Top 50: Best-looking F1 cars of all time

[afx]

Since the Formula 1 World Championship began in 1950, the aesthetics of car design have wowed racing fans just as much as the star drivers who raced them. Here’s our favourite 50 – in no particular order – and have your say in the comments.

Link to the cars: www.motorsport.com/f1/news/best-looking-formula-one-cars-top-50/3209039/

[robhart]

Nothing built after 1990 should be on that list. I think they are confusing attractive liveries with attractive cars. In my opinion, almost any car built prior to 1980 is going to be better looking than any car built after 1980.

[vintagerpm]

So Motorsport.com has degraded itself to clickbait. Well, I ain't playin'.
Although, I've always loved the looks of that 7-Up Jordan.

Mike

[dustymojave]

I was thinking about this issue the other day in researching for my Lotus 49 and Brabham BT33 builds.

As a young man I had lots of ideas about race car aero. If I told you the ideas I came up with in the 1960s, you would all hoot me off of the internet with disbelief. So I'm not gonna tell ya. Let's just say my very early formula car ideas were seen on much later cars. As it turned out, those ideas I had were correct and tried in much later years in F5000, F1 and other major formulas.

Aerodynamically, I like much newer cars. Yet still I vastly prefer the aesthetics of formula cars of the 1960s over later cars. Even though they do not support my own aerodynamic or structural ideas. I find the recent F1 and Indy cars quite ugly, even if much of their design agrees with my 50 year old design concepts. It's like I, in the engineering side of my mind, feel very strongly that the shortest distance between 2 points is a straight line. That philosophy would produce quite simple structures. Yet, aesthetically, I like rustic stuff over modern, and mountains over plains, and front mounted radiators over rear side mounted radiators, I would rather see an art deco or Spanish Mission building than a sleek modern. A log cabin over a futuristic glass building. Or in furniture, I would rather see pieces hand made of raw timbers than Ikea modern.

So I feel the prettiest F1 cars would all be pre-1980. Probably pre-1972.

[Joel_W]

I'm with Richard on pre-1980s. As well as Robhart that quite a number of the cars were judged by their visual paint rather then the car design, as evidenced by the fact that so many of the cars were head shots or angles that you didn't see the whole car. But then you get the earlier cars of the 1960s where design was the deciding factor. Not seeing the AAR 1967 Eagle higher then 4th was a great disappoint to me.
Joel