And now for something completely different.

This strange beast is a Daimler SP250. It was produced by the Daimler company (owned by Jaguar) in 1963 as an attempt to grab some of the American market for British sports cars. Yes, I know it’s ugly, but there is something about its looks that fascinates. That ridiculous grille, for instance - is it really just a huge, cheesy grin?

Underneath the fiberglass body there lurks a hemispherical head V8 designed specifically for this car. So it performed well and was often used in competition. But it failed in its primary task, never really catching on in the States. By 1968 production had almost ceased and the SP250 was confined to history as a quirky but interesting aberration of a normally-conservative marque.

If nothing else, the design is brave. It was as though the company wanted something that built upon the tradition of the open sports car but introduced new elements like the pointed wings at the rear. And the result is a car so homely that I, for one, can’t help but like it.

But what of now? What is there to dream of today? Well, there are plenty but I quite like the Nissan 350 Z. It took a while to get used to it but it grows on you.

It’s all the fault of the Audi TT Coupé, of course. I think they realized that the old Auto Union rear engined racers from before WWII really had something and decided to re-create the look for today. In doing so, they introduced modern car design to the arc of a circle, something we haven’t seen in cars for more than fifty years. The strangest thing is that it works, once you’re over the initial shock.

And the Nissan 350 Z is a Japanese take on the theme, although they made things difficult for themselves by throwing in the triangle, that nemesis of 21st century design. Triangles are for static things like pyramids and don’t belong anywhere near anything that is intended to move.

But I have to admit that those Nissan designers have come close to making it work. By extending the triangles a long way along the body, they make them less obtrusive, almost mere flashes of color to highlight the rounded shapes of the rest of the car. They have understood, too, that what makes the Audi design successful is the suggestion of power it gives - hence the deliberately rectangular grille on the blunt nose of the Nissan.

Throw in some big wheels and a slight flare to the wheel arches and you have a close-coupled, compact design that looks as if it means business. Which is exactly what the designers wanted, of course. The Audi is prettier but the Nissan looks more powerful. Maybe those triangles have something to say about aggression, after all…

We all have our dream cars but what do the builders of such machines dream of? There is one car in the world that can give us the answer to that question: the Lamborghini 350GTV of 1963. And there is a tale told of how it came to be.

Ferrucchio Lamborghini was a successful tractor manufacturer who spent some of his money on fast cars. When his Ferrari developed gearbox problems, Ferrucchio went straight to the top to complain - Enzo Ferrari himself. And Enzo, becoming annoyed with his customer’s complaints, told him to stick to tractor building and let him worry about the cars. Furious, Ferrucchio went back to his factory and had the gearbox of his car dismantled to see what was causing the problem. On discovering that it was the same gearbox that he put in all his tractors, Ferrucchio blew his top and decided to show Enzo how to build a really good car.

The result was the 350 GTV. The engine was a V12 designed by an ex-Ferrari engineer, Giotto Bizzarrini, and it was state of the art, producing 350bhp. This was mated to a ZF gearbox and the whole thing clothed in a body designed by Franco Scaglione. It was a match for any Ferrari and Ferrucchio got back at il Commendatore by showing it off at the Turin Motor Show. Orders began to pour in and Ferrucchio realized that he was going to have to put it into production. He built a factory and the Lambo story began, leading to those Miuras, Countachs and Diablos that were always far beyond our means.

Few remember the first Lambo, however. After the production model appeared, now termed the 350 GT, the front end was revised and included fixed headlights that looked out of place somehow. It kept the distinctive rear end, however. The real dream remained the GTV, only one of which was made. It is not as extreme as the later supercars but has a style all its own.

Who remembers Studebaker? And, even if you do, who ever considered them as more than a small producer of different but odd American automobiles? Yet they created some of the best looking cars on the road, mostly thanks to the industrial designer, Raymond Loewy.

In Europe, car designers tend to do nothing else but Loewy was involved in the design of everything from duplicating machines to locomotives. Nothing was beyond his distinctive touch and he was responsible for the redesigned Coke bottle of 1955, Greyhound buses, Frigidaire refrigerators, the Lucky Strike packet, the interior of NASA’s Skylab space station and the Shell Oil logo, amongst innumerable others.

Studebaker employed his skills for many of their cars from the 1930s until 1956 and then, in 1963, called him back one more time to design the Avanti. Typically, he gave them a classic, a car so good looking that it survived the end of Studebaker car production in 1966, continuing as the Avanti II under various ownerships for forty years.

The Avanti’s design bridges the Atlantic, being clean enough for European tastes and yet retaining the long hood and square lines beloved of the Americans. It broke new ground in many ways, being the first mass production American car with disc brakes, adding a rollover bar and tucking the grill below the front bumper. Underneath its unusual body there lurked a 1953 chassis and an aging engine but this hardly mattered; the car was bought for its looks. Even so, the engine produced more power than the Ford Mustangs of the same period.

Many think that it looks strange or even ugly, probably thanks to the invisible grill, but in my opinion it is one of the best designs of the 20th century, needing no ornament to add to its sharp and bold lines. If nothing else, Raymond Loewy dared to be different. And the fact that it remained in production, admittedly in various guises, for so long shows how timeless is the design.