Greatest car transformations of all time… from Aston Martin's glitzy DB4 revamp to Fiat's whole new look
HUMANS aren't the only ones to go under the knife for a makeover.
Plenty of motors have also undergone dramatic transformations.
11
The Fiat 850 was given a noticeable makeover
Credit: Getty
Cars can often change body, engine, and even badge to become unrecognisable from their previous selves.
Below are five of some of the most breath-taking motor metamorphoses, featuring everything from Aston Martin supercars to the basic VW Beetle.
Aston Martin DB4 → Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato
11
The DB4 became iconic for its role in the James Bond franchise
Credit: Getty
"No Mr Bond, I expect you to change you car's bodywork" doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it?
This iconic four-wheeled star of the 007 film 'Goldfinger' first wowed onlookers at the London Motor show in 1958, and boasted a 240bph straight-six engine which could accelerate to 100mph and break to a standstill in less than half a minute.
Even this classic underwent some changes, however, as it lost more than 85kg in a bodywork diet, got an engine upgrade, and even a body rework in 1960 by Italian coachbuilder, Zagato.
The result was 19 hugely rare models of the DB4 GT Zagato, which are both eye-catching and eye-wateringly expensive - one sold for $9.52 million at an auction in the US in August 2021.
11
One of these GT Zagato models was sold for nearly $10 million
Credit: Getty
Citroën 2CV → Citroën Mehari
11
The 2CV was produced over five decades
Credit: Getty
Back to basics we go.
First drawn up in the 1930s, sold in the 1940s and still being produced in the 1990s, the Citroën 2CV has one of the longest legacies in car history, and was a masterstroke of simple but effective design.
Popular car dealership abruptly shuts after 'trade-in trick' uncovered – as drivers blast 'worst experience ever'
Its body was bolted onto its chassis, which made conversions very easy, and resulted in a number of cousins being produced including the British-built Bijout - but none were quite as striking as the Mehari.
But the Citroën Mehari was built for the optimistic buyer.
It was mechanically identical to the 2CV, but had a plastic body and no roof, so while perfect for a reliable trip to the beach, it wasn't much use for a rainy day.
11
Citroën Meharis didn't come with a roof
Credit: AFP
Fiat 850 → Fiat 850 Coupe
11
The Fiat 850 had a functional look
Credit: Getty
Who doesn't love a glow-up?
The Fiat 850 was first introduced in 1964 as a larger, more powerful version of the 600 which had been brought out nine years earlier.
The technology in the 850 wasn't much of an upgrade, but the car was a relatively successful for small, mid-engine European cars, and it became recognisable for its soft, yet unremarkable look.
This was a feature someone at Fiat clearly took issue with, as they redesigned the 850 and produced the much prettier coupe and spider models.
The cute coupe was described by one car reviewer as 'one of the handsomest, best-balanced designs ever seen on a small car,' and it's rather hard to disagree.
11
The coupe version of the Fiat 850 was widely lauded as beautiful
Credit: Getty
Volkswagen Beetle → Volkswagen Karmann Ghia
11
The Beetle has quite the story behind it
Credit: Getty
The most produced car in history - first commissioned by arguably the worst person in history.
The Beetle did indeed start life as a cheap, functional car for Germans under Nazi rule in the late 1930s, and was commissioned by Adolf Hitler.
But it was resurrected by the British Army for the Allied forces occupying Germany at the end of the Second World War, and was then put into mass production with unrivalled popularity - and even underwent a rebrand as a cute, wholesome family motor.
The Beetle was then given a sporty, Italian makeover by Ghia, and manufactured in Karmann, Germany, thus giving it the joined title Karmann Ghia.
This stylish cousin of the Beetle debuted in 1955, and has since been regarded as one of the most beautiful cars in history.
11
The Karmann Ghia was hugely stylish
Credit: Getty
Mercedes-Benz SLK → Chrysler Crossfire
11
The original SLK was released in 1996
Credit: Getty
Outfit change anyone?
First produced in 1996, the Mercedes-Benz SLK was a successful sports offering from the German outfit, with various engine options including a fearsome 3.2 litre V6 AMG version producing 350bhp.
The SLK had many incarnations before Mercedes changed its name in 2016 to the SLC, with one even having a different badge...
Enter the Chrysler Crossfire, the product of a corporate merger between Mercedes and Chrysler, who became DaimlerChrysler and discontinued the original SLK model.
Well, not quite. They gave it an American-style body and badge, and sold it as a Chrysler Crossfire.
Sales of the model started well, but soon tanked, and the Crossfire was pulled in 2007, the same year its parent companies divorced.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Scottish Sun
10 hours ago
- Scottish Sun
Crisis-hit car brand ‘to close another two major plants' – days after shutting flagship factory with 2,400 workers
The brand says that closing its flagship plant was a 'tough' decision SHARP TURN Crisis-hit car brand 'to close another two major plants' – days after shutting flagship factory with 2,400 workers A STRUGGLING car brand will reportedly close another two major plants - days after shutting a flagship factory. The brand is planning to close the plants down as part of its huge global restructuring plan. Advertisement 3 A major car brand is closing several of its production plants Credit: Getty 3 Two plants will be closed in Mexico Credit: Getty Nissan has been battling with rising debt and manufacturing in recent years, forcing the company to desperately re-evaluate its business strategy. The company launched its Re:Nissan initiative, in which it is earmarking factories across the world for closure. Now, according to Automotive News,, Nissan is has earmarked two factories in Mexico for closure. Nissan is planning to close its Civac plant in Morelos and the Cooperation Manufacturing Plant Aguascalientes (COMPAS) plant in Aguascalientes. Advertisement Both factories are set to close by 2027, putting thousands of jobs at risk. The Civac plant has been producing cars since 1966 and was the very first international manufacturing site that Nissan ever owned. It currently produces the South American version of the Frontier, the N18 Versa and the Mexico-only V-Drive. Meanwhile, COMPAS was only opened 10 years ago as a collaboration between Mercedes-Benz and Nissan. Advertisement The plant produced the Mercedes GLB in 2019, the Infiniti QX50 in 2017, and the QX55 in 2021 - all of which are set to end production. The Sun have approached Nissan for comment about the closure. Final days for Nissan drivers to claim $5k from 'defect' settlement – you can get multiple payouts by filling in form The news comes after Nissan closed its flagship factory in the Kanagawa Prefecture south of Tokyo. The factory will close at the end of the 2027 fiscal year in March 2028. Advertisement Over 2400 jobs will be lost in the closure, which Nissan says was a 'touch but necessary decision'. Chief Executive Ivan Espinosa said: 'I believe it's a vital step toward overcoming our current challenges and building a sustainable future. 'The world is changing by the minute.' The car manufacturer is planning to reduce its 17 plants down to just 10. Advertisement Nissan has been battling with falling vehicle sales in China, huge restructuring costs and US President Donald Trump's international tariff war. Trump's tariffs have raised the cost of importing vehicles, causing car sales of many different brands to nosedive across the world.
Top Gear
12 hours ago
- Top Gear
Here are nine of the best classic car interiors
Advertisement The most beautiful Benz of all time (fight me) also boasted a classically correct cabin. Big, slender wheel, sensibly situated vents, radio and switches, the clear, watch-like dials – it's still a paragon of ergonomic bliss. High-quality, for high society – cars like this cemented Mercedes' reputation for quality and craftsmanship at a time when the modern-era Audi brand barely existed and the idea of a mass-market Merc hatchback would've seemed preposterous. The Pagoda's probably a tad more timeless than the current A-Class's job lot of widescreens. Advertisement - Page continues below A simpler time. A time before iDrive. A time when BMW basically perfected sporty exec saloon design. It's just so wonderfully gimmick-free. A round steering wheel, dials you could read from the back seat through the wrong end of binoculars, and a dashboard console angled just-so to the driver. Not an ambient-lit heated armrest with integrated wireless tablet charger in sight. Ahh, the Nineties. Meet your heroes: the understated brilliance of the E39 M5 You might like Everything you need, and nothing you don't. Actually, the original Fiat 500 is missing quite a lot you'd need, these days – crash protection, sound and heat insulation, and any security measures whatsoever spring to mind. But just look at it – the idyllic simplicity and honesty of the small car that put Italy on wheels. Advertisement - Page continues below Of course there had to be a bonkers vintage Citroen in here, and what better than the wantonly wacky DS, with its single-spoke steering wheel, spindly gearchange, horizontal speedo and squishy, plush chairs. It's as comfy and idiosyncratic as, ooh, I dunno, a Salvador Dali exhibition in a bouncy castle? No, even comfier. Retro review: the Citroen DS The '59 Bonneville is one of the quintessential jet-age designs of Americana – it's got fins, chrome, loads of little aerospace nods and would turn a pedestrian crash test examiner's hair white at fifty paces these days. Loads of American metal from this era qualifies for ultimate interior design wackiness, but we've gone for the Bonneville because it treads the line between kitsch and caricature so cleverly. A real modern classic. The TT's interior was, fact fans, the work of the splendidly-named Romulus Rost, who also dreamt up the Bentley Continental GT's interior complete with its rotating Toblerone dashboard screen. Clearly not a man who enjoys exposed infotainment buttons, then, as the TT's trademark radio cover proves. From the knobbly air vent surrounds to the spars around the dashboard, the TT was the car that woke the world up to Audi interior design in a big way. Audi TT: Mk1 vs Mk3 It takes a marque as raving-mad as TVR to compromise something as fundamental as where the driver can comfortably hold the steering wheel, just so it can install extra gauges and an air vent underneath the steering wheel centre itself. The rest of the Cerb's interior is a crazy land of bulbous blobs and topsy-turvy leather hillocks. Quite some place to spend time, until the breakdown lorry arrives to get you home. Again. Nine of the best TVRs: a list Advertisement - Page continues below Striped seats. Dimpled gear lever. Austere, dense-looking dashboard. The GTI's template hasn't deviated much – it's one of the all-time hot hatch icons inside and out. Retro review: the Mk1 Volkswagen Golf GTI As the GT's from 2003, it doesn't seem old enough to be a classic. And yet, because it's so heavily inspired by the GT40 of the mid-Sixties, it certainly qualifies. This is one of the all-time great retro updates of a cabin – it's all so faithful to the original, from the dial layout to the holey seats, and yet it's very elegantly updated with tasteful switchgear. A true concept car made real, in fact. Advertisement - Page continues below
BBC News
13 hours ago
- BBC News
Are Aston Martin a dark horse to sign Verstappen?
After a three-week break, the Formula 1 season resumes this weekend with the Belgian Grand Prix at the much-loved Spa-Francorchamps will be the first race with Laurent Mekies in charge of Red Bull, following Christian Horner's sacking as team Sport F1 correspondent Andrew Benson answers your latest questions. With Adrian Newey at Aston Martin and his history of making cars that Verstappen is strong in, does that make them dark horses to sign Max if he does leave Red Bull? - DanAston Martin already have two drivers committed for Alonso's contract runs out at the end of next season, and Lance Stroll will drive there for as long as he is the son of the owner, Lawrence Stroll, and the team effectively exists for means that if Verstappen were to want to leave Red Bull for Aston Martin, an arrangement would have to be reached with that Alonso gets his first chance to drive an Adrian Newey-designed car next year, the chances of him being especially amenable to that are low. Any pay-off in such circumstances would have to be very large indeed, one can said all of that, and while nothing is impossible in F1, and one can always be surprised, there does not seem to be any movement in this direction at the Verstappen is to leave Red Bull, it is most likely to be to Mercedes. Whether he will remains an open question for sense from little bits of information from here and there is that at this stage Verstappen is more likely to stay at Red Bull than not. But of course that could change. How hard is it for a team principal to step into a new team part way through the season? Particularly at Red Bull where the outgoing team principal seemed to have a lot of the control and responsibility. - SteveThe sacking of Christian Horner as Red Bull team principal is a big change. This weekend's Belgian Grand Prix will be the first time in Red Bull's 20-year history that someone else other than Horner is in charge of the replacement Laurent Mekies is a very capable person who is well respected within already has a good understanding of the Red Bull structure. He had been working as team principal at their second team since the start of last year and before that spent a decade there as an engineer before moving to the FIA in 2014. He has also worked at Ferrari, from as Racing Bulls source a lot of their parts from Red Bull, that means Mekies will already know a fair bit about his new will have spent the past two weeks getting to know Red Bull as well as he can at their Milton Keynes base - as well as a test day that he attended in the days immediately following his already knows he is stepping into a team that is immensely capable. He won't want to make massive changes the time being it will primarily be a question of watching, learning and understanding how and why things work as they do, and building a bank of knowledge from which he can then start to make the changes he feels will fix some of the issues that have developed in the past 18 months or so. In the context of teams focusing on 2026 cars, it is interesting that so many have introduced new floors over the past few races. Are floors more reusable for the new regulations than other parts, or do they simply provide the best value for money performance upgrade? - SamThe fact that teams are introducing new floors as upgrades this year is not in any way related to next year's new the current F1 cars, the floor is the most powerful part of the design in terms of aerodynamics, so it's inevitable that will be where teams focus their attention as they try to make their cars faster through the any floor that is introduced this year is not relevant to next year because the technical regulations for 2026 are completely different in aerodynamic so-called venturi floors that generate ground effect on the cars that have been in F1 since 2022 are being abandoned next F1 is returning to what are known as 'step-plane' floors - similar to the ones used prior to have a central section which is the lowest part of the floor, and then a 'step' either side to a higher section which, from the front of the floor to ahead of the rear tyres, is flat, rather than curved in a wing shape as the cars will have to be run differently from that era because the FIA has introduced a series of prescriptions with regard to what teams can do to control airflow in the rear corners of the to Mercedes technical director James Allison, these restrictions in the rules "make it harder to hang on to the downforce at high ride heights".In the era from 2017-21, there was a lot of discussion about the cars' Bull ran a high rake - a steeper angle from front to back - and Mercedes low. In other words, the Red Bull's rear was higher from the ground than the Mercedes'. Red Bull's was the style followed by most teams at the time, even though this was the era of ground-breaking Mercedes success. These approaches were to do with different philosophies of dealing with a phenomenon known as 'tyre squirt'.This is messy airflow created where the inner shoulder of the rear tyres meets the ground. It disturbs the clean flow of air teams want through the diffuser, the upswept part of the floor at the back of the want to try to clean up that airflow to increase downforce created by the diffuser, and under the previous rules there were various ways of doing that. But the new rules have aspects that are intended to impede that to Allison, this will likely mean that the cars next year typically run lower at the rear than in the previous generation - but not as low as the ground-effect cars of the current said: "The low ride-height Mercedes (of the previous era) is vastly higher than the cars of the current generation, and I suspect that the new generation cars will be in between where we are now and the lower end of the ranks that we saw in the 2014 to 2021 era." How can teams have a 'feel' for who is ahead in developing the new engines for 2026 when the manufacturers presumably keep everything as secret as possible? - AlexIt's a good question because, on the face of it, no one should know anything about the relative performance of next year's engines, because the manufacturers are all working on them in reality, though, F1 might be big business and have a huge following, but it is a relatively small world, and people a start, the manufacturers have to discuss their engines with governing body the FIA for a whole bunch of there is movement between teams and manufacturers in terms of employment - people leaving one team or engine company to work for another. When they get there, they will obviously take knowledge of where their previous employer was, and be able to share that with their new then there is just general gossip between people in the while individual manufacturers do their best to stop performance figures creeping out, inevitably they do, to some how an impression last time there was a major change of engine design, there was a lot of talk about Mercedes being ahead of the rest. No one knew for sure whether that was true until the cars first ran in pre-season testing, when it became immediately apparent that it situation this year feels very similar. Again, no one knows for sure, but the grapevine says that Mercedes are is a lot of complexity in the new engine architecture is changing, with the removal of the MGU-H, the part of the hybrid system that recovers energy from the power split of the engine is changing, with the electrical part of the engine now set to produce about 50% of total output, up from about 20% need to recover that much energy - in combination with the removal of the MGU-H, which had a powerful impact on recovery - has led to a change in the aerodynamic rules.F1 is introducing moveable aerodynamics - both the front and rear wing have high- and low-drag modes. The idea is that drag can be reduced on the straights, to increase speeds, to make braking distances longer, to increase the time energy can be recovered during deployment and recovery aspects of the engines will also be very different from example, the engines will likely be run at high revs during cornering simply so energy can be recovered for use on the straights. In that situation, the internal combustion engine is effectively being used as an energy generator for the there is the fully sustainable fuel, which is being manufactured without any use of fossil fuels. These will also have an impact on snippets of information about all these aspects of the new engines creep out one way or another, and a sense of who is in a good place and who is less so starts to it is, of course, all guesstimation at the moment.
