It’s Anything Can Happen Thursday, and I want to show you my favourite cars.  These are all cars that, for me, defined an era.  Cars that make me go all wobbly inside and reach for my purse to check for loose change when I see them on Auto Trader.

First up is the iconic Jaguar E type, a beautiful vehicle that was a triumph of design:

Then there was this:

The Lotus Elan was an instant hit, thanks to it’s role as one of the two cars on The Avengers (nothing to do with the superhero characters, these were kick ass detectives) during the golden age of that show – Diana Rigg and Patrick MacNee (ok, Honor Blackman fans, I’m ready for your hatemail, because I firmly believe Emma was cooler than Cathy).  If anyone has one of these and doesn’t want it, I will gladly take it off your hands, this is at the very, very top of my list of dream cars, but sadly I can’t afford it.

Then Austin made a car that could be parked outside tiny 2 up 2 down terraced houses.  It also featured in a rather daring film, where some cockney gentlemen (such as Michael Caine) proved that you could park several of these in a lorry, in The Italian Job and then everyone wanted one.  Presumably lots of people had parking spaces in haulage vehicles:

When Rover took over and re-badged it in the 1990s, it didn’t look any different, but the badge means a lot to car collectors.  And clowns.  This is the mini that you could be amused watching clowns get out of, because there’s not much space:

Let’s take it back to the ’70’s and look at a triumph of car design:  It was named after a well known airplane used by the British Royal Air Force during the second world war – and it’s body design resembles a plane chassis.  Put some wings on this baby and the Triumph Spitfire would be airborne:

And here’s what’s under the hood, from the days when you could actually feel a thrill by looking under the bonnet of a car:

But if you want a sports car for an eighties action TV series featuring someone resembling a young David Hasselhoff, you need something a bit more ridiculous.  Undersized, underpowered, under warranty … these are not words that describe our next car, the Lotus Esprit, which looks not unlike the DeLorien because pointy angular cars were a bit of a thing for a while:

By 1989, however, it had had a remake and looked even more stunning than before:

Around the same time, this unassuming, more mainstream car was on the road:

What a stunner, the Ford Escort Cabriolet has it all.  A year later, it got a facelift:

While all things must come to an end, these cars don’t have to yet – they’re all for sale on Auto Trader (which is where I got all of today’s photos, unless otherwise stated) although they’ll obviously set you back a fair bit – that Jaguar E type is going for £89,000, the Mini is £2,500 and everything else is somewhere in between!!!  I think they’ve all got a fair bit of mileage in them yet, although I think I need something more practical and spacious for my next car camper conversion.  Or something with more than four seats. This VW Devon looked like it fitted the bill:

But it appears to be missing something:

I wanted something that wasn’t lacking large chunks of the chassis, so I’m probably going to go for something like this Toyota Lucida (but this one is now sold):

Which one is your favourite?  Let me know in the comments.