Every vehicle with a Ferrari emblem on its nose will become a valuable classic sooner or later. Bugatti knows it can charge millions for just about any type of car it decides to make. Porsche seems to have found the Midas Touch after a near-death experience during the 1990s.

For other cars, however, greatness came later. They had to earn every ounce of it and they went through periods of time when it looked like they would never achieve it. What are the odds of an economy-oriented hatchback spawning one of the best driver’s cars of the 1980s?  Here are some of the cars whose ascension to stardom was far from guaranteed: