Nine more cars that deserve shooting into space

Each SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch costs around $90million, but it’s proved now it can launch a car into orbit without exploding in a fireball. So, let’s load one up with the one of the worst cabrios of all time. Even if it did go bang, it wouldn’t be the greatest loss to mankind…

Hmm, hang on. There are several other drop-tops that deserve to be exorcised from our planet atop a giant controlled explosion. Will anyone actually miss the Lexus attempt at a Mercedes SL? Thought not.

Here to represent all of British Leyland, the death of the British car industry in the 1970s, and simply what happens when cars are designed while wearing a blindfold, it’s the hideous TR7. Perhaps this ought to be jettisoned into deep space tied to an Aston Martin DB11 or McLaren 720S, to show just how far the British car industry has come since.

We know there is a finite amount of oil to be harvested from our precious planet, and the question we must ask ourselves is this: do cars so pointless even their maker can’t remember when they built them deserve to use the oil up? The R-Class was that rarest of calamities: a German niche-bust exercise that utterly flopped. To the Moon with it.

Where it can be joined, in fact, by another example of the human race not knowing what’s good for it. Impractical, ugly 4x4s that can’t go off road and have the taste profile of jeans et sheux must be dispatched into the sun post haste.

Given anything we fire into deep space has a decent chance of being around long after the human race has ceased to be, we ought to send up some of our greatest technical achievements, just to show beings in galaxies far far away that occasionally, mankind did build some decent kit. The everyday-drivable Bugatti Chiron is not officially the fastest car on Earth as of this moment, but it is a sensational achievement of speed, power, packaging and engineering bloody-mindedness. And it’s so heavy, most of the other space junk will end up orbiting it anyway.

And to show how far we’ve come, a Ford Model T ought to join the payload. The first mass-produced affordable automobile arrived into the world in the infancy of powered flight. To send one into space a century later shows the pace of progress…

This ought to fool any intelligent life that comes across our wares dotted about the cosmos. Upon finding Issigonis’ diminutive Mini, they’ll have to assume we’re a race of stunted, hobbit-sized creatures. Which will make the inevitable invasion interesting.

The 8C was never much cop to drive, but oh my Jedi it’s gorgeous. Given it's little use as a sports car down here, it might serve it better to spend eternity tumbling through the heavens showcasing how pretty humankind’s work can be.

If Elon can dig out some more space in his rocket, what else would you post to the other side of the atmosphere?