Mercedes 280 SL

There’s an ongoing debate (in these towers at least) as to whether sex continues to sell cars. For many of us, it’s a no-brainer. So many car ads, even of recent years, use lean, lovely bodies and all sorts of veiled messages about how such and such a car/motorbike will make you more attractive to women/men.

The fact that you rarely see overtly unreconstructed woman-draped-over-car imagery in mainstream ad campaigns is almost beside the point. There’s something essentially encoded in the marketing of cars that always whiffs of the blend of testosterone and estrogen.

What’s even more obvious is that cars are always used by media outside the mainstream of the car industry to get some sort of message across – and very often that message uses sex and beauty as an indivisible part of its language.

It’s no surprise then when we spotted controversial model Crystal Renn draped impressively over a beautiful Mercedes 280 SL, for a recent cover of the Spanish edition of slick and aspirational Harpers Bazaar magazine.

Renn, interestingly, has been one of the latest generation of models involved in the ratified upper echelons of fashion to write about the anorexia she has suffered. You wouldn’t believe it looking at these images, but Renn was once one of the leading ‘plus sized’ models – and was reputed to make a high-six figure salary every year selling clothes to ‘normal’ sized women.

Whatever the political we’ll admit that the combination of truly beautiful classic car and truly beautiful human form is something we’d hate to see disappear from our consciousness. For us cars, bike and beauty have always been intertwined. Long may that continue.