Petition to start National Rarely Seen Car Day | Axon’s Automotive Anorak

The day started early and within just a couple of minutes of leaving my driveway, I saw a Proton Impian pass by at a T-junction. Admittedly, it was a metallic silver Impian that I have spotted before around the local area, one of only 80 remaining road-worthy examples in the whole of the UK according to the data found on the How Many Left (HML) website.

No sooner had the Proton passed me by than an equally rare Mercedes-Benz R-Class roared past in the opposite direction. The R-Class can best be classified as a major flop for the revered Stuttgart vehicle maker. It was a large and long MPV-cum-SUV seven-seater with a premium price tag, but little else to match its lofty market positioning. I’m not too sure how many R-Class models found UK buyers, but it can’t have been many, based on how few you ever see on the roads, even when it was current.

Having by now begun my journey in earnest, the roads were full of the inevitable ubiquitous and strong-selling Fords, Vauxhall, Nissans, Kias and VWs that go to make up the routine and dullness of the crowded British road network. My boredom was soon punctured however, by the welcome and very rare sighting of a tidy-looking Subaru SVX, the quirky Giugairo-styled coupé with an unusual flat-six boxer engine and many odd styling details.

Always a niche car with a large price tag (for a Subaru), the silvery-blue SVX really did stand out amongst the boring hatches and anonymous SUVs as something quite different. According to HML, only 23 registered examples remain on our roads today, so seeing one was a real privilege.

The excitement of seeing the scarce Subaru was soon tempered by getting stuck behind a far less exciting family conveyance – a boring Toyota Avensis Verso MPV – of which around 325 examples remain road legal and in use, not that you’d really notice due to the anonymous model’s tedious nature.

A Peugeot 407 Coupé was my next uncommon spot. On paper this two-door coupé held much promise. In reality, though, the sporting 407 was a disappointment.  Introduced to replace the popular and gorgeous Pininfarina-designed 406 Coupé, the 407 Coupé lacked the grace and charm (and sales) of the modern-classic Pininfarina car.

Rather, the 407 Coupé was styled in-house at Peugeot itself, with an unfortunate large grille and front bumper arrangement that gave the model the appearance of an angry fish. Peugeot’s own design failed to equal or better the elegant and timeless looks of the 406 Coupé, and as a result, the 407 was never a strong seller, despite the royal blue example I saw being a remarkably original and clean car.

Shortly after seeing the Peugeot, I overtook another rare-seen 2+2 coupé: a Ford Probe, on of around 140 examples still extant on UK roads. Now ‘getting on a bit’, the Probe was an American-built coupé, based around a Mazda MX-6 platform, and sharing many of the Mazda’s mechanicals. When first introduced into the UK the media of the day hailed the new coupé model as the revival of the Ford Capri so beloved by us Brits. Sadly, the Probe (and its Ford Cougar successor) never achieved the dizzy cult-status following or sales of is Capri forefather.

By now I was about halfway north to my Warwickshire destination, with the roads getting busier and the traffic scenery more predictable and duller. The sight of an early sixties Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud purposely wafting its way along the outside lane of the opposite carriageway did much to warm my heart as I trudged along behind a sea of brake lights, but the sudden spot of a Rover CityRover got my attention.

Launched towards the end of the MG Rover Group’s existence in 1994, the CityRover was a lame attempt to recapture a slice of the small supermini hatchback market vacated by the Group’s Austin Metro/Rover 100 series a few years earlier. The model was nothing more than a rebadged Tata Indica, imported from India with a marginally plusher interior and a chrome ‘traditional’ Rover grille added, all for an overly ambitious price.

Unsurprisingly, the British public were not fooled and only around 9,000 CityRovers found buyers before the MG Rover business failed. Today just 82 CityRovers remain on our roads.

My next spot after the Rover was another little entry hatchback model: the Seat Arosa. A little older than the CityRover, the Arosa was the Seat version of the Spanish-built Volkswagen Lupo. Cheaper than its badge engineered VW sibling, the Arosa never found huge favour in the UK, and only 192 road-legal examples are now extant.

Nearing my destination near Coventry, my last couple of rare car spots ran to another badge-engineered model, the Vauxhall Monterey. The Monterey was a large and forgettable range-topping 4x4 SUV, sitting above the more popular Frontera in Vauxhall’s off-road family before being rebranded as the Isuzu Trooper. HML records that just 122 Montereys remain in active use.

My final intriguing spot of the day was the appealing but ‘what on earth where they thinking?’ Suzuki Kizashi. The stylishly sporting and tough-looking Kizashi was a minor league junior executive three-box saloon, sold in a company car tax unfriendly 2.4-litre petrol format only with a CVT gearbox, the option of all-wheel drive and just a single specification. Given how few would have been sold when new (2009-2015) a surprisingly high 265 Suzuki Kizashis are still registered for the road in the UK.

My return journey home was in the dark and rain, so my unusual and scarce car spotting was less productive, but the ten or so rare cars I spotted on my outward trip northbound had helped to make the long and potentially dull drive more entertaining, and should certainly be enough to qualify for the makings of a productive National Rarely Seen Car Day.