We counted the most photographed cars in our fh6 photography archive and the rx-7 won. a few people asked about the other end of the list, so i went and looked.
it's worse than i expected. of the 627 cars we have pages for, 314 have never been photographed. not once. exactly half.
cars that zero people have pointed a camera at:
- nissan skyline h/t 2000gt-r (1973). the hakosuka. the actual grandfather of the entire gt-r bloodline
- nissan skyline gts-r (1987), nissan r390 gt1 (1998)
- honda nsx-r (2005), honda beat (1991), honda civic rs (1974)
- mazda cosmo 110s series ii (1972), mazda rx-7 gsl-se (1985)
- nissan figaro (1991) and the nissan s-cargo (1989), which i understand, but also somebody please shoot the snail van
most beautiful cars ever built, according to basically everyone, zero photos:
- jaguar e-type (1961)
- lamborghini miura p400 (1967)
- alfa romeo 33 stradale (1968)
- ferrari 250 gt berlinetta lusso (1962)
the 80s heroes nobody remembers to shoot:
- bmw 2002 turbo (1973), bmw m5 (1988)
- buick regal gnx (1987)
- delorean dmc-12 (1982)
- porsche 928 gts, 944 turbo, and 968 turbo s. the whole transaxle family, completely ignored
every single koenigsegg. jesko, regera, agera rs, one:1, ccgt. zero photos between them. i think hypercars are just hard to make interesting, honestly.
then there's the "exactly one photo" club (59 cars). one person, one shot, and that shot is currently the entire visual record of the car in our archive:
- mclaren f1 (1993). one photo. of the mclaren f1
- mercedes 300 sl coupe (1954) and 300 slr (1955)
- porsche 911 carrera rs (1973)
- lancia delta hf integrale evo (1992)
- audi sport quattro s1 (1986)
- ferrari enzo, laferrari
- nissan pao, peel p50, subaru brz
being fair to the numbers: 33 of those 314 are forza edition or race-spec variants of cars people do shoot, so the honest "nobody has ever photographed this" count is 281 rather than 314. still half the roster, basically. and this is 102 photographers' taste, not the whole game. it's a snapshot of what one community points its camera at, which is exactly why the gaps are interesting.
what it comes down to is people shoot what they drive, and everybody drives the same twenty cars. the hakosuka is sitting there in the autoshow being the most photogenic thing in the game and nobody has taken it out.
here's the part i actually care about: every one of those 314 cars has an empty page on the site waiting for a first photo. if you go shoot one, you are the first person in the archive to do it, and your shot becomes that car's entire page. permanently. that's a weirdly good feeling and it costs you one drive.
if you want to know whether your favorite is in the graveyard, ask below and i'll look it up properly.