For eight decades, cars have been incredible: gorgeous, innovative, powerful, and even reliable and affordable. As we spend more time talking about not owning cars and enjoying them drive themselves, we thought it would be appropriate to look back on the glories witnessed and pick a few big winners.

The 1940s: Original Jeep

The Willys-Overland Jeep was the vehicle than helped the Allies win World War II. The original rugged, throw-anything-at-it set of wheels, its legacy remains strong even today in vehicles such as the Jeep Wrangler.

Military vehicles have sometimes made the transition to civilian life. Think of the Hummer, for example.

But the Willys Jeep is one of the vehicles that said it all. Simple, easy to maintain, tough, ready for action. It was used by the US military and its allies as a scout car, so it saw front-line duty. Research it today and you can't help but be impressed at its perfect combination of form and function.

The 1950s: Citroën DS

The Citroën DS marked France's automotive comeback after World War II. Ahead of its time in both technology and styling, the DS has and will always be considered a pinnacle of the peculiar Gallic aesthetic attitude toward cars: sleek, suave, worldly.

Its iconic styling, advanced hydro-pneumatic suspension, and numerous Citroën design quirks made the DS truly unique.

The beautiful machine went into production in 1955 and stayed there until 1975.

The 1960s: Volkswagen Beetle

The "people's car," as the Volkswagen was originally defined, was created by Ferdinand Porsche at the behest of Nazi Germany for a cheap vehicle for everyone. Porsche went on to found Porsche as we know it today, while the Beetle survived the German World War II defeat to become one of the most popular cars of the 1960s.

Affordable, basic transportation was what a lot of people needs as the huge American sedans of the 1950s had lost their appeal. Eventually, the VW Beetle would go out of production but not before 21 million had been sold.

The 1970s: Lamborghini Countach.

While the stunningly beautiful Lamborghini Miura may have been the original supercar, it is the Countach that put the supercar on the map. No car in the last 40 years can match the Countach for sheer star power.

Armed with Lamborghini's legendary Bizzarini V12 engine, a sleek wedge-shaped body by Marcello Gandini, and its iconic up-swinging doors, the Countach was a cultural phenomenon.

The 1980’s Porsche 959

The 959 doesn't make our list because it could do 320km/h or because it let the world know that twin turbos were insane, or that variable all-wheel drive was possible on a sports car. The car's influence is still felt to this day on Porsche's line-up, and even that wasn't enough. The Porsche 959 is the best car of the 1980s because it walked the walk, winning everything from Dakar to Le Mans. Quite simply, in its heyday, nothing made could beat this car on any surface.

It's not just the car of the '80s. It's among the best of all-time.

The 1990’s NISSAN R33 SKYLINE GT-R.

The Nissan Skyline is an automobile nameplate originally produced by the Prince Motor Company starting in 1957, and then by Nissan after the two companies merged in 1967. An R33 GT-R driven by Dirk Schoysman lapped the Nordschleife in less than 8 minutes. The Skyline GT-R R33 is reported to be the first production car to break 8 minutes, at 7 minutes and 59 seconds.

It was an R33 variant that broke the "gentlemen's agreement" between Japan's automakers, limiting horsepower to 276. The R33 was also the only GT-R to be officially available with four doors.

Every dynasty has its bright spots and its dark horses. The '33 is emphatically the latter.

The 2000’s BMW E46 M3.

There are the purists who believe BMW lost its way in the early 1990s. For everyone else, the early 2000s were the halcyon days for BMW, with that era’s cars being a perfect fusion of modern engineering, classic BMW driving dynamics, and somewhat-conservative styling.

The E46-generation M3 may be, simply, the best car BMW has ever built. It packed the S54 3.2-liter naturally aspirated inline-six engine, with 338 horsepower and an 8,000 rpm redline.

2010’s Tesla Model S

Elon Musk has leveraged every edge granted by the US government to put Tesla in the forefront of motoring’s future. He was also way ahead of every other electric-car maker, by giving his flagship Model S the form factor of a luxury car instead of an economy vehicle. He knew that potential buyers wanted comfort and panache to go with their environmental sensibilities. Tesla has had quality and production issues, but the cars are good to drive, and the company is sticking around.

The 2020s: Uber!

The best car from the latest decade - might not be a car! In fact, it might be a smartphone app valued at over $60 billion (about R841 billion), which not incidentally more than the market caps of GM, Ford, FCA, and Tesla.

For all its faults, Uber joined on-demand ride-hailing with the app economy and made it possible to eliminate much of the friction of getting around. In short order, users realised that Ubering (yep, it became a verb) could be cheaper than owning a car. The company remade the urban landscape and in the process shook up the taxi business.

Prior to CEO Travis Kalanick's departure in 2017, Uber was reckless and defiant in its relentless efforts to dominate the new market it had created. The law-bending and at time law-breaking wasn't good. Nor were the battles with governments in Europe.

But there's no debating that for the first time since the invention of the automobile, Uber got a massive number of people thinking about why they might not ever need one.

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