Bugatti’s official story is that the seed of the Veyron was planted in 1997. VW Group boss Ferdinand Piëch and his powertrain chief Karl-Heinz Neumann were on a Japanese train brewing up engine ideas.

Once they headed the company car parks of Eighties Britain, now these executive icons offer prestige, nostalgia and pure driving pleasure from £5k. But which of these trading-floor titans best rewards the shrewd classic motorist?

YOU’LL PAY: £45,000 YOU’LL LOOK LIKE: A LOTTERY WINNER ON THEIR WAY TO THE GREEK PILLAR EMPORIUM Has the 360 finally aged out of its blobby phase and into used Ferrari temptation? Though its curves we

In 1976 Lancia brought out the Gamma, a luxury saloon that took the place of the Flavia 2000. It had a flat-four engine of 1998cc or 2484cc, but it was withdrawn in 1984, after 15,296 had been built,

Either someone just collapsed a wormhole in the spacetime continuum and bunched up the past 20 years, or Bugatti is messing with our tiny little minds. Turns out it’s the latter, because if you though

If any vehicle is emblematic of the declining value of pre-war machinery, it is this 1927 Star Vela. The last-known six-cylinder Star to survive in the UK, it’s for sale at just under £30,000 – or rou