These are our picks for Canada's top 5 most historic vehicles

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Canada has a rich automotive history, and a number of excellent auto museums, but one thing it doesn’t have is anything equivalent to the Historic Vehicle Association (HVA) .

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Based in Pennsylvania, the HVA recognizes vehicles it deems historically important to American culture and puts them on its National Historic Vehicle Register — there are 28 of them right now, ranging from the first Camaro made; to Ferris Bueller’s famous Ferrari.

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These are our picks for Canada's top 5 most historic vehicles Back to video

That got us thinking about our history on wheels. We took five HVA cars and paired them with Canadian vehicles we thought shared the most with them, creating our own hypothetical Canadian Vehicle Association (CVA) history list.

HVA: 1907 Thomas Flyer

Long-distance road races were surprisingly popular in the automobile’s early days, and one of the first went from New York to Paris. Six cars and 250,000 spectators were at the starting line on February 12, 1908. Only one car was American, built by the Thomas Motor Company of Buffalo, New York. The rest were from France, Germany, and Italy.

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The 35,400-kilometre route involved driving west across the U.S. and shipping the cars to Japan. Drivers then went across Russia and Germany to France. A French competitor arrived in Paris first, but was disqualified for putting the car on a train for some of the route. The victorious Thomas Flyer reached the finish line on July 30, 1908. It was restored in the 1960s to how it looked when it won, and now belongs to the National Automobile Museum in Nevada.

CVA: 1980 Volvo 245 DL “Red Cloud”

In 1977, Garry Sowerby and his friend Ken Langley were driving from Ottawa to Halifax, amusing themselves by thinking up the greatest road trips possible — and a crazy idea was born. On September 6, 1980, they set out from the base of Toronto’s CN Tower in a Volvo nicknamed “Red Cloud,” and returned in a record 74 days after going around the world.

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With Sowerby driving and Langley navigating, they went across Australia, India, the Middle East, Europe, to the U.S. and then back to Toronto. The Guinness record, which they broke by 28 days (including flying time between continents), required them to put 43,030 kilometres on the odometer, representing the circumference of the Earth. Sowerby later set three more distance-driving records, and still owns the Volvo .

HVA: Alan Bean’s 1969 Corvette Stingray

Astronauts were the rock stars of their day during the first space programs of the 1950s and 1960s. As a marketing tie-in, General Motors gave each a one-year lease on any vehicle for a dollar. Alan Shepard was first and he wanted a Corvette, as did most who followed him.

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Alan Bean was the fourth person to walk on the moon, and his car was one of three “Riverside Gold” Corvettes presented to the Apollo 12 crew. The cars were sold when the leases expired, and Bean’s car was bought in 1971 by an enthusiast who recognized it at an auction.

CVA: Chris Hadfield’s 1955 Thunderbird

Commander Hadfield is our homegrown guitar-strumming outer-space star, and while he pilots up-to-the-minute technology for his job, he spends his spare time driving and wrenching on curvaceous classics.

He loves his Thunderbird, which he says is a “beautiful sculpture” but also a “lovely thing to drive.” And drive it he did, every day to his job at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, from 2003 until he retired in 2013.

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HVA: 1909 White Model M Steam Car

Back in the earliest days of motoring, no one was quite sure if the industry’s future was going to be gasoline, electric, or steam. Ohio-based White originally made sewing machines before building its first steam car in 1900. The HVA’s Model M is significant because it was used by William Taft , the first U.S. president to be ferried around in a car. He also added a gasoline Pierce-Arrow and electric Baker to the fledgling White House fleet, but it’s reported the White was his favourite.

CVA: 1926 Brooks Steamer

Stanley was the most popular steam car in America, but during the 1920s, second place in sales belonged to Brooks, built in Stratford, Ontario. It was founded by Oland Brooks, who moved from his home in Buffalo, New York to Toronto to set up a mortgage company, and then the auto firm.

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The cars were sold in Canada and the U.S., and were famous for their bodies covered in a leatherette-style fabric. It’s believed about a dozen still exist, and the one pictured is owned by the Canadian Automotive Museum in Oshawa, Ontario .

HVA: 1954 Mercedes-Benz Type 300 SL

This is the first Mercedes-Benz “gull-wing” sports car sold in the United States . Vienna native Max Hoffman moved to the U.S. in 1941, and late in the decade, imported European cars and sold them through his dealerships in New York and Los Angeles.

He also encouraged these automakers to build cars that would sell in America. He convinced Porsche to make the 356 Speedster (it’s believed he even had a hand in designing the Porsche crest), and BMW to create the 507 roadster. And he got Mercedes-Benz to take its W194 300SL race car, and turn it into a stunning version for the street.

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CVA: 1974 to 1975 Bricklin

Our Canadian entry only has gull-wing doors in common with the Benz, but we’ll run with it anyway. Malcolm Bricklin was (and still is) an American businessman who longed for automotive success. He wanted to build a sports car and approached New Brunswick, offering jobs in return for funding, but there were numerous problems and soaring costs. The government closed him down after dumping $23 million into it — about $114 million today.

It’s likely the only car built exclusively by Canadians, but never sold in Canada. Malcolm Bricklin took them straight from the factory to his U.S. distribution company, and from there to his American dealers.

HVA: 1920 Anderson Six

Most early American cars were built in the Northern states, but the Anderson was a successful Southern car. About 5,500 were made in South Carolina from 1916 until 1926. They were expensive, but used luxurious materials and came in bright colours seldom found on cars made farther north. Their special features included a compressor for pumping tires, electric wipers, power convertible tops, and the first headlight dimmer switch, invented by founder John Gary Anderson.

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CVA: 1908 McLaughlin

Robert McLaughlin founded Canada’s most successful carriage company in 1867, but his son Sam was fascinated with the early cars he saw. Sam decided to build cars and initially planned an original design, which fell through. He met with William Durant, who owned Buick and used it to create a new company he called General Motors.

Starting in 1908, McLaughlin built Buicks under license , but with far fancier bodywork thanks to the carriage company’s skill. The McLaughlin Motor Car Company soon became Canada’s most successful automaker, but Sam had no male heirs to continue it as an independent firm. He sold it in 1918, creating General Motors of Canada that still exists today.