Tesla is known as the car of the future. Now the collector-car community that venerates cars of the past has also taken notice.

Collector-car insurer Hagerty Insurance named the Tesla Model S the greatest car of the 2010s.

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That may have been obvious for some Green Car Reports readers, but it represents a breakthrough in mainstream thinking evidenced by Teslas regularly dusting off Dodge Challenger Hellcats at drag strips.

Hagerty has become a motivating force in the collector car industry, publishing a price guide along with its own magazine. Hagerty regularly publishes pricing updates with an eye toward which collector cars represent good buys and which ones it's time to sell.

Its editors have become arbiters of which cars' cool factors are likely to stand the test of time. And at the top of that list sits the Model S.

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Notably, the Model S got the nod even before the decade finished and is a design that debuted just two years into the 2010s.

"Only one (car) has shown the world not only the efficiency and environmental advantages of electric power, but it has also shown the performance advantages of electric power," Hagerty editors wrote. "In other words, only one has made the electric car cool, and that’s the Tesla Model S.... instead of coming out with an all-electric car that people felt that they should drive or that they had to drive, Tesla came out with an electric car that people really want to drive."

Hagerty notes that it could have named the Tesla Roadster, which preceded the Model S by four years, but that the Roadster was made only in small numbers and isn't the electric car that really captured the public's imagination.