It’s that time of year again when houses are decked in fake cobwebs, shops are filled with an assortment of orange plastic tat, and kids are frantically banging on your front door to get their next hit of sugary treats.
But whether you love or loathe Halloween, it’s at least an ample opportunity for petrolheads to reminisce about some of the most horrifying vehicles from years past.
And there are plenty of reasons why cars can fall into the bracket of petrifying.
Some simply terrify drivers with their sheer speed or sketchy handling.
Others have spine-chilling reputations for being unreliable or popular among some of the world’s most evil characters.
And some have safety reputations that would make a zombie think twice about getting behind the wheel.
So, which are the scariest of all?
We’ve teamed up with classic car experts at Hagerty to pick ten models that could give the average slasher movie a run for its money in the sweaty palms stakes…
1. AC Cobra
When US tuner Shelby started putting big-block V8 engines in the diminutive and incredibly light AC Ace’s chassis, it turned the sports car into an almost untamable beast to drive. Those who have driven one will probably tell you it’s the most terrifying car from behind the wheel
Powered by a 100-horsepower 2.0-litre inline six-cylinder unit, the original fifties AC Ace’s engine was brisk but certainly not overwhelming for its chassis.
But when US tuner Shelby dropped a variety of V8 big-block powerplants into the two-seater in the sixties, it became such a handful that turning the key was like making a deal with the devil.
In its most potent variant, the Cobra 427, the roadster made 425bhp – 300bhp more than that mild-mannered Ace on which it was based.
With a tiny 2,286mm (90 inch) wheelbase – barely longer than that of an original Mazda MX-5 – sixties tyre technology and rudimentary suspension, keeping one out of a ditch required the finesse and reaction times of a fighter pilot.
Ask anyone who has driven an AC Cobra 427 about the driving experience and they’ll probably turn white as a sheet recalling the sheer volume of close calls.
2. Tatra T87
The Tata T87 handled so poorly that the Nazis banned soldiers from driving them because they’d become so deadly
You often wonder whether tales of a car’s poor handling have been exaggerated over time. But there’s no questioning facts when it comes to the Tatra T87, which is a motor that turned so poorly that it makes a Reliant Robin feel like it’s on rails.
It was rumoured to have bumped off several Nazi officers during Czechoslovakia’s wartime occupation, it drove that poorly. And the spate of incidents was apparently so bad that the party banned its soldiers from driving them.
The reason for why it was so life-threatening to drive was a combination of factors: a swing axle design at the rear, an enormous V8 engine hanging out the back, a relatively narrow track, and quite a tall profile.
In isolation, these characteristics aren’t a huge problem. Combine them all and you have a deathtrap on wheels.
3. Rover Metro 100
The Rover Metro 100 series ticked all the right boxes in terms of being cheap and affordable to run. But its crash test performance was nothing short of frightening…
In the early 1990s, the Rover Metro 100 scored a woeful 1-star rating in the European crash assessments
UK safety and security specialist Thatcham Research put the Rover 100 through the 2010s standard for Euro NCAP – and it caused a scene similar to that of a horror film
The true horror of the Rover Metro 100 series was exposed at a time when vehicle crash testing had just become the norm.
While there were plenty of cars around the early 1990s – and certainly before – that are less safe than Rover’s supermini, the ignominy of a one-star Euro NCAP rating will stay with the 100 forever.
For those who don’t recall the original Euro NCAP images that resulted – which look like a horror film starring crash test dummies – Thatcham Research, based in the UK, recreated the tests in the early 2010s. And we’ve included the photographic evidence for you…
4. Mercedes-Benz 600 Grosser
The Mercedes-Benz 600 ‘Grosser’ is a terrifying car by reputation, having been used by some of history’s most notorious dictators
The Mercedes-Benz 600 ‘Grosser’ is a frightening car by reputation alone.
While the likes of John Lennon, David Bowie, Jack Nicholson and Coco Chanel aren’t exactly terrifying (notwithstanding Nicholson’s most famous role), others who made entrances in Grossers were far less admirable.
Idi Amin, Kim Jong Il, Nicolae Ceaușescu, Pablo Escobar, Saddam Hussein: they’ve all been pictured in one.
The Grosser’s list of owners over the years is nothing if not diverse, but definitely tends towards the unsettling.
5. Christine, the Plymouth Fury
The Fury was the main character in horror flick, Christine, which told the tale of a possessed car that would go on a killing spree
In the film, the Fury is bought by Arnie Cunningham, played by Keith Gordon, who restores it and begins to take on some of the car’s personality traits. Christine begins killing people who have inflicted pain on it and Arnie, including Arnie’s bullies
The Plymouth Fury would probably have been remembered as just another enormous American muscle car… had it not been for the 1983 movie, Christine.
There, ‘Fury’ was quite an appropriate model choice for the eponymously-named car.
If you’ve never seen the movie, we’d suggest you skip ahead to avoid spoilers.
The big Plymouth had a mind of its own from the day it was built, slamming its bonnet on a worker’s hand and mysteriously killing a line worker who dropped cigar ash on its seats.
The Fury is later bought by Arnie Cunningham, played by Keith Gordon, who restores it and begins to take on some of the car’s personality traits.
Christine begins killing people who have inflicted pain on it and Arnie, including Arnie’s bullies, the owner of the restoration garage, and eventually kills Arnie himself in an accident at the end of the movie.
Thankfully, despite the Fury name, the real cars are somewhat placid to drive.
6. Bugatti Veyron
They Bugatti Veyron wasn’t just face-rearrangingly fast, it was outrageously expensive to bring to market. It must have caused real terror for the Volkswagen Group’s accountants
When the Veyron arrived in 2005, it set a new standard for hypercars. Not least for its jaw-dropping performance.
But it’s not the staggering speed of this machine that’s most terrifying of all – it’s the cost associated with bringing it to market, which must have be a real cause of terror for the Volkswagen Group’s accountants.
The Veyron’s development cost the group around $1.6billion in investment. Bugatti sold 450 Veyrons between 2005 and 2015, priced between $1million and $2million depending on the model.
Sources vary, but Bugatti is estimated to have lost between $2million and $4million per unit, easily eclipsing most other loss-making cars in automotive history.
James Dean’s Porsche 550 Spyder
The Porsche 550 Spyder is infamous for one particular version – ‘Little Bastard’. This was the car that James Dean infamously lost his life in. Parts of the car were sold on – and led to even more tragedy
The Porsche 550 Spyder is infamous for being the car in which James Dean lost his life. But the motor the Hollywood star nicknamed ‘Little Bastard’ didn’t stop after his crash in September 1955.
And its future movements suggested the car was cursed from the start.
The guts of the Porsche were subsequently bought by an amateur racer, William Eschrich, who installed the engine in his Lotus IX, and loaned further parts to another racer, Troy McHenry. Both drivers crashed at Pomona in 1956, and while Escrich survived, McHenry was killed.
Customiser George Barris bought Little Bastard’s shell, and the car went on tour with the National Safety Council, under whose tenure it was involved in a warehouse fire in 1959.
Barris sold two of the 550’s tyres, which apparently blew and pitched their new owner off the road, and the car is reported to have fallen in both display and in transport, injuring one person and killing another.
Ford Nucleon
A nuclear-powered car – what could have ever gone wrong? Ford’s 1957 Nucleon concept would have almost spelled disaster had the US brand considered putting it into production
Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima – not words you tend to associate with technological success. And they’re why nuclear energy can tend to make people a tad twitchy.
As such, Ford’s 1957 decision to consider launching the Nucleon seems utterly terrifying today.
There were benefits to its unusual power source; going 5,000 miles between reactor changes while producing effectively zero-emissions, for instance.
Like a modern nuclear power plant, the Nucleon used heat from the fission reactor to generate steam for its power (albeit directly, rather than using that steam to generate electricity).
Take a few steps back though, and maybe it wasn’t such a great idea.
Firstly, just look at how much of the car’s footprint is taken up by the reactor – it’d have to be even bigger to realistically seat a ‘nuclear family’.
Then there’s the potential cost of those reactor replacements every 5,000 miles, the constant stops for water, and yes, the potential for your driveway becoming an exclusion zone if anything ever went wrong.
Thankfully, this a car that never left the drawing board.
Citroen SM
For what was designed to be a relatively typical mainstream car, the costs associated with keeping a Citroen SM running are more attune to a supercar. Collectors probably have nightmares about them
A well-maintained and set-up Citroen SM can be truly a thing of joy – one of the great grand touring cars, with brisk performance, a spectacular ride, unique handling, a great exhaust note from its Maserati V6 engine, and styling that still looks otherworldly.
But in terms of upkeep, maintenance and restoration, the costs associated to have one on the road are equivalent to purchasing a small country.
Rust is a never-ending problem, though so is the Maserati engine and complex hydropneumatic suspension system – and all three typically require a remortgage to rectify.
Sinclair C5
The Sinclair C5 – the brain child of Clive Sinclair – was designed to be a mobility solution with plenty of eco benefits. But it had a major flaw…
Of all the ‘vehicles’ you could drive on the road, the Sinclair’s C5 tiny proportions, low body and pedestrian speed makes it one of the most frightening to use
Give Clive Sinclair his due, the Sinclair C5 was a nice idea. It was easy to park and store, and its mixture of leg and electric power was a hell of a lot less polluting than the average car from 1985.
The design also proven quite resilient and easy to fix, given the plastic body and very simple mechanicals, so the C5 is never likely to become landfill in any great quantity.
Unfortunately though, C5 ownership doesn’t take place in a closed system, where the only other things moving around are pedestrians and cyclists.
Painted white and adorned with reflective yellow stripes might have given owners a false sense of security. But as soon as they drove one in traffic – hobbled by a 15mph top speed – it was nothing short of terrifying.
Even by today’s standards, sharing the road with cars equipped with more safety features than a 1980s Boeing, it is an unnerving experience.
Wind the clocks back to 1985 when most people were driving Mk3 Escorts – far from the last word in collision mitigation – and taking one on the highway must have been enough to trigger a coronary.
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