The Black Eureka

This one is properly Australian. The Purvis Eureka was built in Melbourne through the seventies and eighties by Purvis Cars, who bought the rights to a wild British design called the Nova and made it their own.

The trick is the roof. Instead of normal doors, the entire canopy — windscreen, roof and all — hinges forward and lifts up, so you climb in over the side like a fighter pilot. In 1976 that was about the most futuristic thing on any road anywhere.

Underneath the swoopy fibreglass body sits the floorpan of a Volkswagen Beetle, which is the sort of cheerful contradiction that makes these cars so likeable: spaceship on top, humble Beetle underneath.

Only a few hundred were ever finished, so most people have genuinely never seen one. Expect questions.