Car spotting 40 years ago
10/14/2025
Nowadays, people are always talking about so-called "car spotters", mostly young men who wait for hot sports cars at intersections with their cell phones in order to film them and then "post" them as YouTube videos or on Instagram.
However, car spotting is not really a modern phenomenon. We also did something similar, even if we didn't have to film and publish it back then. I remember sitting in the Gran Café on Limmatquai in Zurich (picture above) and hoping that a Jaguar E-Type or a Ferrari would drive past at some point. The owners of these rarities also did us this favor from time to time; after all, they too enjoyed the admiration they were sure to receive when they drove past the Boulevard Café.
The picture from the ETH library (thanks for that!) above shows the Zurich "Gran Café" in 1985, and it could well have been that I was sitting at one of the tables that very day, drinking a coffee and watching the cars drive past. The W126 S-Class photographed was of course still a new car back then, or at least a very youthful used car.
Incidentally, today no cars drive past the Gran Café in Zurich, which is now called "Motta", because the Limmatquai has been reserved for bicycles and streetcars for some time now. A pity really ...
