20 Cars That Look Completely Different Once You See Them in Person
The Camera Lies About Size
Car photos are almost always shot from low angles with wide lenses. That combination does strange things to scale, and a supercar that fills an entire poster can barely reach your hip in a parking lot. Trucks go the other way, looking ordinary online until you're standing beside a grille taller than your kid. Brushed metal and bare steel play their own tricks under real light. Here's 20 cars that look completely different once you see them in person.
1. Ford GT40
The name is a measurement. Ford's Le Mans racer stands about 40 inches tall, low enough that most adults can rest an elbow on the roof without bending. It beat Ferrari at Le Mans four years running, from 1966 to 1969, after Henry Ford II's attempt to buy Ferrari fell apart.
2. Lamborghini Countach
Almost none of the Countach posters that hung in 1980s bedrooms showed how low the car sits, at just 42 inches. The giant rear wing on so many posters was an option added in the late 1970s. Rear visibility is so poor that drivers famously back it up by opening the scissor door and perching on the sill to look behind them.
3. Peel P50
Guinness lists the Peel P50 as the smallest production car ever made, at 54 inches long. With a single door and no reverse gear, it gets moved around by a handle on the back. Jeremy Clarkson drove one through the BBC's offices for Top Gear in 2007, riding an elevator without ever climbing out.
Andrew Bone from Weymouth, England on Wikimedia
4. Messerschmitt KR200
The company that built fighter planes for the Luftwaffe was barred from making aircraft after the war, so it put the KR200 on sale in 1955. In the little three-wheeler, the passenger sits directly behind the driver, and the whole top is a clear canopy that swings open sideways. You steer with something closer to handlebars than a wheel.
5. Smart Fortwo
A current Smart Fortwo is less than 9 feet from bumper to bumper, short enough to fit crosswise in some parallel parking spots. Parked between two ordinary sedans, it looks like it wandered into the wrong space by mistake. Seen in profile, it's mostly doors and windshield, with barely any hood at all.
6. The Original Mini
The first Mini, launched in 1959, was 10 feet long and rode on 10-inch wheels. Today's two-door is almost three feet longer and a good deal wider, even though the shape is still recognizably the same car, and those original wheels were about the size of a large dinner plate.
7. Mazda Miata
Mazda has built more than a million Miatas since 1989, enough for Guinness to name it the best-selling two-seat sports car in history. The current one measures under 13 feet and stands only about four feet tall. Getting in feels closer to lowering yourself into a bathtub than sitting down in a seat, especially with the top up.
8. Porsche 911
At about 178 inches, the current 911 Carrera is shorter than a current Honda Civic sedan. Its rear seats exist, but they're better suited to a bag of groceries than an adult. The engine hangs out behind the rear axle, where Porsche has kept it since 1963.
David Villarreal Fernández on Wikimedia
9. DeLorean DMC-12
The DeLorean's gull-wing doors, made famous by Back to the Future, look like they'd need a whole driveway to open. They only need about 11 inches of clearance at the side, less than many regular car doors. In daylight, the unpainted, brushed stainless steel body also shows every smudge and fingerprint.
10. McLaren F1
Only 106 were built between 1992 and 1998, race cars included. From outside, you'd never guess that the driver sits dead center with a passenger seat tucked slightly behind on each side. The engine bay is lined with gold foil to reflect heat, since gold is one of the best heat reflectors there is.
11. BMW i3
Look at the tires, which BMW made as narrow as 155 millimeters on tall 19-inch wheels, a combination that looks almost like a bicycle's from the side. With its tall, narrow body on top, the i3 seems to be standing on tiptoe.
12. Citroën 2CV
Citroën launched the 2CV in 1948 to carry farmers and their goods across rough country roads, and it looks the part up close. The roof is a canvas sheet that rolls back almost to the rear bumper, turning the car into something close to a convertible. The body panels are thin enough that you can see them flex when someone leans on a fender.
13. Mercedes G-Class
The G-Class stands close to six and a half feet tall, taller than most of the people who drive it. Mercedes has built it largely by hand in Graz since 1979. It still looks like a box on wheels, with door handles around chest height on many adults and doors that shut with a heavy mechanical clack.
Julian Herzog (Website) on Wikimedia
14. Rolls-Royce Phantom
Nearly 19 feet from end to end and weighing more than 5,600 pounds, the Phantom takes up a lot of curb. The rear doors open backward from the middle, and each front door hides an umbrella in a slot built into the frame. From the driver's seat, the Spirit of Ecstasy ornament sits a long way out.
15. Hummer H1
The original Hummer, a civilian version of the Army's Humvee, is 86.5 inches wide, about 14 inches wider than a Toyota Camry. Inside, a huge center tunnel separates the driver from the passenger so thoroughly that conversation takes some effort. On a normal city street, it fills most of a lane.
16. GMC Hummer EV
The electric Hummer's battery pack weighs close to 3,000 pounds on its own, about as much as a whole Honda Civic. The launch edition topped 9,000 pounds in total, more than twice the weight of a typical midsize sedan. The rear wheels steer too, letting it creep diagonally in a mode GMC calls CrabWalk.
DestinationFearFan on Wikimedia
17. Tesla Cybertruck
In pictures, the Cybertruck can pass for a video game prop, but the real thing is more than 18 feet long with flat panels of unpainted stainless steel that catch light at hard angles. The bed walls come up high enough that loading anything over the side takes a real stretch.
18. Ford F-250 Super Duty
Consumer Reports measured the front edge of the F-250's hood at 55 inches or more off the ground, about level with the roof of a Toyota Prius. Behind the wheel, a good stretch of pavement disappears in front of the grille. Ford offers a 360-degree camera system on the Super Duty to fill in that view.
19. Chevrolet Suburban
Chevrolet has used the Suburban name since 1935, longer than any other nameplate still on sale. Today's model runs about 226 inches, close to 19 feet, which leaves little room to walk around it inside a 20-foot garage. Pulling in usually means folding the mirrors and squeezing out sideways.
20. Original Volkswagen Beetle
Modern traffic makes a classic Beetle look tiny, and at a little over 13 feet, it is. The air-cooled engine sits in the back under a small lid, and you can hear it clatter from down the block. You can often spot a first-time passenger by the moment they open the front trunk expecting to find an engine.
