I was driving the other day in traffic and saw a car parked in a driveway facing the house. At first glance I thought it looked a little like a DeLorean, although I knew right away that it wasn’t one, but it had a similar sharp and angular design that placed it visually in the late 70s or mid 80s. It had a silvery-gray finish, a low-angled hatchback, and a single “S” emblem in the center of the rear area.
I immediately wondered what it was, and so when I got home I googled possible matches. I thought it might have been an older Supra or Nissan 200SX, and while these cars do both look like the car that I saw, I can’t find any pictures of any of them bearing the solitary “S” emblem that I saw on the back of the car.
The position of the emblem looked more like the emblem of a make rather than a model, but I can’t think of any car makes starting with S that fit the car that I saw. And I can’t just go back and look at it because I don’t remember where the hell it was. (I’m in the US, by the way.)
I’m thinking it may have been an 80s Supra or 200SX with some kind of custom emblem that was a modification by the owner - but is there any other car it could have been?
Some of their 1970s-80s models were vaguely DeLoreanesque in design – the mid-1980s Ibiza and maybe the late-70s 1200 Sport? However, I am having trouble finding pictures of SEAT models from that time frame with the “S” logo on the rear center. Newer models do have the logo located like that.
The first thing I thought of was the Mitsubishi Starion. It has a shape similar to what you describe and is at least a model name that starts with ‘S’, but I don’t see any with a logo like you described from a cursory image search, though.
The ‘S’ logo makes me think of Suzuki, but I’m not aware of them making any sports cars like that.
Actually, the first thing that popped into my head when you mentioned the ‘S’ logo was Studebaker, but nothing they made even remotely looks like the car you described. Even the Avanti was more 1960s “Coke bottle” than angular 1970s/80s.
I missed the edit window, but poking around Wikipedia I learned that Shelby made some limited production versions of Chrysler cars in the 1980s, some of which bore an ‘S’ badge (actually it looks more like a “CS”, I assume for Carol Shelby). The Shelby Lancer, for example. That doesn’t look quite like the car you saw, but maybe it was a Shelby version of a Charger or Daytona? Although all the pictures I can find of those have Chrysler badges.
Aye; I thought of a Shelby too, partly because they fit the shape and because their logo is a coiled cobra that looks like an S. And they place it center.
I’m pretty sure the S emblem was just an S, and kind of like this. I don’t remember any kind of border around it either, I think it was just a standalone letter. Which would lean more in the direction of “custom modification.”
I may try to drive around tomorrow and see if I can remember where it was.
The S badge on the back (not the front) of the car is what threw me. It may very well have been a Silvia, I didn’t get a chance to scrutinize it as I was driving in moving traffic, but I remember that solitary letter S emblazoned in the center of the hatch lid. And I can’t find a single damn picture of a Silvia with that emblem on it.
Don’t feel bad. I read lots of Superman comics as a kid and was 30 before I realized the red blob with funny yellow shapes inside on his chest was actually an “S” with a border. I guess negative space isn’t my thing.
Well, I drove around the general area of where I thought I saw the car, and I guess I got lucky because I managed to find it. I got a picture of it. It definitely appears to be a Supra, but the S badge - which I did not in fact imagine, but which WAS in fact inside some kind of border and not a standalone “S” as my false memory led me to believe - I don’t see that emblem on any pictures of Supras that I can find online.
When the Batman (1989) Movie came out and the Batman Logo was plastered everywhere, I had no idea what it was. I was in my mid-30s at the time and really wasn’t all that interested in superhero movies, so I tuned out any references to the movie. I just saw the logo as a variation of The Rolling Stone’s big lips that were ubiquitous a decade or so earlier, except being a set of grinning yellow teeth. It made no sense to me, for an embarrassing length of time.
In fact you can buy that ‘S’ emblem (or any other letter or number you want) at Autozone. I was once behind someone who altered their car’s model name to make it a “Nissan Versace” with those aftermarket letters.
