It is the era of the remarkably unremarkable car once more, where all the magic is under the hood and behind the wheel. We dive into the shadowy world of these stealthy characters

'Q-cars' have been a part of popular car culture since the 1980s, where remarkably unremarkable cars were blessed with the supermechanical prowess. This allowed them to humble 'flash-factor' cars that were more overtly endowed with the random body addenda that so many wrongly believe just has to characterize a performance car.

Those days saw relatively nondescript heroes such as the BMW M5 (E34), Lancia Thema 8.32 and in particular, the legendary Lotus Carlton, tear up chunks of the Autobahn tarmac in their rabidly rapid display of brute power.

Named after the stealthy 'Q-ships' that were used in both the World Wars to 'kill' enemy submarines, this understated breed of cars were essentially wolves in sheep's clothing. In a nut-shell, these Q-cars essentially shared the same general semblance as their less endowed brethren, but were typically engineered to go like stink and out-handle the average exotica.

This select group of low-key high-performance vehicles was appreciated only by a niche audience, especially during the flashy, heady excesses of the 1980s. However, in both good times and bad, these cars were never left wanting for homes: in times of excess, less sometimes was really more and during the bad times, it wasn't always that good an idea to give the impression that one had 'more'.