The leaves are starting to change color, and the school year is well underway across the country. If you have the responsibility of dropping kids off at class every morning, you probably have a good grasp of which parents have the cool cars. We asked our readers last week for the rarest cars they’ve ever seen on a school run. The comments section featured trips down memory lane or recent carspotting outings while waiting in the pickup line for their own child.
The submissions ranged from expensive luxury cars to racing machinery that probably wasn’t legally allowed on public roads. A few commentators reminisced about the cool cars they got to drive into the parking lot as students or spotted their classmates driving home in. However, you would swear that the parents were trying harder to show off than the newly-licensed high schoolers. Without further ado, here are the rarest school run rides:
Someone thinks they’re too cool for school
If you want to talk in terms of pure rarity and uniqueness, I’ve dropped my kids off in one-off pre-production prototypes and concept cars a time or two. But I value my anonymity, so I won’t be disclosing what they were here…
Submitted by: NoID11
Company cars at Ford’s aerospace division
My dad worked for what eventually became to be known as Ford Aerospace (eventually Loral Space Systems). In any case, we always had a Ford lease car. Of course, my dad would select a sensible four-door family car but his bachelor co-workers, sometimes not so much. And the lease group did occasionally offer some oddities based on Ford’s collabs at the time. Apparently, one of my Dad’s coworkers needed the sensible sedan for a few days and that’s how I ended up being driving to kindergarten for a couple of mornings in a Pantera.
Submitted by: REO
A soccer mom with a Rover
Was picked up once after soccer practice by a friend’s mom who was driving a Rover SD1 (3500). I distinctly remember it because while most cars had blue-tinted windshields, the Rover had an amber-tinted one.
Submitted by: RobFromVA
Yes, it’s a race car
Several years ago, our son’s elementary school called to tell us he had been in a fight. It turned out he had been protecting some kids from another one, who was bullying them. For his trouble, our son was kicked in the shins.
My race car wasn’t road-registered, but I took the risk and drove it to pick him up from school. The pick-up line was minivan, minivan, suv, suv, race car, suv, minivan…
Submitted by: Poorsche
Riding on a friend’s Yamaha Triple
It’s not exactly an exotic vehicle, or anything like that – but when I was in high school back in the mid 2000s, I usually got a ride from a friend who lived in our neighborhood, but when he would have an AP class in our later years, my late father would occasionally take me to school and pick me up on his 70s era Yamaha triple.
It was always funny seeing some students looks as I would get dropped off on my dad’s bike. I guess sometimes, you can get the motorcycle cool factor even if you’re just the passenger.
Submitted by: Mondestine
Fun rides at a West Texas high school
Back in the mid-to-late 80s, my sister and I drove ourselves to high school in some fairly rare metal.
My sister drove a 1971 Triumph GT6+, and when I started driving, I drove the 1960 Chevy El Camino my Dad and I built. I don’t know how rare they are in the world, but they were the only ones in our west Texas city. They were fun, but their rarity made it tricky to get away with anything.
Submitted by: Stillnotatony
Driving to high school in a British convertible
Decades ago, I used to drop myself off in a 1976 Triumph Spitfire…not sure if that counts? My dad and I fixed it up together, and it became my first car. Couldn’t take it to college, though, because it was never really weather-proof 🙂
Submitted by: Matt Eames
An eclectic parking lot in suburban 1980s New York
The rarest thing I saw on the occasional school runs was a Ford Centurion conversion. I lived in a lower-middle-class suburb and my kids usually walked. My high school parking lot was a lot more interesting. This was an affluent NYC suburb in the early 80s. One of the jocks had a Citroën Mehari, another kid drove a Porsche 911 Carrera. RS, and one kid occasionally drove dad’s Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow. Two other standouts were a Renault 15 and a VW Thing.
Submitted by: Slow Joe Crow
Pre-production cars in the pickup line
Currently living in Birmingham, UK and went to pick up my daughter from school, only to see a Mercedes G-Wagen 6×6 waiting to pick up another kid! Then two weeks later, I saw someone in a camouflaged Defender (her school was about 1 mile away from their factory) and then also saw a camouflaged Aston Martin DBX (which a lot of their employees live where I do).
Before we moved to the UK from the US, I had bought the Alfa Romeo Giulia when it first came out in the US, used to take my daughter to school in it and all the boys would rush over to the car to open the door for her only to tell me that is a nice car, which then annoyed my daughter!
Submitted by: George
