There’s only one acceptable answer: The sensible Fiat Panda 4x4

The Black Volga. Seeing one meant either you was being tailed by the KGB or someone on your neighborhood would get a free one-way ticket to Siberia.

Nice looking car, though

My pearlscent blue VW Parati Club, a rare version with an even rarer color. It was recently bought from a guy from other state in to be completely restored and sent to the USA (I’m from Brazil)

Unpopular opinion: Barebones shitboxes. Nowadays there are so many mandatory equipment because safety, emissions and etc that there’s no longer true cheap cars with mechanical simplicity.

If by “left” you mean “something that fell on it and you could never fully wipe off” I’d say tree sap.

My car had three globs of tree sap glued to its roof for 4 years until I got it polished.

The Fiat Multipla. Sure, it’s ugly as heck, but it’s the cleverest packaging in a small footprint that’s not a boxy kei-car from Japan.

Does the 2022 Lada Niva Bronto counts?

It’s not a thing from my town, but from my entire country. In Brazil, for a long time customers valued reliability and mechanical simplicity over technology. And during the 70's to early 90's we were under am import embargo, as ordered by the military junta who commanded the country to “develop the national industry”.

I’ll beat a dead horse and suggest the Volvo P1800. A lot could be said about its styling which still feels fresh, its clean lines and etc, but for me, I just think it’s neat :)

Ssangyong Actyon, the first version. It was a coupé SUV before these were a thing, but the sharknose grille and awful rear design composed a car that didn't look good at any angle.

Speaking from a non-US POV: The Chevrolet Chevette, a.k.a. the Brazilian Miata. It’s dirt cheap, has a strong modding scene, it’s RWD and it’s so easy to put other engines and transmissions on these that we even have names for them: Chepala is the Chevette with the 4.1l inline-6 from the Opala, Chevectra the Chevette…

*puts on fedora, slightly sideways*

Having an older car, I always keep at least a quart of oil, a bottle of coolant, jump cables, zip ties, emergency tire repair kit (if somehow I have a puncture on my spare tire) and a set of spark plug cables (saved me once).

The best fast car is the one nobody expects. Like the Fiesta-based Ford Courier. The 1.6 liter Zetec engine doesn’t seem like much, but 109hp on a 1000kg ute made those incredibly zippy and, frankly, frightening to drive.

A good window film, like a UV-blocker dark green polarized film. I live in a tropical country, and when the sun shines, it shines so hard you can feel your skin start to fry. A dark green window filter not only makes the car interior much more comfortable by filtering out most of the harmful UV rays, but it…

There’s this meme on Brazilian car circles, about the Hyundai Veloster. It was advertised as the 8th wonder of the world, as a true sports car in Brazilian soil.

In Brazil we didn’t got all those juice muscle cars you Americans got. The only similar things we got were the Dodge Charger (actually the Dart rebadged as a Charger), the Ford Maverick and the Chevy Opala. From these 3, the Mavericks were amongst the most desired ones.

The Stochastic Theft Prevention system, also called “this POS is 30 years old what the heck is broken this time”, which randomly prevents the car from being turned on.

The Ferrari F40. Ok, it was never meant to be an expensive luxury car, but it was expensive back in the day and it still is get expensiver each day.

My vote is for the badge on the Gordon-Keeble sports car, a low-volume British automaker that only made the Gordon GT, and only between 1964 and 1967.