Caterpillars to butterflies: 12 amazing automotive transformations

Sow’s ear to silk purse, but with cars

From Cortina to Capri; from Golf to Scirocco: a few strokes of the designer’s pencil are often all it takes to turn the humdrum into a humdinger.

Here are 12 ordinary – and in many cases ugly – classics that started off as caterpillars and emerged as butterflies.

Or, in the case of the Alfa SZ, one of those scarily toxic oak processionary moths.

From… Volkswagen Beetle

Everybody loves the Bug. OK, so maybe not people who’ve lifted off the accelerator on a wet corner having forgotten to deposit the obligatory paving slab in the trunk and found themselves upside-down in a ditch. But the Beetle is cute and cool.

Pretty, though? No way.

To… Volkswagen Karmann Ghia

But the Beetle’s floor-pan and running gear proved the perfect platform for numerous much sexier cars, including Bruce Meyers’ Manx beach buggy and Volkswagen’s own Karmann Ghia coupé and cabrio.

From… Lancia Fulvia saloon

Front-wheel drive and four-wheel disc brakes was pretty advanced stuff for the early 1960s. But looking at the Fulvia’s traditional, three-box body you’d never know it had anything like that going on underneath the skin.

It was crying out to be transformed into…

To… Lancia Fulvia Coupé

…a gorgeous little coupé. That wish was granted in 1965 when Lancia unveiled a stunning little 2+2 on a shortened Fulvia platform.

The standout feature was the almost uninterrupted 360-degree vision afforded by its unfeasibly slim roof pillars.

From… Fiat 125

With its classic drawn-by-a-five-year-old silhouette, Fiat’s late-1960s big family car was right on trend, but not likely to set anyone’s pulse racing – although the uprated 100bhp 125S shown here did its best.

To… Fiat Samantha

However, when Vignale went to work on the 125, it was a different story.

A face with echoes of the Lamborghini Miura and Maserati Mistral, plus a sleek fastback as graceful as the 125’s was brutal, left little clue as to what was underneath.

From… Alfa Romeo 75

With a transaxle layout providing balance, the 75 drove far better than it looked.

Then again, considering the weirdly kinked waistline makes it look like a Giulietta that’s been shunted up the rear by a truck, that wouldn’t be hard.

To… Alfa Romeo SZ

OK, so a butterfly isn’t the first creature that springs to mind when someone mentions an Alfa so brutal it was nicknamed il mostro (the monster).

But the SZ works because it’s far better resolved than the 75, and it has real presence on the road.

From… Ford Falcon

By the late 1950s, the big US car makers realised they needed to come up with some smaller, cheaper cars to fight affordable gas-sipping imports from Europe.

Unlike rival Chevy’s rear-engined air-cooled Corvair, the Falcon was disappointingly conservative. This turned out to be exactly what buyers wanted.

To… Ford Mustang fastback

The Falcon was a sales hit, but entirely uncool, unlike the Mustang that Ford created from the same pile of bits.

Sharper styling – particularly in fastback form – endless personalisation options, and a slick marketing campaign helped create an icon out of the ordinary.

From… Triumph Herald

We’re being a bit harsh on the Herald by describing it as a caterpillar. But when you compare Giovanni Michelotti’s work on Triumph’s small saloon with what he created from the same chassis just a couple of years later…

To… Triumph Spitfire

…it all makes sense. The transformation from upright saloon to ground-scraping sports car was possible because the Herald still used body-on frame construction.

Mechanically, the two were almost identical, and shared the same iffy transverse leaf suspension.

From… Volkswagen Golf Mk1

Designer Giorgietto Giugiaro’s thoroughly modern Mk1 Volkswagen Golf was full of purpose, but not much in the way of passion – at least not as presented to the world in the spring of 1974, two years before the GTI hot hatch version went on sale.

To… Volkswagen Scirocco Mk1

The coupé Giugiaro created from the same component set, however, was a stunner, even in base form.

But since the Karmann-built Scirocco actually made its world debut before the Golf, giving Volkswagen a chance to iron out any bugs ahead of the more important car going on sale, this is more a case of a butterfly turning into a caterpillar.

From… Dodge Coronet

By the second half of the 1960s, Detroit was starting to replace straight lines with Coke-bottle contours, though conventional four-door cars such as this Dodge Coronet still looked like they’d been designed using a Jenga set rather than modelling clay.

To… Dodge Charger

When Dodge added a fastback roof to create the original 1966 Charger from the same platform, the Coronet became a genuine crowd pleaser.

Or at least it did until the fabulous (if less striking) 1968-’70 Charger appeared, and it’s been mostly forgotten about ever since.

From… Bentley R-type

Expensive cars such as Bentleys were often bought as bare chassis and delivered to coachbuilders to be turned into something special.

But the regular Crewe-built R-type was a fairly frumpy clone of sister brand Rolls-Royce’s Silver Cloud II.

To… Bentley R-type Continental

However, there was nothing frumpy about the R-type Continental. This lighter, coachbuilt R-type was good for 120mph thanks to its uprated straight-six and longer final drive.

From… Lancia Gamma (1970s)

Not Pininfarina’s finest work, this rather large Lancia looked like one of those modern hatchback things, but was actually just a boring old saloon, meaning there was no excuse for the elephant’s-leg C-pillars that killed rear visibility.

To… Lancia Gamma Coupé (1970s)

Now we’re talking. Pininfarina also drew the Gamma Coupé, and the results were much happier. That low, tapering bonnet – one of the saloon’s strong design points – was possible because it was powered by a flat-four engine.

From… Ford Cortina Mk2

Long before Mondeo man (it’s probably crossover man, these days), there was Cortina man.

Which, if he was anything like his humdrum family Ford, meant he was solid, dependable and almost totally lacking in excitement. Even the Lotus version was less fun this time round.

To… Ford Capri Mk1

But the Capri screamed excitement!

In fact, much like the Mustang that inspired it, the Capri wasn’t any more sophisticated than the Cortina, but it looked as thrilling as any of those French and Italian coupés without scaring would be owners with any of that complicated-sounding twin-cam, rear disc brakes and independent suspension nonsense.

From… Hillman Hunter/Minx

The Hunter/Minx, and its various badge-engineered Vogue, Gazelle and Sceptre brothers, was Rootes Group’s answer to the Ford Cortina.

It had the same blocky three-box styling; the same conservative rear-drive layout, and similar low-tech overhead valve engine.

To… Sunbeam Rapier

But reimagined for coupé buyers as the Sunbeam Alpine, or the pokier Sunbeam Rapier (especially in Holbay-tuned, twin-Weber H120 form), it suddenly became a whole lot more desirable.