The best cars 40 years ago
02/18/2019
Auto-Motor-und-Sport readers have always been considered well-informed when it comes to good and fast cars. So it can and could be assumed that the best cars were selected in a readers' poll. 40 years ago, the VW Golf came out on top in the small cars up to 1300 cm3, the BMW 320 in the saloons up to 2000 cm3, the BMW 528i in the saloons up to 3000 cm3, the Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL 6.9 in the saloons of all classes, the Porsche 924 in the sports cars up to 2000 cm3 and the Porsche turbo 3.3 in the sports cars of all classes.
That is perhaps why the import classification was almost more interesting.
There, the Renault 5 TS won in the small cars up to 1300 cm3, the Alfa Romeo Alfetta 2000 in the saloons up to 2000 cm3, the Citroën CX 2400 GTI in the saloons up to 3000 cm3, the Jaguar XJ 5.3 in the saloons of all classes, the Lotus Esprit in the sports cars up to 2000 cm3 and the Lamborghini Countach in the sports cars of all classes. Incidentally, the latter also made it into the top 5 in the overall standings, as it was followed by the BMW M1 (25.6%), the Porsche 928 (11.7%), the Lamborghini Countach (6.5%) and the Ferrari 512 BB (5.1%) behind the Porsche turbo 3.3 with 32.4%.
It was also unusual that the import winner in the small car category, the Renault 5 TS, finished behind the VW Golf, Ford Fiesta, Opel Kadett and Alfa Romeo Alfasud in the overall small car rankings.
The full results were published in AMS issue 3/1979 .
