Thursday, March 12, 2026

Is there a car brand so luxurious and expensive that ordinary folks probably have never even heard of it?

 Well, there is Toyota. OK, most people know about Toyota and quite many also know that they sell their more premium oriented models as Lexus. But at the top model they go back to calling it Toyota. The Toyota Century.

Third generation Toyota Century (2018 to present). Photo: Cxpr, CC BY-SA 4.0 <Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International>

A defunct manufacturer would be Bristol Cars that started producing cars in 1945 based on BMW designs taken as war reparations and they liquidated in 2020 even if there are plans to revive the brand.

The production numbers of Bristol is not public, but in 1982 they produced 104 car. It’s estimated that over their 75 year history they produced only 3000 cars. The low production numbers isn’t the only reason many haven’t heard about them. They were intentionally designed to not attract attention. Some would even call them ugly.

Bristol Blenheim 3S, Photo: Matthias v.d. Elbe, CC BY-SA 3.0 <Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported>