{"id":650542,"date":"2026-08-22T10:15:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T10:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/650542\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T10:15:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T10:15:11","slug":"what-cars-being-made-today-could-be-considered-the-joyful-classics-of-tomorrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/650542\/","title":{"rendered":"What cars being made today could be considered the joyful classics of tomorrow?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A FEW WEEKS ago, I wrote about the joy of driving a classic Mercedes-Benz 500E<\/a> and it got me thinking.<\/p>\n

What cars from today will have the same meaning to us in the future? At the cars and coffee meets of 2056, what will middle-aged men like me be rolling up in?<\/p>\n

Cars of the 1990s were built, at times, without much in the way of filters.<\/p>\n

Emission rules were a nice-to-have, and safety tech was only starting to catch on. Cars had airbags and felt solid, but nothing was watching your eyes to see if you were drowsy.<\/p>\n

Those features are mandatory now, in part as an antidote to our addiction to our phones, and we are a far more distracted generation of drivers than any that came before us.<\/p>\n

The classic car market is booming, and you have to admire anyone with the foresight to hold onto a car that meant something to them.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t so clever. About 20 years ago, after a few glasses of wine and browsing the internet for cars, which is something I do about 20% of any given day, I found a 1991 BMW 318iS<\/a> in Luton.<\/p>\n

The E30 was the much-loved 3-Series of the 1980s and 90s, built in big numbers but, by the early 2000s, easily picked up for very little money. Mine was one of them.<\/p>\n

I hopped on a cheap Ryanair flight and met the owner of Old Colonel Cars. He took \u00a32,000 off me for a low-mileage, rust-free Lazer Blue car with a good history, and I drove it back to the ferry.<\/p>\n

It never missed a beat. I loved that thing, and was delighted with myself when I sold it a year later for \u20ac4,000. Today, that same car in Ireland would probably cost me \u20ac25,000.<\/p>\n

Drawing up a list of tomorrow\u2019s classics is tricky, and one reason is our obsession with SUVs.<\/p>\n

Since the Nissan Qashqai opened the floodgates in 2007, we have become a nation of crossover buyers, and they nearly all look the same.<\/p>\n

Even at the luxury end, the Mercedes S-Class and BMW 7-Series have been elbowed aside by the ubiquitous Range Rover, a complicated, occasionally troublesome machine unlikely to be around in huge numbers decades from now.<\/p>\n

Then there are electric vehicles. July saw Ireland become an EV-first market for new cars, and the technology, simple and rather brilliant, is already delivering lower running costs and emissions for those who choose it.<\/p>\n

The earliest EVs, like the original Nissan Leaf and Renault Fluence, already feel like relics of an immature version of the same idea.<\/p>\n

Classic EVs?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Are there EVs today that we will still want to keep? A few. The Renault 5 EV is a car Renault has got properly right, a modern take on the gloriously simple original that you would have seen plenty of outside Dunnes Stores in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

It is fun to drive, looks great, and used values suggest it will hold on to its worth.<\/p>\n

Even more likely to become a future classic is its feistier sibling, the Alpine A290. The Tesla Model S deserves a mention too, with a timeless shape and a mechanical simplicity that should make it easy to keep going.<\/p>\n

Same goes for two design outliers, the Honda e and the BMW i3s. Neither made much commercial sense at the time, both were short-lived, and that is exactly why they will be sought after: small production runs and genuinely distinctive shapes that nothing since has quite matched.<\/p>\n

On the petrol and hybrid side, a few spring to mind. The most obvious is the Toyota GR Yaris.<\/p>\n

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\n Honda GR Yaris\n<\/p>\n

At close to \u20ac90,000, with a 1.6-litre turbo engine, all-wheel drive and 280hp, the numbers on paper aren\u2019t remarkable, but it\u2019s one of the most thrilling things you can drive, essentially a road-going rally car.<\/p>\n

It is already much-loved on the used market and, without doubt, is a future classic.<\/p>\n

The Volkswagen Golf GTI Edition 50 belongs here too, the birthday special I drove on Irish roads earlier this year, made a little more special by sharing its birth year with mine.<\/p>\n

And you can\u2019t talk about hot hatches without the Mini Cooper S, a nameplate with real heritage and still, somehow, as cheeky as ever.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s a car I have spent the last week living with, the Honda Prelude. Newly arrived here, it reimagines a much-loved nameplate from the 80s and 90s, and although it runs a hybrid 2.0-litre engine, it feels like a proper performance car from a different era.<\/p>\n

Honda has resisted the urge to make it needlessly fast, but its 180-odd horsepower is rapid enough, and it is a genuinely stunning-looking car that will still turn heads in 2056.<\/p>\n

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\n Honda Prelude.\n<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the Alpine A110, Renault\u2019s performance arm. A 252hp coup\u00e9 weighing just 1,100kg, it\u2019s a direct descendant of the 1963 original and one of the purest sports cars sold today. At \u20ac94,995 it isn\u2019t cheap, but it\u2019s almost certainly an investment.<\/p>\n

Any Porsche 911 falls into that category too, and prices are extraordinary at the moment.<\/p>\n

There are around 30 on DoneDeal Cars<\/a> right now, ranging from about \u20ac25,000 for the cheapest, with well over 200,000km on the clock, up to \u20ac329,950 for a three-year-old Turbo S with barely 19,000km showing.<\/p>\n

If you can stretch to one of any description, it remains a very solid investment, and unlike my old BMW, probably not one you\u2019d be selling on a year later for a loss.<\/p>\n

Paddy Comyn is the head of automotive content and communications with DoneDeal Cars. He has been involved in the Irish motor industry for more than 25 years.<\/p>\n

Journal Media Ltd has shareholders in common with DoneDeal Ltd<\/p>\n

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