Humans are conditioned into having most affection and nostalgia for the era in which they grew up, so there’s a good chance your favourite music, movies, fashions and cars come from the period when you were in your teens and twenties.
We suspect more than a few of you reading this though will concede that there was something unusually special about the cars that emerged during the 1990s. It’s increasingly seen as a sweet spot between the interactivity and driver appeal of earlier cars and the usability of later ones, but there’s more than that to the growing profile and nostalgia for nineties vehicles: it was the decade when several carmakers really got into their stride, and turned out some era-defining models.
We’ve selected ten 1990s iconic cars that stand out from the last decade of the last millennium, encompassing everything from perfectly-formed hot hatchbacks and homologation specials, to definitive British sports cars, to one of the greatest supercars of all time. It’s a sign of how talented the crop of 1990s performance cars was though, that limiting our selection to just ten models was more than a little tricky…
BMW M3 (E36)
The original BMW M3 is revered for its raw driving experience, a natural side effect of it being a homologation special, developed to help BMW win in motorsport – rallying originally, but more pertinently in tin-top racing series such as the DTM. The E36 M3 of 1992 though didn’t have that motorsport burden: it instead aimed to be a great high-performance road car from the off.
BMW didn’t get that balance right at first; there were definitely those who missed the old car’s immediacy. But from solid footing the E36 M3 became one of the decade’s most accomplished performance cars, especially when its 3-litre inline six made way for the 316bhp 3.2-litre unit, giving the M3 nearly 100bhp per litre – a feat only achieved by the BMW-powered McLaren F1, and a handful of Hondas at the time.
The six-cylinder didn’t need to be worked as hard as the old four, and had a more cultured sound, while giving the M3 enough performance to trouble a Porsche 911. It was no racer (though naturally, some did race the M3), but this new, more mature M3 remained great to drive, and set the template for the E46 M3 that followed, too.
Ferrari F355
Few manufacturers have made such a leap from one model to another as Ferrari did with the F355. While internet discourse has probably done its predecessor, the 348, few favours – exaggerating some of its bad habits out of proportion, and ignoring the things it did well – there’s no doubt its reception was lukewarm. With the F355, things couldn’t have been more different.
That’s all the more surprising given the F355 was effectively a heavy revision of the 348 rather than an all-new car. This was no Porsche 993 to 996 blank slate. It was even visually similar, the F355 simply adopting a few more friendly 1990s curves, swapping strakes for ducts and a slatted rear panel for traditional round tail lights.
The biggest changes were in the engine bay, where the 348’s V8 was bumped to 3.5 litres and gained five valves per cylinder (hence 355) and revised and refined suspension, plus power steering, taming some of the 348’s more difficult handling traits. So profound were the changes that the F355 instantly became the sports car to beat, and the standard against which subsequent Ferraris were judged.
Ford Escort RS Cosworth
Unlike the Imprezas, Deltas, Lancers, and Celicas against which it competed, the Ford Escort RS Cosworth never took a World Rally Championship title. That hardly seems to matter though because it remains one of the best-remembered, and best-loved homologation specials not just among rally fans, but among enthusiasts across the spectrum.
You have to imagine the Cosworth’s styling plays a part in this. From one of the most anonymous family car shapes of the decade, the talents of designers Steve Harper and Frank Stephenson – the latter responsible for that enormous whale-tail wing – turned the ‘Cossie’ into one of the most distinctive and downright appealing shapes on the road.
Mechanically though the RS Cosworth was more closely related to the Sierra Cosworth than any contemporary Escort, using the same longitudinally-mounted Cosworth YBT four-cylinder, and the necessary four-wheel drive system to allow it to compete on the stages, and make it a monster on a wet and bumpy back-road. And it still won WRC events, mostly at the hands of François Delecour and Carlos Sainz.
Honda NSX
The Honda NSX’s legend stands alone. It arrived in 1990 and is still considered one of the all-time great Japanese cars today, a definitive moment from a decade when Japanese brands demonstrated they could build sports cars as well, if not better, than any other country on the planet.
But consider this: without the NSX, there’s a chance that neither the McLaren F1 nor the Ferrari F355 on this list would be the cars they became. Gordon Murray stated the NSX as being a design target for the F1, a drive in the car displacing all his other benchmarks in a stroke, while the NSX’s glowing reception and many reviewers’ preference for it over the Ferrari 348 undoubtedly set Maranello on a path to vastly improve its successor.
Rising values are a hint at how drivers and collectors now view the NSX, after overlooking it for so long, but the car’s remarkable driveability, the guttural howl of its 3-litre and later 3.2-litre naturally-aspirated V6, the quality of its gearshift, balanced handling, and its outside impact among enthusiasts of a certain age have all cemented its status as an icon of the decade.
(Image: Sue Thatcher)
Lotus Elise
The Lotus Elise: a car with back-to-basics 1960s sensibilities, packed with 1990s innovation, that lasted until the 2020s. The Elise is almost timeless, and its driving experience will surely never fall out of fashion, not least because nobody has ever really emulated it – only the Alpine A110 has got close in modern times, and even that is a much more insulated, much less interactive car.
Unveiled in 1995 and on sale in 1996, the Elise could have been considered simply another in a long list of new open-topped sports cars that decade, riding the crest of a wave created by the original Mazda MX-5 at the end of the 1980s. But the Lotus was so much more than that – less a spiritual successor to the original Elan, like the Mazda was, and more a reimagining of the sports car concept from the ground up.
So right was the concept from the start that Lotus barely changed it all the way until the final car rolled off the line at Hethel in 2021. Okay, so the company’s modest budgets might have been partly responsible, but beyond styling tweaks and a few engine changes here or there, the driving experience really didn’t need touching. No car from the 1990s has aged so well.
McLaren F1
As a sign of how impactful the McLaren F1 was when it arrived in 1992, consider that more than one journalist who got their hands on the car confidently proclaimed that they would never test a quicker one. Autocar famously recorded the only true road test of the F1, and it’s from this test that the car’s most notable statistics are often quoted, but it took until 2011 for the magazine to test something both quicker accelerating and faster at the top end, with the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport.
Of course, plenty of subsequent cars, many of which use electric power, have made the performance race almost farcical. That’s unquestionably why Gordon Murray, creator of the F1, has replicated in his T.50 supercar the qualities that no multiple-turbocharged or EV supercar can ever compete with: the F1’s low weight, spine-tingling sounds, and nearly unmatched driver interaction.
Yet even the T.50 hasn’t eclipsed the F1’s legendary status. To see an F1 in person – pretty, tightly-packaged, and surprisingly small – remains a near-religious experience. Its central driving position remains the preserve of just a handful of cars, and if values hadn’t exploded in the way they have over the past few decades, owners would no doubt continue to use them every day, just as they did when new. The F1 remains probably the performance icon of the 1990s, and one of the greatest of all time.
(Image: McLaren F1)
Porsche 996 Turbo
Porsche has become adept at leaving enthusiasts aghast. There have been several times in recent memory even: the launch of the Cayenne SUV in 2002, the company’s first diesel model in 2009, the challenging styling of the Panamera that same year, and if not the Taycan electric car itself, then use of the word ‘Turbo’ on a car without even an engine ruffled a few feathers.
Then there was the Porsche 996 in 1997, which saw the brand’s rear-engined model go water-cooled for the first time, following the lead of the mid-engined Boxster a year earlier. It took a while for brand enthusiasts to get used to, but it helped that the 996 was still a great car – a better one, arguably, than the 993 had been, whether or not you liked the new styling.
And Porsche hadn’t forgotten the real performance variants. 1999’s GT3 set new dynamic standards but for walloping performance, the Turbo unveiled in 1999 kept Porsche at the top of the tree: 414bhp and all-wheel drive meant 0-60mph in only 4.2 seconds, yet it was, like all the best 911s, and indeed the best Turbo models entirely useable every day – a grand tourer and a sports car in one.
(Image: Porsche)
Renault Clio Williams
Badge aside, Williams didn’t have much to do with the Renault Clio Williams. But the association didn’t hurt, given the British F1 team was at the top of its game when the car arrived in 1993, fresh from Nigel Mansell’s championship victory in 1992 and well on the way to another with Alain Prost.
Development though was handled by Renault Sport, who already had a good track record but would go on to top even the Williams with later hot hatches. Renault Sport took the already talented Clio 16v and replaced its 1.8-litre engine with a 150bhp 2-litre unit (which even got a baffled sump, to handle the car’s increased cornering power), gave it a wider track, firmer suspension, and fitted a set of gold Speedline alloys to give Subaru a run for its money.Autocar called it “a standard Clio 16v improved in virtually every dynamic area”; not bad given the 16v was already among the best hot hatches on sale. Today the Williams is rightly seen as one of the all-time greats, and values are beginning to reflect that – even if, at the time, Renault angered collectors by following the Williams with not one, but two more production runs of this ‘limited edition’ car…
Subaru Impreza Turbo
The Subaru Impreza Turbo would still be one of the most significant performance cars of the 1990s if it weren’t for its star driver, but few cars can have benefitted so much by association as the Impreza has from Colin McRae. The Scottish star took just a single championship title, in 1995, but there probably isn’t an Impreza Turbo owner alive whose purchase hasn’t been influenced at least a little by the legend of McRae.
McRae’s “if in doubt, flat out” driving style gave the Impreza star quality, but only because the car itself was already so capable. In the WRC it replaced the larger and heavier Legacy, but the constant evolutionary push of rallying meant the Impreza benefitted on both road and stage from every one of the car’s rallying victories.
1998’s wide-arched Impreza 22B STi is the most coveted (and by far the most valuable), but UK special editions like the Prodrive-developed P1 and the Richard Burns-inspired RB5 are hugely desirable too. But even the earliest Turbo models from 1993 deliver the authentic Impreza experience: a uniquely burbling flat-four exhaust note, grippy handling whatever the weather, and styling that undoubtedly looks its best in dark blue with a set of gold-painted wheels.
TVR Cerbera
There was a time when plucky little TVR from Blackpool could genuinely compete with the best in the world. That time was the 1990s, and more than any other, the car was the TVR Cerbera, whose performance and styling both justified it a place in comparison tests against everything shy of the very quickest supercars.
It was a regular magazine cover star, giving everything from Porsche 911s and BMW M3s to Dodge Vipers to Lamborghini Diablos a hard time. Give a magazine an empty runway and a bunch of supercars, and the Cerbera would frequently find itself near the top of the list – late ‘Red Rose’ models could top 190mph and had 0-60mph acceleration times in the threes.
TVR designed and built its own engines for the Cerbera, the inline six ‘Speed Six’ and V8 ‘Speed Eight’ units – unthinkable for such a small company today, and unusual even back then. They were loud and violently quick, but the Cerbera really handled too. The 1990s, and Cerbera especially, saw TVR at its styling peak: it’s still a great-looking car from any angle, including the mad interior. And it did it all for a fraction of the price of any supercar.
(Image: RetroMotor)
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