10 Cars that Made Complexity a Virtue

In the 1980s, it took Aston Martin a full 16 weeks to build just one of its Lagondas—and we suspect that a considerable percentage of that time was spent installing, troubleshooting, and repairing the incredibly complex electrical and electronics systems. (Usually without much success.) Virtually every function in what was at the time supposedly the world's fastest and definitely the world’s most expensive four-door is controlled by sensitive touch switches, and the dashboard is fully digital. Back in its day, we described the Lagonda as "part spaceship and part Rolls-Royce, with a strong dose of autobahn express thrown in for good measure." The ultra-angular exterior, designed by William Towns, itself incorporated four pop-up headlights for much of its run. The aluminum panels hide a solid steel structure and Aston Martin's powerful 5.3-liter V-8—mated to an ordinary three-speed Chrysler Torqueflite automatic. —Jens Meiners

Karl-Heinz Neumann was irritated. "If everything I have read in the past few days were correct, I would have to present you with a pile of junk right now," Bugatti’s then president bellowed at the Frankfurt auto show in September 2003. Newspapers and magazines had described the long-awaited Veyron 16.4 as a "debacle"—one haunted by cooling, aerodynamic, and tire problems. In the end, the quad-turbocharged, W-16–powered supercar came to market a year later than planned, but it met every one of its targets: 1001 horsepower, a top speed of 253 mph, everyday drivability. The sheer number of parts that had to be developed specifically for the Veyron is staggering, as few existing components were hardy enough to withstand the hellacious fury such a car could unleash upon them. Case in point: A trivial part like the fuel pump. There was not a single one in the Volkswagen Group or available from outside suppliers capable of delivering the necessary amount of fuel into the 16 combustion chambers. This is also a car that required three radiators, two intercoolers, and separate oil coolers for the transmission, differential, and engine oil. In total, 450 units were built, and New York–based Bernstein Research estimates that the VW Group lost about $6 million on each one of them. —Jens Meiners

The car spinning on the turntable at the 1955 Paris motor show was pure science fiction with a license plate. The front-drive Citroën DS, named for the French word déesse, or goddess, threw every engineering and styling convention out the window but managed to be both highly functional and remarkably beautiful. At its technical heart was a hydropneumatic suspension pressurized to 1900 psi by an engine-driven pump, a system under development since the Nazi occupation of France, when the work was done in secret.

The system completely replaced old-fashioned metal springs and tube dampers, instead suspending the car’s weight on four hydraulic rams. Atop those were fixed metal spheres, filled with nitrogen gas on one side of a diaphragm and pressurized hydraulic fluid on the other tied to the wheel motion. Hydraulic fluid is not compressible, but nitrogen is, so the gas served as both springing element and the shock absorber, while the hydraulic rams allowed various features, including constant ride-height adjustment while the car was in motion. Self-leveling and selectable ride height were other bonuses, with four settings available to the driver via a lever under the dash, the top one allowing jack-free wheel changing or, if necessary, slow-speed three-wheeled driving.

Citroën employed the hydraulic system to also provide power steering, the industry’s first front power-assisted disc brakes (with split circuits allowing automatic brake biasing depending on the car’s load), and power-assisted clutch engagement and gear selection in the semi-automatic transmission. An instant sensation and as much a French icon as the Eiffel Tower, the DS and its less expensive sister, the ID, remained in production for 20 years with 1.5 million built. —Aaron Robinson

Marcello Gandini had designed the lovely Lamborghini Miura in the 1960s, but his vision for a ’70s supercar, the Countach, was an absolute world-beater. With the flick of the pen that resulted in an oddball wheel arch, Gandini captured the bedroom-wall real estate of countless boys around the world. For a generation, it is the exotic car. And his follow-up car he designed for Lamborghini, while not quite the knockout that the Countach was, stands on its own as one of the most excessive machines ever to emerge from Italy.

No, it’s not the Diablo. Lamborghini’s masters at the time, Chrysler, saw Gandini’s vision and went for something more toned down. So Gandini and his design went to a man named Claudio Zampolli. Zampolli had a vision for a lurid, 16-cylinder machine. He also somehow roped international disco pioneer Giorgio Moroder into the project. The result was the Cizeta V16T, unveiled at the 1989 Los Angeles auto show. A mechanic who did some work on one once described the engine as “a couple of 308 motors stuck together.” And while the mills weren’t from Ferrari, the mid-mounted, transverse-oriented (!) engine was indeed based on Maranello’s engines, although, compared with the 308's V-8, it featured a larger bore and a shorter stroke. Maximum Italia and all that. A longitudinal ZF five-speed manual gearbox handled shifting duties.

But the best thing about the Cizeta is not the 16-cylinder engine. Nor is it Moroder’s brief involvement. It is unquestionably the fact that, like the Lagonda also on this list, the car features quad pop-up headlights. Perhaps the Diablo would have kept its pop-ups if Lambo hadn't fallen into the hands of Indonesian thug Tommy Suharto and his cronies. Perhaps cars would still have pop-ups today.

Instead, the V16T is an amusing footnote, a supercar, like the roughly contemporary Bugatti EB110, that never really found purchase. We’ll take ours with selective-yellow headlamps. We’ll drive it only at night, and then only behind a truck equipped with a fog machine. We have aesthetic standards to uphold, after all. Just like Marcello Gandini. —Davey G. Johnson

The act of lowering a convertible top can be as simple as you please: Flick the clips or twist the latch at the windshield header, give the thing a good toss rearward, and watch it collapse behind you. At the other end of the spectrum, you have the Ford Skyliner. In the Age of Automation, when a power-operated convertible top must have seemed awesomely modern, the Skyliner’s retractable hardtop took the idea even further. It was a miracle from the future, where you really can have it all.

The first retractable hardtop in a mass-produced automobile, the Skyliner was supposed to address all the criticisms of a convertible’s fabric top. But getting it to work was no easy business. First the trunklid had to open backward. Then because the roof was too big to fit inside, the front section flipped down, and finally the roof—complete with C-pillars and rear glass—arched into the trunk. The whole mechanical orchestra took six different mechanisms, five motors, nine circuit breakers, 10 solenoids, 13 switches, and 610 feet of wire. Reliability was not its strong suit. To add insult to injury, the public seemed nonplussed, as Ford’s traditional, fabric-topped Sunliner convertible far outsold the Skyliner. It would be years before the retractable hardtop would return in any significant way to the automotive market. —Joe Lorio

Hyper-exotics are expected to be complicated, but the latest hybrid crop from McLaren, Ferrari, and Porsche—the P1, the LaFerrari, and the 918—take it to a new level. The P1 adds a further wrinkle in its hydraulic cross-linked suspension, a system created to allow the suspension to hold up the car against 1300 pounds of downforce at 150 mph, but not be teeth-rattling stiff the rest of the time. Under the relatively soft springs in the coil-overs is a tube that looks like a fancy shock absorber. But on the P1 this is actually a hydraulic actuator, which can be stiff or compliant as speeds dictate and offer ride-height adjustment and self-leveling. The actuators are also cross-linked side to side through hydraulic accumulators, so that as the car turns, the outside remains rigid while the inside is softer. That eliminates the need for heavy anti-roll bars, which the P1 does not have. Mounted next to the P1’s engine is the 177-hp electric motor, powered by the 4.7-kWh lithium-ion battery pack that lives behind the seats. It can propel the car up to 100 mph alone through the seven-speed dual-clutch automatic gearbox or join with the 3.8-liter twin-turbo V-8 to make 903 horsepower. —Aaron Robinson

Over its near-two-decade run after being launched in 1963, the Mercedes-Benz 600 was the favored ride of the famous and the infamous the world over: John Lennon and Idi Amin, Hugh Hefner and Mao Tse-tung, Elvis Presley and Nicolae Ceauşescu. You get the idea. Although imposing in its design (by the superb Paul Bracq) and available in a variety of regal configurations (including a Landaulet and the six-door Pullman), the 600 is most impressive for its engineering. In an era when Mercedes-Benz really did attempt to live up to its (later) advertising tagline, “Engineered Like No Other Car in the World,” the 600 was engineered like no other Mercedes. Most famously, it used hydraulics to (silently) operate its many accessories, which in lesser cars would have been electrically actuated. That list includes the power windows (with variable-speed lifts), front and rear power seats, closers for the doors and trunk, the sunroof, the suspension dampers, and the cowl vent. The system operates at 3200 psi, and Mercedes shipped the cars with a fix-it kit in case of system failure; it includes hydraulic blocks, line connections, line plugs and clips, extra flex line, an oil container, brass spacers (to keep the seats from collapsing), wood wedges (so the windows don’t drop into the doors), and an instruction book. Better hope you’ll never need it. —Joe Lorio

When BMW launched its E32 7-series in 1986, it shocked Mercedes-Benz. Mercedes-Benz’s response, the W140 S-class, shocked the world. In order to humiliate BMW, Benz stuffed every possible technology into the gargantuan car—including an electrically dimming and power-actuated inside rearview mirror and rods that extended from the rear corners of the trunklid when the transmission was shifted to reverse to indicate where the car ended. This was the first Mercedes with a CAN-bus electrical architecture, and the brand intended to take full advantage of its capabilities.

The BMW 750i made 296 horsepower, so Daimler's top model—the 600SEL—had to beat that in kilowatts, making 300 kW (402 horsepower). More evidence that Mercedes was pulling out all the stops: The sumptuous long-wheelbase version was designed first and the short-wheelbase model was done later. Even more, for the press presentation, Mercedes repaved the roads to the event venue. Finally, when Mercedes realized that the car wouldn't fit on the train to the prestigious vacation island of Sylt—a major nuisance for its wealthy owners—the railroad reengineered their train cars to accommodate the S-class. Public reaction in Germany oscillated between derision and outrage, and Benz would later spend years taking cost and content out of this S-class. But its basic design was so sturdy that it served as the architectural basis for the previous generation of ultra-expensive Maybach cars, which ended production in 2012, some 30 years after engineering initially started for the W140. —Jens Meiners

When it came time for Mitsubishi to replace the fabulous Starion, sort of a Japanese Porsche 944 with origami styling, the company threw itself full-bore into the task of creating a hypermodern sports car that it would launch in 1990. Sold in Japan as the GTO, the resulting car was sold on our shores in two guises. Owing to Mitsu’s captive-import deal with Chrysler, it appeared at Dodge stores as the Stealth through 1996. The Mitsubishi was sold as the 3000GT, and in VR4 trim, it came laden with all the trickery the Japanese automaker could throw at it. All-wheel drive, active aerodynamics, twin-turbocharging, four-wheel steering, an electronically controlled active suspension, and more.

Sure, it’s all pretty commonplace stuff now, but in 1990, Ferrari was still selling the fundamentally basic 348, a car that lost in our quarter-mile testing to a small GMC pickup. Acura’s NSX set the supercar world on its ear, but that was due to a strict application of weight savings and quality control. The 911, we might remind you, was still air-cooled. The unobtainable Porsche 959 had just left production, and while the F40 was still available, it hewed to principles of race-car fabrication that had been around for decades. In short, it was a throwback. The 3000GT was no such thing; perhaps only Nissan's R32 Skyline was anywhere close to as advanced. And for two years, from 1995 to 1996, you could order it as a hardtop convertible—an utter novelty 20 years ago, as the car that mainstreamed the style, the Mercedes-Benz SLK, was still a year out. It was, in fact, the first retractable hardtop to be sold in the U.S. since the 1950s Ford Skyliner.

Unfortunately, the VR4 was heavy and developed a reputation for fragility. The droptop only added to its woes in that department—and did away with a significant portion of rigidity in the process. The LS and VR4 Spyders disappeared for the 3000GT’s final model year, 1997, while the lively Eclipse devolved into a bloatmobile shortly thereafter. Mitsubishi would take one last stab at sporting relevance on our shores with three generations of its delightful Lancer Evolution, but the 3000GT VR4 Spyder was the high-water mark for the brand as far as shooting the moon went. And now? Well, pop down to your local Mitsu store and see for yourself. Perhaps it never should have killed the Starion. —Davey G. Johnson