While I am personally not cool, I think I have a reasonable sense of which vehicles are viewed as fashionable or interesting by both car people and the general population. A 1964.5 Mustang is one of those cars that was born cool and has remained cool for its entire life, no matter who you ask. A 2nd-generation Prius was a vehicle that car people hated at launch, but now have grown to appreciate.
What I’m curious about is finding a vehicle that had some buzz when it launched, garnered indifference or even hate, and then quickly turned it around to become appreciated again. Right at the top of the list, for me, is the Hummer H3T. Based on the same GMT355 platform as the Colorado/Canyon (and similar Isuzu trucks), it was launched as a capable and more aesthetically interesting mid-size truck.
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I remember people being excited about this vehicle and how it performed at launch. The Hummer brand appeals to that innate desire many of us have to own a real Tonka Truck one day. While most of them rolled out with the strange inline-five GM used for a while, the one to have was the H3T Alpha with the 5.3-liter V8 and the dual-range transfer case/locking diffs. This was a truck that was immediately cherished but, through its association with the soon-to-be-scuttled Hummer brand, suddenly became a truck without a home… for about 15 seconds.
A used H3T Alpha isn’t a collector’s item, exactly, but they’ve long held their value as a truck that looks cooler than almost any rig from the era. And with 300 horsepower, it’s not exactly slow. Compare that to the H2, which landed with a thud and is not particularly beloved by anyone other than hardcore Hummer fans.
That’s what I thought of, but I’m sure you can do better.
Top image: GM
SN95 Mustang. The 94-98 pre-New Edge version.
A complete hit when it came out, then everyone soured on it, first for abandoning the 5.0, then for being too 90s looking. But it’s back in good graces again for its rad era feel and being the last of the bad old days, analog Mustangs.
My friends stopped calling my 95 gts a sorority girl car a couple years ago when they figured out it’s actually cool ass car.
There’s a pre-NE GT where I live that someone has clearly put effort into restoring. Still looks pretty sharp, though honestly they always did.
Lots of random interesting cars around me — owners mostly on the younger side (late 20s to early 30s) put real effort into. RSX Type S another one.
Someone had a dark blue XV20 Camry Solara cabrio in ridiculously good shape, but started hooptie-ing it. Was a violent punk, and got kicked out of his place. An older woman around here owns it now, and I’m certain it’ll be neglected from now on.
Thats what I thought when I saw one on the side of the road for sale, its the V6 but it was very clean, no rust, and just for $3000, I got it. Its so comfy and has enough power to move very decent. There is something about the simplicity of the interior, I dont even have to look when I hit a button or switch.
Because today is opposite day…
The 1960 Ford Falcon was completely uncool. A few years later, people discovered that beater Falcons could be upgraded with Mustang parts, so it became cool. That was short-lived, and it became uncool again. Then sometime in the 1990s, hipsters discovered old Falcons, and they became cool again.
The H3T became cool again?
Is this another one of those “I’m old and don’t understand what the kids like anymore” moments?
Well I don’t know if they are really “cool” now, it’s just that GM made about 13 of them before going bankrupt. So it’s more of a rarity + specific car nerds wanting one.
(I’m one of those nerds)
The S2000 went from beloved to overlooked pretty quickly during its production run. By 2009, monthly sales were in the double digits. At a used book store, I thumbed through a late-2000s picture book on convertibles that featured 350Z and Corvette softtops, but not a whiff of the S2k.
We all know how quickly its desirability went back up after its production run ended.
The last Ford Thunderbird by J. Mays.
Also the Plymouth Prowler. Everyone loved it at first and then hated it because of the V6. It’s definitely a cool collectible classic the likes of which we’ll never see a major manufacturer do again. The Dodge Prowler will probably be some “off-road” oriented crossover slathered in plastic cladding with some orange tow hooks if it ever gets revived.
For me, that T-bird was always cool. Even in its heyday, personal luxury cars were getting rarer, much less something as relatively lithe as the T-bird. I was always impressed at how it managed to capture the same ethos as the original; it was just by the 00s, people’s tastes had changed.
Those orange covers on the tow hooks will be shipping protectors intended to be discarded. Of course everybody will insist on leaving them on.
How about the Chevy Avalanche and it’s sea of unpainted plastic cladding. At least the nifty midgate lives on with the Silverado EV.
Honda CR-V
Edit: I misunderstood the assignment. The new CR-V is cool.
I’ll put the Honda Element in this fight. I’ve never owned one, but I think about it sometimes.
They for sure fell off the cool podium at a rapid rate. People are now (again) starting to notice reliability and utility with the box on wheels with convenient doors can be cool.
I’m with you on this one.
They definitely went through the arc of cool at launch to who wants that then wait they’re discontinuing that cool little vehicle.
The thinking with the Element and Scion xB was that these boxy little things would appeal to the youths (who make brands cool). Instead, they mostly appealed to middle-aged women (who make brands uncool), so the manufacturers let the cars die. Only later, as you say, did people realize their incredible durability and utility (and that maybe the middle-aged women had been right all along) and make them cool again.
i don’t think they were ever in the “cool” car segment. they were this oddity that almost nobody knew existed and by the time word got out how AWESOME they really were honda stopped selling them! If honda brought it back and it could tow at least 4k pounds i would want one for sure. I know honda would make it either a hybrid or give it the 1.5t engine but i think the na v6 would probably suite the element better.
i think the suicide/half doors is what made them so innocuous if you just glance at the element it seems small because the 2 door profile but its actually quite roomy inside.
Were Elements ever mainstream “cool”? I love them for taking the Kei van ethos of space efficiency and versatility and upsizing it for the US market, but I always thought they only appealed to quirky car buyers. Like I could totally see a Saab buyer having one.
My college buddy had a manual AWD one, and it was awesome.
Had a Saab. Wanted an Element. I am your cliche
I wanted the Element until I drove the Saab! in 2003 I was in high school and side impact airbags were rare and extremely effective, so that was the limiting factor. Shopping went from:
Now 20yrs later, I’m a glutton for pain and have pretty exclusively driven Saabs since HS.
Ah, one of the family
Have a 900 turbo. Only new car I’ve ever purchased was a 2003 (first year) Element. Bought it because my wife said I had to have something responsible for a new baby. Now that baby just graduated college and it’s her car!
900 turbo and an Element. Well done.
Scion xB
Those were always cool.
Toyota Previa 100%. Initially “cool” perhaps more in that it was different and well regarded. It became just another dorky/soccer mom mobile for a while. Not sure when it started to get cool again, but there’s definitely a lot more “hey sweet a Previa” kind of mentality now than 2000-2015.
I think they started to get cool when people realized that the S/C model was a supercharged intercooled mid-engine AWD jellybean that seated 7.
i think when they were newer they were too expensive and shiny now that they are older and people started modding/lifting them people realized the potential.
As “just a minivan” the previa is not as good at it’s job as it’s american counterparts. but when you consider the off road capability and the fun-to-drive factor that is what makes the tradeoffs worth it.
I’d have to say the Aztek.
Was it cool at first? That’s debatable, but I’d say it was more like “surprising”. Then it was loathed for a while, but gained traction again after Breaking Bad. It’s now cool to see one.
The original concept was cool. The execution/production version was not. Then BB made it cool.
the aztek was, essentially, what every modern crossover eventually became. they just went crazy with the styling. There is a reson why most ‘concept cars’ get Much more tame when they come to production and the aztek is the example of why automakers don’t just build the concept car.
I think minivans could apply here. While they’re not mainstream popular anymore (at least in the US – China seems to love them), they’ve seen a bit of resurgence.
really depends on what you classify as a ‘minivan” because cars like the pilot and highlander are just minivans without sliding doors and a “suv” shaped body.
Muscle cars fell off a cliff during the oil embargoes, climbed to ridiculous heights at auctions, and are dropping slowly, like their current owners.
it’s almost like the popularity of muscle cars follow the economy as a whole. economy down muscle car down. economy strong muscle car up.
Hybrids.
The Bronco was cool for a long time, one low speed police chase in the 90s and suddenly it was deeply uncool. The road back to cool wasn’t exactly a fast one though.
VW New Beetle & Chrysler PT Cruiser.
Both initial hits, then overplayed, now the former is the apple of more than a few Gen Zer’s eye (my daughter included), and the latter is once again being appreciated as distinct packaging of an extremely practical & economical hauler
I was going to say the new beetle as well!
The first time I saw one of those Smyth Ute kits on a New Beetle, I thought, “might the NB become cool again?”
Toyota FJ Cruiser, for sure. Sold really well at first, then the demand dropped enough for Toyota to discontinue the model. Now, they’re pretty sought after.
As a FJ driver, you’re likely right. I always regretted selling my first one (couldn’t afford the payment and adult rent at the time) and after a bunch of cars in between, I’ve got one again. But yeah, they sold well, then the crash came and killed it. Seems like unless the SUV was a really well-established model (4Runner, Explorer, etc.), the crash really killed that entire generation of others. But yeah, FJs have really held value over the years and they’re still fun to drive (if you ignore the gas mileage)
Good call! Look at the sales figures of those, they sold a good amount the first two years then it dropped off a cliff. Excluding the first model year, I believe the worst sales year of JK Wrangler was still better than the entirety of FJ sales.
I’ve always wondered why exactly it left the market, given that they didn’t stop selling it in a lot of other markets (maybe some regulatory ish?). Parts availability is probably pretty great since sooooo many were sold globally.
Stay with me here. Gonna pitch the Aztek. There was a lot of hype surrounding its debut. The hype quickly turned to revulsion at its appearance, and now in the last few years, people are starting to love them both ironically and for their versatility.
Any pre-war “royalty” cars.
Cost the equivalent of millions when new, bought in some cases for a couple hundred bucks after WWII (before anyone had the idea of a classic car) and worth millions again now.
Bugatti Royale, Duesenberg, Cadillac V16, Mercedes 770, the stories are endless (and jealousy-inspiring)
The Bugatti Royale was such a dud upon release I remember reading that Ettore drove one around for a while himself because there were no buyers. It took four years just to sell six of them.
Kind of related, but not really:
Growing up, the neighbor down the street had a prototype Corvette (EX-122, Jack Ingle in the story). Back in the ’60s they would use it to take garbage to the dump and things like that. They said it was a totally unremarkable old Corvette that no one cared about. It wasn’t until the ~’80s that it started being deemed important.
https://www.corvettes.nl/gm_prototypes/ex122/index.html
Accurate except for price. Though it’s possible some oddball one-off would exceed an inflation-adjusted $1M, nothing that I know of was in that range back then. Even the Bugatti Royale was only about $3/4M post coachbuilder bills and they were only able to eventually sell 6 of a planned 25 (though Ettore refused to sell one to an actual royal because of his table manners, reputedly) and “regular” Duesenbergs were in the lower level modern Ferrari range (these all varied to some degree since they were often custom coachbuilt by outside companies and it’s tough to get solid numbers). A famous one-off Duesenberg was called the Twenty Grand for its outrageous price in 1933, which is about $1/2M today.
One could argue that some vehicles equipped with VWs cheating diesel engines qualify. Cool when they came out, because of the efficiency and the novelty of being a diesel, in the US anyway, where diesel passenger cars never really took off. From what I recall they were generally liked by the automotive press at the time. Plus you could get it in a wagon with a manual!
Uncool when VW got righteously busted for emissions cheating. People sold their cars back to VW in droves and from what I heard about the deals VW offered, I don’t blame them. It felt like diesel was a dirty word for a while, particularly if you were talking about passenger cars.
Cool again now that they’ve been fixed and re-sold. I get a lot of compliments on my 2014 Sportwagen TDI (a buyback car I purchased in 2020) and no one mentions the emissions cheating thing. Some people have no idea what Dieselgate is at all. Plus, you know, the whole enthusiast trope of “manual diesel wagon,” though I refuse to accept that brown is the right color. I went with red.
I mean, maybe “cool” isn’t the right word for an 11 year old VW wagon, but I’ve had so many compliments about the Sportwagen, more than I ever got with my VW CC or even the GTI I had before that.
I hope you have better luck than I did with mine. Both a coworker and I bought 2014 Sporwagen TDIs when VW started dumping them back for pennies on the dollar. Paid $14,000 for mine in 2018 with 33K miles. Both were lemons with a bunch of problems that were thankfully fixed either with the CPO warranty or dieselgate warranty. I dumped mine in 2022 to Carvana for $17,000.
(VW paid to repair the panoramic moonroof in both of our cars for more than $5,000. His had the DPF replaced twice. Mine had a persistence intercooler icing problem with a service bulletin that VW refused to fix unless I had the vehicle towed to the dealer hydrolocked…..)
Mine has held together pretty well! I had a rear caliper sieze up but since my car sat for 2+ years I chalked it up to that. My instrument cluster lights started acting up so I had to send it off for repair, that was the worst. Oh and my rear middle seatbelt locked up and I’m gonna have to cut it. For VW problems, that’s not terrible. Everything else was mods and the timing belt replaced on schedule. It had 35k on it when I bought it in 2020 and has maybe 68k on it now. I work from home so I don’t drive a ton.
I am immensely thankful my car doesn’t have the pano sunroof, from what I’ve gathered they’re awful.
True to that. The problem for me is that I owned a Toyota hybrid between my 2003 Jetta Wagon TDI and the 2014 Sportwagen TDI. It required almost nothing but scheduled maintenance for 13 years / 150K miles. (The only unscheduled repair was a stuck 3 way coolant thermos valve – $100 and 2 hour fix)
Yeah, a Toyota will definitely spoil you there! My fiancee has a 2018 Mazda3 hatch with over 80k miles on it. All I’ve had to do is oil and filter changes, it’s marvelous. It’s still on the original brake pads! Between the Sportwagen and my air-cooled Beetle, I have enough to keep me busy. He had an 09 Ford Fusion before the Mazda and it was more unreliable than any VW I’ve come across. I think it hated me.
The Delorean.
I’ve never thought the H3 was cool, even at launch. Too much of a military cosplay vehicle, at least the H1 was cool like the postwar Jeeps were cool, but The H2 and H3 were just tryhards with no pedigree, also great fodder for the Hummer Rescue Team stickers on every lifted Jeep of the era.
Delorean is a great pick.
They came out to a whole bunch of fanfare, didn’t hold up performance-wise to the visuals it gave off, then the whole company collapsed and it became the butt of numerous jokes. Two years after that the movie comes out and suddenly they became cool again.
Came here to say Delorean.
Matt, for someone who is about my age and was around for this, I’m disappointed in this ahistorical take. The H2 was the hottest of hot shit in 2003 and it wasn’t until the trifecta of oil prices rising, Bush/Iraq backlash, and recession looming later in the decade that the Hummer name became the punchline it’s mostly remained since.
The H2 was the hottest of hot shit in 2003 thanks to an unholy trifecta of aggressive patriotic military cosplay, xenophobia and testosterone poisoning machismo.
But you agree, it was the hottest of hot shit in 2003, right?
Not to me. I thought it was lame.
The Hummer and the Ford Excursion became the twin pariahs of the Bush era.
Except the Excursion got cool again because it actually can be a useful vehicle if you have to tow while carting around a big group of people while the H2 was kind of just big and daft.
A look at the sales data shows they peaked their first year at 35,000 and then dropped like a stone. (H3 did the same)
Hardly “landing with a thud” then.
Agreed, not a thud. Maybe they were scorned wherever Matt and Cheap Bastard lived but I remember everyone talking about them at the time. A friend even had a toy one (could have been a knockoff).
Even without the culture changing around it (and rising gas prices) it’s one of those cars where everyone who wanted one and could afford it bought the first model year or two.
Maybe the C6 Corvette?
“Cool” when it came out (although we all miss the pop up headlights from the C5), then Uncool with all the Boomer obsession and Jort crowd, and now cool again as an analog sports car for relatively ‘cheap’ money.
See also: most Corvette iterations since 1968.
Miata, duh.
The Miata was uncool for a while? Serious question.
Absolutely, even I hated them for a while until I bought one as a project car for very cheap. They were the “hairdresser’s” car as a stereotype.
When it comes to affordable cars, you don’t widely find out just how capable or flawed they are until the end of the warranty / lease period. This turned out to be a real gem as have many other Mazda cars.
For a while they were known as the “just divorced dad” car where I lived.
The record holder has GOT to be the Cybertruck. When it was announced, the hype was unreal. Once released,the frenzy began. Now, what, less than a year later, Tesla can’t GIVE them away.
Will they come back around, though? Gooooood question…
“Tesla can’t GIVE them away.”
I mean if they’re GIVING* them away I’ll take the lot!
* I suspect your definition of “giving” is dramatically different from mine.
I mean, yeah, all that stainless steel has got to have some scrap value.
I can see these being a bit like Aztecs down the road – a relatively rare sight that will trigger a “wow, haven’t seen one of those in awhile”. But it’s going to be quite some time before the stink comes off of them. And we’ll have to see how that stainless steel fares 10-15 years down the road.
In the meantime, no, they don’t qualify. They’re nowhere near “cool again”.
They may win the title of fastest “cool to not cool”, though.
Please god no