The Importance of Dreaming from A to Z (2024)

Dreams are the birthplace of enthusiasm, ignitor of goals and gateway to innovation. Early in life we dream of flying, going fast…and usually around birthdays or holidays, getting the best toys. Some of us never outgrow dreaming and we’re better off for it.

On the polar opposite side are the nightmares called Top 10 lists. I’ll argue any ranked list of top 10 (or 5, 100 or whatever number a list chooses) are the work of Satan himself. From Rolling Stone magazine’s “Top 250 Guitarists” (Nile Rogers at #7?) and US News & World Report’s “10 of The Worst Cars Ever Made” (Hummer H2, Ford Pinto, Pontiac Aztek and Chevy SSR, really?) to Rotten Tomato’s “300 Best Movies of All Time” (with Top Gun: Maverick and Toy Story 2 in the top ten!?!), a list of the best, worst or any superlative tends to indicate more about the agenda of the writer or publication than true expertise in any subject matter. I can’t remember the last time I read a ranking-specific article and didn’t feel the immediate need to practice deep-breathing exercises to lower my blood pressure below stroke-producing levels. Consequently, long ago I determined I would never write for publication any Top X list about anything, period.

Here comes the contradictory rub. I love creative exercises, including making mental…and sometimes written lists. Dreaming via systematic creative exercises can lead us towards identifying the nature and subtleties of our own personal passions and give us goals to achieve. Take it from me, who as a 16-year-old looked at a new blue Ferrari 328 GTS parked outside a Seattle dealership and thought I’d never own one, but have now owned a blue 1986 Ferrari 328 GTS for 17 years. A little dreaming goes a long way in creating opportunities to realize the once unfathomable. If we never think about what we would do in a figurative moment when the sun, moon and stars are all in alignment, we might miss a once in a lifetime opportunity to turn a dream into reality. This isn’t Oprah’s manifesting crap, rather simply understanding what you really want so you’ll recognize the forks in the road when you get there.

Forget making or reading lists of superlatives, because the best, prettiest, most valuable, most reliable – it’s all subjective bullsh*t. Even data-based objective criteria like top-scoring or fastest usually employ subjective filtering or methodologies intended to skew results, with Northeastern University’s and Claremont McKenna’s manipulation schemes to game US News & World Report’s annual “Best Colleges Rankings” as a prime example. Ranking is a fool’s errand with the practice rooted firmly in selling advertising space by building a brand and/or controversy, rather than being educational and actionable.

To truly have educational growth value, you must dream about what is important to you. Relative importance always changes, but the validity of the creative process is never wrong if seen through the perspective of a specific moment in time. Today’s exercise, the A-Z Dream Garage, is no different:

Picture you have 26 spaces in your dream garage. Each one is marked with a letter of the alphabet. Your job is to fill each space with your favorite automotive representation of the specific letter. The letter should represent the manufacturer, not the model.

This is far tougher than it initially seems. There have been over 3,000 auto manufacturer brands since the beginning of the 20th century, but we’ve forgotten or never heard of the overwhelming majority. As in Scrabble, some letters are harder to play than others, because a few letters have almost no automotive representation, while others contain competition by some of the greatest single vehicles ever produced. Do you pass on a more valuable car for a vehicle that is infinitely more fun to drive, prettier, historically significant, or usable on modern public roads? Most letters also present the challenge of deciding between outstanding vehicles from totally different time periods. To add to the level of difficulty -- nobody ever said this dream includes extra money, a personal mechanic to maintain or source parts or a means to get non-street-legal cars to a racetrack, so each pick carries benefits and potential liabilities. And don’t forget that there’s no fun in having cars which are alike…and your current real-world vehicles don’t magically vaporize.

Admittedly, it’s a long, arduous, time-consuming challenge, so feel free to alter it for time constraints or your own personal interests, with some suggestions being:

• Only use the letters of your name

• Pick alternate letters

• Pick fewer letters at random

• Not a car person? Do it with whatever you’re into, such as places to travel or foods to try.

Prepare for your tour through The Collector Car Guru’s A-Z Garage choices, along with my thought process for why each was selected. After you read about my picks, think about yours (even if your selections aren’t cars) and share/debate in the comments.

The first letter of our alphabet delivers more excellent choices than a typical MIT admissions season cohort. There are road-going icons like the 1936 Auburn 852 Supercharged Eight boattail Speedster or 1958-1963 Aston Martin DB4 -- with or without Bond’s British Secret Service toys. For the classic road racing enthusiast, there are the 1953 Allard J2-X with its typical Cadillac V8 that dominated early 1950s tracks or the low production 1955 Austin Healey 100S, which pioneered disc brakes in sportscar racing to stop its gorgeous aluminum body. The 1982-1985 Audi ur Quattro introduced four-wheel drive to international rally competition and in production street car form made for four-season fun. One could easily justify dreaming big for one of the famed two surviving mid-engine supercharged V16-powered 1930s Auto Union racers (one Grand Prix car and one hillclimb car with four rear wheels), but the NAZI association is enough to for me to steer clear.

In the end, none of the other vehicles come close to matching the 1932 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 with its jewel-like twin-supercharged dual overhead cam straight-eight engine and sultry two-seat roadster coachwork by Touring. At home on any type of road or racecourse, it’s one of the great dual-purpose cars – even if unlike the 1960’s Amphicar, it cannot cross water without the help of a boat or plane.

Our second letter gives me more indecision than a virgin stepping into a brothel. It’s even painful to admit as much as I love the beautiful lines of the 1956 BMW 507 roadster or vividly remember the first moment I read the Car & Driver article introducing the Darth Vader-black 1987 Buick GNX with its turbocharged and intercooled V6 propelling it to being the fastest accelerating car in America that year, there are no BMWs or Buicks that can hold a candle to the top tier competition from Bentley and Bugatti. Part of me thinks it should be a no-brainer to pick a 2024 Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+ with its quad-turbocharged 8.0-liter V16 producing an unfathomable 1578 horsepower and a record-setting 304.77 mph top speed. A 100-percent discount on the $3.5-million price tag of the fastest production vehicle ever is enticing, but where the hell does one get to explore those limits outside of the Bonneville Salt Flats or the Volkswagen Group’s heavily guarded 12.4-mile test track (with 5.4-mile straights) in the German province of Ehra-Lessien? As the saying goes – it’s much more fun to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow! There’s also the small issue with the $25,000 cost for a dealer to perform the routine oil change, because the normally simple task is specified to take 27 labor hours! A four-tire change costs roughly the same. So, maybe I should ponder choosing a classic Bugatti supercar, such as the rare 1938 Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic Coupe, but I could never fit inside of one. I’d fit in one of the seven totally mental 12.8-liter, 21-foot-long Type 41 Royales, but every report makes some reference to the model’s truck-like driving experience.

That leaves me choosing the 1929 Bentley Speed Six Le Mans, as it is another ultimate dual-purpose car capable of a cross-country drive to a track to crush all-comers in a vintage race. The Speed Six’s power and robustness make it a logical choice over the aforementioned fragile (yet certainly more elegant) contemporary Bugattis. Still to this day, no matter where a Speed Six goes, it’s like bringing a wrecking ball to a knife fight.

The Cs give us so many insanely wonderful choices. There’s the sexy supercharged coffin-nose 1936 Cord 812 with its innovative first-to-market hideaway headlights, or the sultry Cisitalia Type 202. And who wouldn’t want to show up to a formal event in an elegant ’57 Continental MKII (not officially a Lincoln product), opulent 1932 Cadillac V16 dual cowl phaeton or first-gen-Hemi-powered 1957 Chrysler 300C convertible?

There are more valuable and opulent choices, but I’m simply prioritizing the behind-the-wheel experience on this one with one of my all-around favorite American cars to drive, the 1967 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray L89 427/435 Convertible. Instead of going for the no-holds-barred L88 engine option (which requires 104 octane race fuel, does not idle in traffic and is prone to overheating), I’m specifying the L89 option, which puts weight-saving aluminum heads on the fire-breathing tri-power 427, giving it 435 big block horsepower, but with the better weight balance similar to a small block 327 V8 car. The coupes might be more iconic, but I’m more likely to enjoy the convertible. While I’m at it, make mine Tuxedo Black with a white stinger hood and black interior.

No Dodge Charger or Challenger (Hemi-powered or otherwise), extravagant Figoni et Falaschi-bodied Delahaye, dangerous DeTomaso Pantera or even DeLorean DMC12 with operational flux-capacitor and Mr. Fusion for real-world time travel comes close to taking on the undisputed king of the Ds. Only two short-wheelbase 1935 Duesenberg SSJs LeGrande roadsters were ever produced, with one selling at auction in recent years. In a time when most new American cars struggled to hit 70 mph, the SSJs reached 90mph in second gear with a top speed touching 150mph from its supercharged multivalve overhead cam straight eight.

Back in early 1991 I drove a new Eagle Talon TSi AWD and found the svelte 195-hp sporty coupe a fantabulous seat-of-the-pants experience as the dealer urged me to take freeway cloverleafs at excessive speed. Like modern cars, though, I’ve grown up, so the Talon no longer has what it takes to ever lure me away from vehicles I already have. So, it’s long past time to get over the 1958 Edsel Citation Convertible grille! Only 930 examples of the 1958 top-of-the-line Citation convertible models were made – each with the great Mercury-derived 345-hp 410-ci V8. This Impala killer also is better than any fiberglass Elva racer or neo-classic Excalibur. The car didn’t fail due to being bad, rather the brand’s debut at the start of the 1958 recession caused its demise. The top-spec Edsel just has so many cool touches like the push-button tranny and compass-dial speedo to be denied, plus it’s also big enough to take five others out cruising in comfort, a benefit missing in many of my other selections.

Like any other marque even had a nudist colony’s chance in Siberia over Ferrari’s many dream cars? It is simply a question of which Ferrari to pick. It’s really hard to pass up a $75 million 250 GTO, $45 million Ferris Bueller’s Day Off-spec 250 GT California Spider or more modern 2013 788-hp LaFerrari supercar, but I’m going to have to, because the 1968 Ferrari 275 GTS/4 NART Spider is just one of the prettiest, best behaving, most versatile classic roadgoing Ferraris ever.

Just ten 275 examples were produced with the four-cam-equipped 3.3-liter V12 and a convertible body. For many years I’ve drooled over one driven frequently by a well-known Pacific Northwest car collector. Being worth between $25-$30 million, the only way one will ever find its way into my garage is in a dream.

There are plenty of Grahams and Gilberns and even one of less than 100 Corvette-powered Gordon-Keeble coupes, but the G to have would be a 1964 Ginetta G4 1500. Watch one of these nimble Ford Cortina-powered G4s on a vintage racing circuit like Laguna Seca and you’ll understand. It looks like it would take a serious squeeze to fit inside, but many of this era’s diminutive British sportsracers offer a surprising amount of interior space.

The Swiss watch of automobiles, the 1930 Hispano-Suiza H6C was powered by an overhead-cam six built to quality and price standards that made contemporary Rolls-Royces look like it was ordered from Wish.com. Hispanos were built to such exacting tolerances that the company’s publicity stunt was to run one 100 miles then park it on a white sheet to show that it wouldn’t drip a drop of fluids. Bodies were built-to-order by the many custom coachbuilders of the day.

Itala was the first true Italian exotic, its cars were nearly unstoppable in early racing. I’d get my hands on a 1908 Itala Grand Prix with the company’s nearly 15-liter engine. Every dream garage needs a car that takes a team of people with a combination of enough expertise, brute strength and blind luck to start…and a driver with backbone of steel to survive.

Take the Le Mans-dominating D-Type endurance racer, then simply fit it with doors, a full windshield and a convertible top to create the 1957 Jaguar XKSS. Only sixteen were made before all the tooling was destroyed in a factory fire. Steve McQueen owned one, which is reason enough on its own to pick it over the four-wheel-drive pioneer 1966-1971 Jensen FF, a 1919-1930 Jordan Playboy or any other J car option.

Frank Kurtis was one of America’s great sports car pioneers. His racers dominated all types of tracks in most racing disciplines. The 1952 Kurtis 500S was basically a road legal Indianapolis 500 roadster with cycle fenders and two seats. Like the contemporary Allard, the Kurtis could be fitted with a number of American V8 engines from the likes of Cadillac, Mercury and Chrysler... but offered far superior braking and handling to the Allard. Only 300 were made between 1951 and 1953, many of which were written off after being wrecked by well-heeled amateur racers, but the 500S remains legendary in many circles.

For decades I carried a torch for both the international rally dominating 1974 Lancia Stratos HF and the outrageous Lamborghini Countach, but both of these poster-worthy Bertone-designed midengined tour de forces revealed themselves as cars in which my 6’4” frame fit worse than tuna in a chocolate cheesecake. Luckily, I do fit in the 1971 Lamborghini Miura SV, a model which solidified the use of the word supercar in reference to the highest performing exotic automobiles. Not a day has gone by when its Bertone-penned lines have appeared any less jaw-dropping as they did when the car first appeared on stage at the 1966 Geneva Auto Show.

Photos do not do it justice -- you really need to see one in person to fully comprehend how Barry White-low it is. In my experience driving a 1967 Miura P400, I found no onomatopoeia can quite capture the glorious sound of that sonorous V12 from behind the co*ckpit. I’ll concede the Miura’s underdeveloped engineering and suspect build quality, but with a friend who is a Miura restoration expert, I know the problems could be addressed if needed.

It isn’t pretty like a 1939 Mercedes 540K Special Roadster or visually iconic as a 1955 Mercedes 300SL Gullwing, but how could I pick anything other than the 1994 McLaren F1, the result of a cost-no-object mission to create the greatest road-going analog driver’s sports car ever. The engine cover used gold to reflect heat, for god’s sake! Due to its limitless engineering budget, the F1 with its central-mounted driving seat was the fastest series production car on earth for a decade. I’d have to take out a second mortgage or sell other cars from my list to even afford “routine” maintenance. (e.g. the specially designed fuel cell degrades quickly, so every five years an F1 owner must replace it at a cost of $100,000 for the factory part. A factory-approved replacement of the four high speed tires carries a $50,000 price tag.) If one actually appeared in my garage, I’d likely either figure out good workarounds to stock parts or sell it for the current market value of $15-$20 million before needing to throw any money at it.

There’s a rare N car with a twin-turbo 455-hp V6 behind the seats that goes 0-60 in 3.5 seconds and 185 mph all-out? Sign me up! Kudos to Nissan for its Godzilla-like GTR, but the 2008 Noble M15 is simply a nicer looking and better driving car with significantly less weight to haul around.

There are a limited number of O car manufacturers, such as Oldsmobile, Oakland and Ogle, but none of these manufacturers can compete with OSCA. After the Maserati brothers left their eponymous company, they formed OSCA (an acronym for Officine Specializzate Costruzione Automobili) to produce small-displacement street-legal sports racing cars. As beautifully styled as an Armani suit and more nimble than a Romanian Olympic gymnast, my favorite is the 1954 OSCA 1500, which claimed overall victory at the 12 Hours of Sebring.

There are plenty of qualifying P classic dream cars from Packard and Pierce Arrow, as well as the exclusive 150-mph Spanish Pegaso Z102, which topped Ferrari for fastest production road car honors throughout the 1950s. And I must admit considering one of the 14 1970 Plymouth Hemicuda Convertibles for at least a passing moment before realizing I simply had to settle on something from Porsche. I would assume most enthusiasts would have a reflex response to quickly blurt-out 356 Speedster, 550 Spyder or legendary 959, because those Porsches have long been the most coveted.

Those with a keen eye for the rare and sublime, however, would look to one of Porsche’s glorious road course specialists. The series started with the 904, but the 1966 Porsche 906 “Carrera 6” combines the sexiest Speed Racer-era body with the most bulletproof engine. They’re also road legal – as required by FIA rules of the time, so if I ever felt the need to drive the multi-million-dollar car to a show or to the track to race it, I could. And for those angry I didn’t choose the later CanAm and Le Mans-killing 917K, I value my life too much to tame this 240-mph beast known for being difficult and dangerous to drive even in the capable hands of many of its era’s greatest racers.

There are just a handful of Q manufacturers, but luckily, there’s the interesting 1906 Queen to save me from picking the 1999 Qvale Mangusta, which happens to be one of the ugliest cars to my eyes in recent decades. Built in Detroit, Queens were high-end transport for wealthy people. Its four-cylinder delivered a whopping 28 horsepower to motivate its giant open touring bodies down the road. A friend of mine actually owned a mostly original, unrestored four-cylinder Queen, and it was as cool as ice cream on a hot day.

While there are more R cars than Q manufacturers, the pickings of dream cars are still slim within the offerings from Rambler, Renault, REO, Rover, and even the Hudson-powered British-built Railton. The clear frontrunner is the 1930 Ruxton, which although wasn’t the first front-wheel-drive car (Christie beat them by twenty years, Tracta by four and Cord by about six months), was one of the wildest. Its low lines were accentuated by a lack of running boards – a rarity for the time. The car’s inline-eight produced 85 horsepower, which made it a good runner. Contrary to common belief, the funky Woodlite headlamps were only an option, and only a few cars came originally in the outrageous multicolored gradient paint schemes. Most cars were plain black, but some have been repainted to match the iconic Ruxton look. I’d have to stake my claim on the famous original white over purple gradient sedan.

Is there anyone who wouldn’t choose a Shelby Cobra? I’m sure most would want a 427 SC, but not me. Even with a revised coil-sprung platform and wider wheels, the big block Cobras were dangerously overpowered. Furthermore, pull up in a 427 Cobra and nobody will think it’s real. One of the six Daytona Coupes that helped win the World Constructor’s Championship would be cool, but were miserably hot and fundamentally unusable in places with stop signs and speed limits. The original 1965 Shelby Cobra 289 roadster, on the other hand, was a wildly successful car on both road and track. Its lines are as timelessly gorgeous as a Coco Chanel little black dress. The performance remains earth shattering and exceeds what mere mortal drivers can handle, so the seat-of-the-pants feeling is simply as good as it gets.

I’ve owned a gaggle of fun Triumph TRs and a ton of Toyotas, but nothing from T car companies approaches the 1937 Talbot-Lago T150CSS Figoni et Falaschi. Even Lady Godiva could have gone unnoticed if her famous ride was in the presence of this Art Deco teardrop coupe work of art. It isn’t just about looks, however, as the 3278-pound 150CSS was a serious road burner with its 140hp four-liter straight-six. Like many of the French-built cars of the era, a Wilson Preselector gearbox was often fitted, which means a totally different driving experience from all of the other vehicles I’ve chosen.

The list of automakers making false claims that they offer a “race car for the street” is long and distinguished. The 2024 Ultima EVO Coupe, however, is seriously just barely street legal. Technically, this evolution of its previous GTR is still a kit-car, but so were cars from Lotus and TVR. The car’s specs accommodate the American market with a supercharged GM LS V8 producing a blinding 1020 horsepower and 920 lb-ft of torque in a 2100-pound package. In any event, the GTR is as close as you can get to a car that is as competitive on the track as it is insane when driven legally on the road. And yes, a roll cage comes as standard equipment.

Vector, Volvo, and VW have nothing on the 1937 Voisin C20 Simoun. Gabriel Voisin was an airplane manufacturer before WWI, so his cars reflected the importance of light weight and engineering perfection. He used aluminum extensively, as well as licensed Knight’s sleeve-valve engine design. The C20 had a 12-cylinder engine, plus a coupe body to die for…which was a welcome change from earlier body designs looking more like monsters from Frankenstein’s laboratory. Unfortunately, Gabriel Voisin didn’t like convertibles, so almost all of his vehicles were delivered as coupes or sedans. The C20, like others of the marque, is instantly identifiable as a Voisin due to the external radiator shell supports that run from each fender.

As much as I like the British 1960 Warwick GT (a Triumph TR3-based coupe sold earlier under the name Peerless) and the slightly ugly American 1952-1956 Woodill Wildfire sports car, there are only two “W” cars with the pedigree to make my list. The first is Willys-Knight, which used the same Knight-licensed sleeve-valve engine technology as the Voisin. The second, the 1925 Wills Sainte Claire, is a little more impressive. When Wills Sainte Claires debuted in 1921, it used a V8 with connecting rods made from aluminum, as well as bodies from steel of superior quality to that of any other vehicle. In 1925 an overhead-cam straight six replaced the V8, giving it enough power and reliability to go from New York to San Francisco in 83 hours and 12 minutes -- a record in 1926.

Picking an X manufacturer is a Sophie’s Choice. Better than the Xillion and XTC, both terrible Fiero-based Ferrari replicas, the 1924 Xtra Sociable was just a basic three-wheel cycle car. While the single seater was powered by a 270-cc motorcycle engine (sourced from Villiers), the two-seat Sociable used an eight-horsepower JAP v-twin. Not particularly cute, it would still bring smiles at any car show.

Not many Y cars from which to choose, but thanks to Chevrolet dealer Don Yenko, who applied with the SCCA racing sanctioning body as an independent manufacturer, his creations technically fit the bill. His first project, the Yenko Stinger, removed the rear seats and added Porsche-beating performance to Chevy Corvairs, but these have never done much for me. I’ve always been more enamored with his 1969 Yenko Camaro fitted the fire-breathing 427 cubic inch 425 horsepower V8, which was otherwise only available in the Camaro model through Chevrolet’s dealer Central Office Production Order program.

I’ve chosen cars from America, France, Germany, Italy, England…so let’s end with a relic from the former Soviet Union. The 1960 ZIL 111V was a seven-person parade limousine. Styling was pure 1957 Chevrolet, including fins and excessive chrome trim. Power came from a six-liter V8 producing 200 horses, which was probably just adequate given the car’s 6000-plus pound girth. The ZIL is so cool…in a Cold War partying down with Nikita Khrushchev kind of way.

So that’s my list. Not saying any of them are the absolute prettiest, best, greatest or most important, just what I’d select right now.

I want to see what your personal A-Z Garage selections are in the comments. Feel free to eviscerate my selections…don’t worry, you’ll only be criticizing my dreams!