Best cars of the 1980 S
Tackling the motoring issues that matter
THE eighties: a decade of big hair, red braces, shoulder pads, New Romantics, mobile phones the size of bricks, and the concept that greed is good. Hands wrestled with Rubik’s Cubes, while the famous Sinclair ZX Spectrum put home computing at the fingertips of a nation.
Some of the new eighties technology, such as the microwave oven, remains in use today. Other innovations, such as the video player, ‘ghetto blaster’ and pocket television, have long been consigned to the history books.
It was a decade of immense change. A new generation of music lovers were wired for sound thanks to the Sony Walkman. Many of the highest grossing films remain popular today: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters and Beverly Hills Cop, to name but four.
The hot hatchback encapsulated the spirit of the eighties. Sports cars and coupés faded, as the UK embraced the front-wheel drive hatch with a souped-up engine, go-faster stripes and a bodykit. The Volkswagen Golf GTI kick-started the revolution, with the Peugeot 205 GTi, Ford Escort XR3i and Vauxhall Astra GTE following suit.
Hot hatches were affordable, cheap to run and huge fun. Unfortunately, they could also be pretty tricky on the limit and alarmingly easy to steal. The cost of car insurance rocketed as motorists paid the price for a car crime epidemic.
We’ve pulled together a list of 30 of the best cars of the eighties. From fleet favourites to performance heroes, and sports cars to supercars, these are some of the cars that made the eighties a formidable motoring decade.
30. Lexus LS 400
JUST sneaking into the decade is the Lexus LS 400, which arrived at the 1989 Detroit Auto Show and would go on to become one of the defining cars of the nineties. It was the result of near-obsessive levels of development, with
