London Newspaper Selects 100-Most Beautiful Cars (Introduction)

Newspapers publish polls and reader surveys on all kinds of subjects — favorite recipes to family memories. Sustaining readership, enticing new subscribers and keeping advertisers happy is the name of the newspaper game.

In the automotive world, it’s possible nothing else could gain as much survey attention as asking readers to either tell mechanic nightmare stories or give their opinions on the most beautiful cars in the world.

I prefer the latter subject, and it’s what makes a recent survey in The Daily Telegraph in London, England, a marketing wonderment and a journalistic golden nugget. The newspaper simply asked readers to send it their choices for “The 100 Most Beautiful Cars.”

This week, the newspaper began counting down the results in reverse order. It’ll be a few more days before the readers’ top choice among thousands of votes for 367 specific models is published.

In the meantime, the multi-part article is a great read. A picture of each of vehicle is followed by a succinct assessment, some of which are profoundly elegant.

And The Weekly Driver can’t help but gush over the results, unveiled by Telegraph editors with an introduction that it part reads:

“A remarkably varied collection of curves and straight lines, old and new. If classic cars predominate, it is probably because like great art, it takes time for a design to escape the influence of fashion and to be fairly judged on its on merits.”

The Weekly Driver will blog about the results in 20-choice increments, but here’s a tease:

#85, Land Rover Defender. Telegraph Editor’s comment: “As beautiful as they come should you need to climb mountains, ford streams or follow rainbows.”

Stay tuned.