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Identifying the First-Gen Ford MustangThe Most Popular Cars of All Time
From Beetles and Jeeps to F-150s and Corollas, these are the most popular cars of all time.
Defining “Popular”
The obvious problem with any list that promotes itself as listing “the most popular cars of all time” is defining what is meant by “popular.” Does popular translate simply to best-selling? Are sheer numbers enough? Or is taste, separate from market forces, just as relevant? What about impact? How a car influenced tastes and technologies going forward could give us a good ex post facto view of a car’s popularity. Maybe how a car has stuck in our minds, the poster cars most pined after by car lovers. Trying to cover all these bases, we’ve split our list into three sections: best sellers, influencers, and icons. Of course, there will be many, many deserving cars worthy of such labels we will inevitably fail to highlight so please let us know which beloved cars we’ve been remiss in omitting.
Best Sellers
Toyota Corolla
The Toyota Corolla is the undisputed champion of “economy” cars, and, if we’re going by sales, the champion of all cars period. The Corolla holds the record for the most units sold worldwide at over 50 million. Decades of laudable reliability and affordability make it the most ubiquitous of autos. The Corolla is a bit like James Cameron’s Avatar, the highest-grossing movie of all time; popular even if it’s not what you would call, strictly speaking, the “best.”
Ford F-Series
The Ford F-Series has been America’s best-selling vehicle for decades thereby racking up over 41 million units sold. Its undeniable popularity over the years is owed in large measure to the F-150’s ability to set the trend (or when need be, to follow it). The history of the F-150 tracks the shift from the utilitarian pickups of yesteryear to today’s semi-lux trucks while ever maintaining a north star of workmanlike capability.
Volkswagen Golf
The Volkswagen Golf’s eight generations illustrate a consistent theme: basic transportation with a bit of flair. The OG hatchback has sold over 35 million units worldwide and it’s easy to see why between the classic plaid upholstery and peppy versions like the GTI and Type R. Like the Corolla, the Golf’s compact nature made it affordable by default. But the difference maker has been its enduring quality and unique character which have elevated the Golf from just another compact to a consistent sales leader and inarguably one of the most popular cars of all time.
Influencers
Chevrolet Suburban
After 90 years in production, it’s hard to imagine a world without the Chevy Suburban. Its staying power obscures just how much the Suburban has altered the automotive landscape. The Suburban began as a large utility-focused station wagon and slowly but surely evolved into the massive rolling living room it is today. The Suburban was an SUV long before we had that term, and it set the benchmark for all vehicles that would claim that mantle.
Ford Mustang
The history of muscle cars is full of exceptions, caveats, and asterisks. The Ford Mustang wasn’t the first pony car, technically that was the Plymouth Barracuda, and it wasn’t the first muscle car, that was the Pontiac GTO. But if you had to point to the car that carried the torch for the muscle car revolution of the 1960s, it was the Ford Mustang. The combination of youthful exuberance, style, and sportiness made the Mustang a hit in the ‘60s and allowed it to remain relevant sixty years later. Camaros and MOPARs have the devotees, but none of them can match the Mustang on sheer popularity.
Dodge Caravan
Less flashy but no less impactful was the advent of the minivan in the 1980s and ‘90s. Just as he’d done with the Mustang, Lee Iacocca led the way with Chrysler’s Dodge Caravan a vehicle that defined itself on practicality. Three rows of seating and a cavernous cabin made the Caravan the go-to choice for burgeoning families. Whether you were loading up the minivan with kids, furniture, or your punk band’s equipment, the Caravan had room. The minivan effectively ended the decade’s long run of the station wagon as the family vehicle of choice, but in a stroke of poetic justice, the minivan was in turn eclipsed by the rise of the SUV.
Toyota Supra Mk IV
It’s difficult to overstate how impactful the Fast and Furious franchise has been to the car world. The movies inspired a new generation of car fans, introducing them to exotic performance cars, and birthed contemporary tuner culture as we know it. We can all appreciate Dom’s Charger, but the game changing car, the real revolution was Brian’s Mk IV Toyota Supra. Today, the Supra’s indominable 2ZJ has entered the pantheon of legendary engines alongside the likes of the Chrysler’s 426 Hemi V8 and Ferrari’s Colombo V12.
Toyota Prius
Few cars so clearly mark a seismic shift in the automotive landscape as the Toyota Prius. There is a time before the Prius and a time after. Today, hybrid powertrains can be found in every manner of car from pickups and crossovers to supercars, but when the Prius debuted the blending of electric propulsion and traditional internal combustion was novel as were the mpg figures.
Tesla Roadster
Sure, the Tesla Roadster is largely an electrified Lotus Elise, but then, that’s what allowed the first Tesla to revolutionize our conception of electric cars. Before the Roadster, EVs were thought of as slow, unexciting, and thoroughly nerdy. The Roadster showed the world the performance electric motors were capable of and how arbitrary the prior packaging of EVs had really been. EVs could be blisteringly fast, too fast it turns out. While the Tesla Model 3 vastly outsold the Roadster it was the latter that popularized the notion of EVs as something other than boring.
Icons
Willys Jeep
The original jeep was born of necessity during WWII as the ruggedest of troop transports, a kind of vehicular Swiss army knife capable of tackling the toughest of terrain. In the years to come, the Willys’ CJ (civilian jeep) became a legend in its own right. The Jeep’s design, though simple, was deceptively ingenious. Light-weight and maneuverable, the Jeep was a 4×4 of unbending durability that proved as popular among the masses as it had been among soldiers. The Jeep even served as the basis for two other legendary off-roaders, the Toyota Land Cruiser and the Land Rover.
Porsche 911
The Porsche 911 is what other sports cars say they want to be when they grow up. Designed by Ferdinand “Butzi” Porsche, the roots of the 911 stretched back to the Porsche 356 and before that, the Volkswagen Beetle. The basic design of an air-cooled, horizontally opposed engine positioned at the rear remained true from the 1960s though the late 1990s. Balance, sound, road feel, and power-to-weight all combine in the 911 to deliver what many consider the ultimate sports car experience.
Chevrolet Corvette
When Harley Earl and company at GM first cooked up the idea of an American version of the European sports car, they couldn’t have imagined the impact the Corvette would eventually have. The Corvette became an icon on both the road and racetrack, steadily evolving over decades and eight distinct generations from a striking yet slow six-cylinder car into the mid-engine V8 supercar killer of today. Indeed, if there is a throughline for the Corvette it’s that: looking to the best European sports cars of the day and saying, yeah, we can do that … better.
Volkswagen Beetle
The Volkswagen Beetle is on the shortlist of the most iconic cars of all time. Originally conceived as “the people’s car” for Hitler’s imagined Third Reich, the Beetle ironically became the totemic vehicle of the 1960s hippy counterculture and later the ubiquitous Vocho taxi of Mexico. The Beetle was for a time the best-selling car of all time with over 24 million sold (eventually eclipsed by the likes of the Corolla and F-Series noted above). With its simple, practical design, the Beetle remained largely unchanged from its inception in the late 1930s through the 1970s.
Mazda Miata
Miata is always the answer, even when it comes to popular cars. The Miata might not sell in the numbers of a Beetle of F-150, but what it lacks in volume it makes up for in devoted enthusiasm. The Miata was designed to deliver more smiles per mile than any other car. Its lithe handling and light-weight design make it the default for canyon carving, track days, and weekend jaunts in the countryside. The Miata has proven itself a flexible platform for aftermarket builds from LS swaps to body-kitted tuners.
