Since time immemorial (or at least since the invention of the automobile), car-obsessed kids have put up posters on their bedroom walls that feature their dream cars. I’d be shocked if even a single Jalopnik reader didn’t have at least some sort of car art. Iconic examples of poster cars include any ’80s tuner Porsche, the Ferrari F40 and Testarossa, and every Lamborghini ever made, but especially the Countach. There have been plenty of more modern poster cars too, like the mid-’00s reborn muscle cars, the R35 GT-R and newer supercars from McLaren and Bugatti.
These days, kids are spoiled for choice when it comes to potential poster cars. We’ve got absurd hypercars like the Bugatti Mistral and Aston Martin Valkyrie, stunning coachbuilt luxury cars like the Rolls-Royce Boat Tail and Cadillac Celestiq, and even more affordable dream cars like the Toyota Supra and C8 Corvette. There are tons of incredible concept cars from the past few years, too.
For me, the cars I dreamt about and obsessed over had everything to do with design. Sure, I appreciated the engineering that went into high-performance supercars, but if it didn’t look cool, I didn’t care about it. I have a vivid memory of seeing the Lamborghini Murcielago press photos for the first time – the bright yellow wedge was placed against a simple blank background, and it looked absolutely incredible. Those images were printed on what must’ve been hundreds of thousands of posters, inspiring kids all around the world to dream about cars.
Without a doubt, if I were like ten years old right now my choice for my bedroom wall would be the Mercedes-Benz Vision One-Eleven concept, which I saw get unveiled back in June 2023. A modern interpretation of the groundbreaking C111 supercar, the Vision One-Eleven literally took my breath away when Mercedes wheeled it out. The gullwing doors lifted up and I expected Barbarella to climb out of the silver leather interior; it’s equal parts sci-fi and retro, both fantastical and grounded in Mercedes’ history. Most importantly, it would look cool as hell on my wall.
If you were a kid in 2024, what would be your bedroom poster car? Hell, I know plenty of adult car enthusiasts with automotive art, so you don’t even have to look at it through a kid lens. I’d actually put a poster of the Vision One-Eleven up in my apartment right now. Maybe I will.
