Every so often, Market Insights wanders out of the auction rooms and into somewhere considerably darker, and this Halloween we’ve done exactly that with a countdown of the 13 scariest cars ever made, which is live now on the Classic Driver YouTube channel.

Automotive horror turns out to have a surprisingly distinguished history, beginning with a Belgian coachbuilder who looked at a Rolls-Royce Phantom I, decided it needed gothic proportions and round doors, and produced something that looks like Count Dracula’s personal express to Transylvania. Hollywood has been just as keen to join the fun, from Ghia’s 1955 Lincoln Futura, a concept with twin bubble canopies and a face that was clearly up to no good, which George Barris bought for a single dollar and painted black to create the original Batmobile, to Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, in which a perfectly innocent black Chevrolet Nova gets promoted to murder weapon.

Not every monster needs a film credit, though. Some simply look the part, like a Panoz with a mouth that seems designed for feeding or a six-wheeled Covini that appears to have been bitten by a radioactive spider, while others, such as an armoured Rezvani with optional smoke screens and electrified door handles, suggest their makers know something we don’t. There’s even one that is frightening mostly because of what happens when it meets a Range Rover at a roundabout.

Watch the full episode on the Classic Driver YouTube channel.