The rarest cars on Britain's roads today

In many cases, this has already happened. In others, that day is not far off. To illustrate this, we’re looking at 39 of the rarest models in the UK today, with ten or fewer survivors.

Many more would qualify, but we’re listing only one per manufacturer, though others will be mentioned if there’s a tie. When you’re dealing with such small numbers, it’s inevitable that occasional inaccuracies will creep in, but our data come from the usually trustworthy How Many Left? website, which uses figures provided by the UK Department for Transport.

The information is taken from the site’s last update, which was made on 30 June 2022, and includes only vehicles which are currently registered for road use, rather than being on Statutory Off Road Notification, or SORN for short. Let's take a look:

PS: if you ever spot any of them, pls snap them and send the picture to us at Autocar as we'd love to see them in the wild...

Acura, Honda’s luxury and performance division mainly operates in North America and has never been represented in the UK, so it’s moderately surprising that any Acuras have made it here at all. In fact, there are over 30 currently registered, though in most cases the exact model is not specified.

Where it is, the rarest is the MDX SUV. There have been four generations of MDX in 22 years, and from the build dates given by How Many Left? they must both be part of the third, which was launched in 2013 and replaced in 2021.

The Arna was a joint effort between Alfa Romeo and Nissan. It was largely based on the Nissan Cherry, but powered by the flat-four engine previously used in the Alfasud. Produced only briefly in the 1980s, it was not well received, and is generally regarded as one of the poorest Alfas ever built.

It’s therefore not surprising that only one is currently registered in the UK, but if this is the car that was featured in a YouTube video in October 2021, as we assume it probably is, it has been beautifully restored and is in excellent condition.

Officially, there was no such thing as a DB1. The car was sold as the Aston Martin 2-Litre Sports, and became known as the DB1 retrospectively after the introduction of the DB2 in 1950.

A single example is currently registered in the UK as a DB1, and there is no record of a 2-Litre Sports, though since well over a thousand Aston Martins are listed as ‘model missing’ it’s within the bounds of reason that some may have slipped through unnoticed.

BMW’s New Class saloons went on sale in the early 1960s and were replaced by the first-generation 5 Series a decade later. The original and least powerful model was the 1500, which was also the first to be discontinued.

Since faster New Class cars are available, it’s perhaps not surprising that the 1500 is the closest to extinction in the UK, with only one example currently road-legal.

It was unusual for Bristol to manufacture a three-figure number of any model, so the fact that it produced over 600 401s was exceptional. The 402 was the convertible version of the same car, and was much rarer.

Production number estimates vary, but they are all in the mid 20s, and around half are believed to exist today. If that’s true, most of them they have travelled a long way from the factory, since only one is now registered in the UK.

Initially part of the Invicta range, the Wildcat became a model in its own right in the 1963 model year, and remained in production until the end of the decade.

Buicks have never been officially sold in the UK, but that doesn’t mean there are no enthusiasts here. The Wildcat is the rarest model round these parts, with six currently registered for road use.

Although Cadillac is one of North America’s most prestigious brands, attempts to sell its products in Europe have generally not gone well. In the case of the angular XLR sports car, there was the additional problem that Cadillac never converted it to right-hand drive.

According to the How Many Left? website, only one was registered here when the car was in production. There are now three, at least two of which were presumably first sold in other countries. One of them appears to have been on SORN for some time before being fully registered again in the second quarter of 2022.

The unfortunate history of Chrysler Europe includes the tale of the 180, a large saloon car with a 1.8-litre engine designed specially for it. It was never popular in the 1970s, so we can’t be astonished by the fact that only three are still road-legal in the UK today.

There are also three examples of the same car with a 2.0-litre engine, which we’re treating separately because it had the different – and rather prosaic – name Chrysler 2-Litre. There was also a Chrysler 160, whose engine size you can easily guess, but there appear to be none of those in the country.

The LNA was the replacement for the Citroen LN, which was essentially a shortened version of the Peugeot 104 with Citroen’s tiny two-cylinder engine. The LNA was more or less the same thing, except that its engine had four cylinders and a capacity – for UK purposes, at least – of 1.1 litres.

It wasn’t a big success here, which may partly explain why there are only three left. The related Talbot Samba, possibly helped by the fact that it had a more British-sounding name, has fared better. There are 19 of those still on the road, eight of them with the convertible body style which wasn’t offered in the LNA range.

Manufactured from 1961 to 1967, the Daffodil is the earliest and rarest DAF model of which examples are currently registered in the UK. It was powered by a 746cc two-cylinder engine which drove the rear wheels through DAF’s speciality – an early continuously variable transmission (CVT) known as Variomatic.

The current registration figure of two is the highest since 2008. For a while there were none, and from mid 2020 to early 2022 there was only one, though this has since been joined by another which had previously been on SORN.

The Applause was a simple and straightforward medium-sized 1.6-litre car which never really caught the public imagination, perhaps because it was available only as a saloon and not as a hatchback.

There will still around 2000 on UK roads at the turn of the century, but its numbers dropped into double figures in 2009 and single figures just six years later. There are 11 on SORN now, so a minor revival is possible, though perhaps unlikely.

One of the most curious of all Fiats, the 133 resembled the 126 but was actually a development of the earlier 850. Stranger still, it wasn’t built by Fiat but by SEAT, with which Fiat had a long (though now dissolved) partnership. In markets where SEAT did not have a presence, it was rebadged as a Fiat.

The 133 was sold briefly in the UK in the mid 1970s, a decade before official SEAT imports began. Its numbers here have been below double figures since 1997. Three were fully registered at the start of 2022, but one of them has since been downgraded to SORN status.

These German Fords were essentially the same car, differing most obviously in the fact that they had a 1.7-litre V4 engine and a 2.0-litre V6 respectively. They were part of the Taunus model line, and are presumably from the generation known as P7 built from 1967 to 1971, since this was the only one with both a 17M and a 20M in the range.

Ford of Britain and Ford of Germany had not yet merged to form Ford of Europe in those days, so the Taunus was never sold in the UK, where we had the Cortina instead. This explains their current rarity, though oddly there are three times as many examples of the 12M/15M from the contemporary, but slightly different, P6 generation.

The H1 was the civilian version of the Humvee military vehicle created by AM General, though the brand was later taken over by General Motors. It was never marketed in the UK, and is immense size isn’t exactly suitable for our roads, but up to four have been registered at various times over the past 15 years.

Now there is just one vehicle registered under that name, though this might not be the full story. 123 Hummers, nearly half the UK total, are registered as ‘model missing’, so (as with the Aston Martin 2-Litre Sports mentioned previously) there may be more out there than we realise.

The Fiat 124-based Russian car now referred to as the Lada Classic was built in many forms over its long production life. The 1300 was fitted, as you may already have guessed, with a 1.3-litre engine, and was given slightly different styling than the original 1200 which had been introduced four years earlier in 1970.

Although they once had a loyal following, not many Lada Classics are still registered in the UK, and the 1300 is the rarest of them. There are currently 14 1200s, ten 1500s and four 1600s.

This limited-edition 759bhp supercar, related to the Lamborghini Aventador, was introduced in 2016, to celebrate not the 100th anniversary of the company itself (which entered the motor industry in 1963), but that of its founder, Ferruccio Lamborghini (1916-1993).

Only 40 were built – 20 coupes and 20 convertibles – and according to the records there has been one UK registration every quarter since late 2019. Unless something unusual has been going on, it’s probably the same car.

Based on the same platform used for the Alfa Romeo 155 and the Fiat Tempra, the Dedra was one of the last Lancias sold in the UK before this brand was withdrawn from the market in 1995. It was never a big seller here, and only four are still registered, one of them a high-performance HF Turbo which appears to have been on SORN until quite recently.

There are also four examples of two other Lancia models, the 1980s Trevi and the Delta-based Prisma saloon.

The MC12 road car, produced briefly in 2004 and 2005, existed simply so that Maserati could develop a competition version for GT racing, in which it performed very well.

No more than four have ever been registered in the UK at the same time. There were none at all for a while, but one entered the list in 2019, and it has since been joined by another. This brings it level with the older and slightly less extreme Maserati Kyalami coupe, manufactured from 1967 to 1973.

The Bagheera was a very attractive mid-engined coupe built from 1973 to 1980 and powered by first a 1.3-litre and later a 1.4-litre version of the engine which first appeared in the Simca 1000.

It has always been a rare machine in the UK, and there are currently on six registered for road use, with a further 13 on SORN. They are officially listed as Simcas, which isn’t entirely accurate, and are all examples of the S models, which implies that they have the 1.4-litre engine.

An 1800 is the single remaining road-legal example in the UK of the saloon car known elsewhere as the first-generation Mazda Luce, built from 1966 to 1973 and sold here from 1968.

As its name implies, the 1800 had a 1.8-litre engine. The original Luce was powered by a 1.5-litre unit and was known, inevitably, as the 1500 outside Japan. Four 1500s are on SORN, but there hasn’t been a fully-registered example since 2018.

McLaren built 106 examples of its exceptionally aerodynamic hybrid supercar, which has been timed at a remarkable 250mph in testing. As many as six have been registered in the UK at the same time, but as of the middle of 2022 there was only one, presumably because the remainder have found homes in different countries.

According to the latest available data, four more Speedtails are on SORN, probably to conserve their future value.

It would be easy to assume that almost everyone has forgotten about the Cordia, a front-wheel drive liftback coupe produced for most of the 1980s, but in fact an international Facebook page dedicated to the model has around 1500 members.

Presumably only a small proportion are based in the UK, because only one example is currently registered here. It appears to have been manufactured in 1987, and rather excitingly it has a turbocharged 1.6-litre petrol engine, the most powerful in the range.

17 cars built by Russia’s Moskvitch (or Moskvich – opinions on the spelling vary) are currently registered in the UK. The rarest of these is the 412, of which only one survivor is road-legal.

The 412 was almost exactly the same thing as the 408, which went into production three years earlier in 1964. The major difference was that the 412 had a 1.5-litre petrol engine rather than the 408’s 1.4-litre petrol or 1.8-litre diesel units. For no immediately obvious reason, the 408 is faring better, with three examples registered for road use.

The 110 was a larger derivative of the NSU Prinz, fitted with first a 1.1-litre and later a 1.2-litre engine. It was produced from 1965 to 1967 and then renamed NSU 1200, retaining that name until the model was discontinued in 1972.

The only 110 in the UK appears to have been one of the earliest, since it’s listed as having been built in 1965. The number of registered 1200s grew to 17 in 2022, a figure last achieved in 2000.

The 604 was warmly reviewed in the British motoring press when it was launched in 1975, but sales were never high, possibly because UK buyers preferred their premium saloons either to have German badges or to be built by Jaguar.

Registrations dropped into two figures in 1998 and have since dwindled to just eight, though that’s two more than there were at the end of 2021. Three times as many are on SORN, so perhaps full registrations will gradually rise in the coming years.

Over 400 Plymouths are currently registered in the UK, but nearly all of them are listed as ‘model missing’. The only identified model is the Prowler, very much a special-interest model in this country since it was designed to look something like a hot-rodded American car of the 1930s.

No more than ten Prowlers have ever been fully registered at the same time, a feat last achieved in the third quarter of 2016. There are currently seven, in addition to six on SORN.

The 125P was the Polish version of the Fiat 125, manufactured over a very long period from 1968 to 1991 and latterly known as the FSO 125P. From a UK perspective, there was very little to recommend it, apart from the fact that you could get a new and quite roomy car for very little money.

For most of the 21st century so far there have been no original Polski-Fiat versions registered here, but one (built in 1976, before the name change) was added to the list in 2019 and is still on it now. There are also eight of the FSOs and 12 examples of Fiat’s own 125.

The Executive is one of the less common Pontiac models of its time, having been built in relatively small numbers from 1967 to 1970. It was never officially sold in the UK, but no other Pontiac was either, and well over a thousand are currently registered for road use.

Only one of these is an Executive, listed as having been built in 1968. The later Pontiac Acadian, a rebadged Chevrolet Chevelle sold in Canada, is equally rare today, but until recently there were two. Since 1998, there has never been more than one Executive.

Renault’s first attempt at a front-wheel drive hatchback with a transversely-mounted engine did not appeal to the public to anything like the same extent as the rival Volkswagen Golf, and it quickly became clear that the sales figures, like the bodywork, had gone pear-shaped. Demand was so low that Renault, which had built a million examples of the 4 in just four and a half years in the early 1960s, produced a smaller number of 14s from 1976 to 1983.

It can’t come as a surprise, then, that the 14 is now the least common of all Renaults registered in the UK. There are just six of them, compared with 43 of the earlier and much less mainstream Caravelle sports car.

In each of its three generations, the Sonett was a sports car which used the same mechanicals as contemporary Saab saloons, including two-stroke engines or, later, a four-stroke V4 supplied by Ford of Germany. We’re tentatively reporting that there are three road-legal, UK-based Sonett IIs today because that’s how many are registered under that name, but the situation is complicated by the fact that a single Sonett V4 is also listed. This could be from the second or third generation, but since it’s quoted as having been built in 1967 it’s probably another Sonett II.

To make matters worse, eight more cars are registered under the name Saab 97 Sonett. 97 is the code for both the Sonett II and the Sonett III (the original model was called 94), and while two of these vehicles are almost certainly Sonett IIs, bringing the total to six, another was built in the changeover year of 1970, which makes it difficult to identify. It’s all terribly confusing.

The first SEAT models officially sold in the UK, from 1985, were the Ibiza hatchback and the Malaga saloon. The Ibiza is well known because it’s still being built today, now in its fifth generation, but the Malaga name was discontinued in 1991 and hasn’t been used since.

More than 700 Malagas were still on the road here in 2000, but the numbers fell away quickly. By 2019 the car was effectively extinct in on these shores, but for some reason there has been a revival, and there are now ten fully-registered Malagas in the country.

The 1960s MB (standing for Skoda’s home town of Mladá Boleslav) is a model range rather than a specific car. Saloons were called 1000MB and 1100MB depending on whether they had 1.0-litre or 1.1-litre engines, while the equivalent coupes were named 1000MBX and 1100MBX.

The only example currently registered in this country is an 1000MB which makes up part of Skoda UK’s heritage fleet. Another MB of some sort was registered until 2009, but it was then transferred to SORN and has since dropped off the list.

The 2000GT sports car was an astonishing vehicle for Toyota to bring out back in 1967. Co-developed with Yamaha, it was only ever sold to the public as a coupe, though a convertible was built specially for the James Bond film You Only Live Twice, as the lanky Sean Connery could barely fit into the coupe.

Arguably Japan’s first credible sports car, just one car of that name appears on the How Many Left? database. There is also a single Toyota 2000, which could conceivably be the same thing, but it’s difficult to tell.

Based on the third-generation Opel Commodore, the Viceroy was introduced in 1980 to fill a gap in Vauxhall’s range between the Carlton and the Royale. With a 2.5-litre straight-six engine, it was more expensive and economical than the Carlton without being noticeably better. Vauxhall did not market it enthusiastically, and only 2295 examples are believed to have been sold the two years it was in production.

Of all the Vauxhalls registered today, the Viceroy is the least common. There are nine road-legal survivors, split more or less equally into four with manual transmission and five automatics. A further 13 are on SORN.

Sometimes compared with the Lotus Esprit, the Atlantique 300 was a mid-engined sports car with a fibreglass body, and originally powered by a 3.0-litre V6 jointly developed by Peugeot, Renault and Volvo. This was offered with or without a turbocharger. In 1998, another co-produced V6 of the same size became available with two turbos.

Only two 300s are currently registered in the UK. The exact model is not specified in either case, and the fact that they are both listed as having been built in 1998 doesn’t help much, since it means that these cars might have two turbochargers, or just one, or even none at all.

In the early 20th century, Volkswagen built several ‘one-litre’ concepts which were designed to use only one litre of fuel for every 100km travelled, the equivalent of 282mpg. The third, and the only one later built to be sold to private customers, was the XL1, which had a very aerodynamic body, enclosed rear wheels, an 800cc two-cylinder diesel engine, an electric motor and a total weight of just 795kg.

The official fuel economy and CO2 emissions figures were 313mpg and 21g/km respectively, so the XL1 was very cheap to run, which didn’t come close to offsetting its UK purchase price of £98,515. Despite that, there were as many as 24 XL1s registered here in 2014. The figure recently dropped to just ten, though there are a further 13 on SORN.

The 140 series was the first Volvo range to reach a seven-figure production total, with 1,251,371 examples built in eight years. The first to on sale, in 1966, was the five-door 144 saloon, followed a year later by the 142 two-door and a year after that by the 145 estate.

Today there are 121 144s and 54 145s registered in the UK. Perhaps because of its reduced practicality, the 142 is much rarer, with only ten road-legal examples. Enthusiasts seem to have become increasingly keen on preserving them, though, since registrations were down in single figures all the way from 2002 to 2018.

The Tourist was the estate version of the East German Wartburg 353, sold in the UK as the Knight. There wasn’t much to recommend it, since its 1.0-litre three-cylinder two-stroke engine was an anachronism by the time production ended in the late 1980s, but on the plus side it was roomy and cost very little to buy.

Despite the apparent lack of appeal, some British motorists are very fond of this type of car. Registrations of the Knight saloon have recently increased to 19, a figure last achieved way back in 2003, but there are only three road-legal Tourists.

This listing is surprising because no Wolseley ever appears to have been sold with the 2200 name. A quick date check suggests that this in fact the top model in the 18-22 series which was launched in 1975 and renamed Princess later the same year. Austin and Morris versions were known as the 1800 or 2200 depending on whether they were fitted with 1.8-litre four-cylinder engines or 2.2-litre straight-sixes. The Wolseley did not require this distinction because it was only ever powered by the 2.2, and in contemporary brochures it was referred to simply as the Wolseley Saloon.

The Wolseley version was abandoned at the time of the name change to Princess, and was therefore built for only a few months, during which period production was halted several times due to strike action. It’s therefore unsurprising that only six are registered today, and encouraging that this is six times as many as there were back in 2014.