the F355 better handling and superior performance.
What made the F355 cooler than any other sports car at the time? Ferrari utilized an F1 style 5-valve per cylinder engine design that allowed the 3.5-liter V8 rev much higher, emitting an intoxicating banshee-like scream nearing the limiter.
3 Porsche 993 GT2
Nearly as quick as the 959, better-looking, cheaper, and rarer. What's not to like about the 993 GT2? In total, Porsche built 172 examples of the 993 GT3, with just 57 suitable for road use, the others being track specials.
We could have chosen any number of special 911-based models, they all wear the same hood badge and look so similar that even die-hard fans struggle to tell them apart, that's what makes 911 ownership so cool. Under the hood of this one, a turbocharged 3.6-liter flat-six churns out 444 HP in later models identical to the 959 without the added weight of all-wheel-drive.
2 Maserati 3200GT
In 1998, Maserati bounced back from the doldrums of the shocking Bi-turbo era, no more underwhelming boxy coupes, in their place a beautifully styled 2+2 sports car worthy of the name. Wearing the kind of body that only Giugiaro could create, the 3200GT became an instant hit with gearheads.
There is something cool-sounding about Italian car names, Ferrari, Lamborghini, and now Maserati could be added to the list. This was no mere styling makeover, under the skin, a modern 3.2-liter twin-turbo V8 producing 320 HP meant the 3200GT went as good as it looked, hitting 60 MPH in 5.1-seconds.
1 Peugeot 406 Coupe
Any Peugeot 4-series model immediately conjures images of diesel-powered taxi cabs clattering around European city streets, which makes this much prettier 406 Coupe all the more surprising. Of course, this cool coupe isn't the work of Peugeot's own design team, this is a svelte Pininfarina design, some claim to have been rejected by Ferrari.
And you'd be further surprised just how well Coupe drives. If there is one thing Peugeot can claim to do well, it's chassis set-ups. The 406 is exceptionally agile during spirited driving. We're not suggesting it's going to be a storming sleeper car even with the 3-liter V6 option, but it's how it looks that makes this forgotten Coupe so cool.