Hooniverse Asks: What's History's Greatest Poor People's Car To Have Been Embraced By The Not So Poor?

Whether it’s the gentrification of a neighborhood down on its luck, or the fancification of what’s generally considered to be “peasant food,” the commandeering of the  simple trappings of life by the well to do has long been an annoying industry.
Cross-class appropriate even occurs in the automotive world. You may not be completely familiar with the history of Ford’s original Fiesta, and if you are not I highly recommend Ate Up With Motor’s comprehensive treatise on the matter. In much fewer words, the Fiesta was a car that was intended by Ford to appeal to car buyers in the southern European nations, where cheap wheels like the Renault 5 and Fiat 127 were popular. It was in fact planned to be such a low margin car that the bean counters almost nixed the entire deal arguing that the Fiesta would never recoup its development costs.
The bean counters were wrong and the Fiesta not only sold in substantial numbers in its intended markets but became one of Ford’s more popular models across the rest of Europe. Sales were so brisk in fact that Ford ended sales of the first generation Fiesta in the U.S. ahead of original schedule to provide more production capacity for their European dealers. Why would people who could potentially afford more buy a Fiesta? Because it was a damn-good little car, with clean Tom Tjaarda styling, an available and willing Kent four under the hood, and a decent amount of luxury accouterments if you had a little more cash available.
That’s just one example of a car for the poors that was appropriated by the rich. Was it however, history’s greatest? What do you think?
Image: RetroAdri