I’ve been trying to work this out but I can’t quite.
85mm f1.4 looks great
70-200 f2.8 @200mm looks great too (better?)
If you crop 85mm to 200mm you would get 200mm f3.3 equiv. So the 70-200 is actually better.
Ok so 105mm f1.4 exists… That’s 200mm f2.66 equiv. 135mm f1.8 is the exact same equiv. But you have to crop (not ideal).
Is there anything better still?
Does subject distance matter? Maybe with a 50mm f1.2 but with you physically closer depth of field would be more shallow? Probably not.
I don’t care about having the whole car in focus, I just want critical focus on one part and a super dramatic look.
So you’re just doing a massive in close focus stack?
That would be way too extreme, I think. You back up to where the objects of interest (the one in focus) approximately fills the frame. Closer if the object is stationary. Then you just take a standard panorama at your widest aperture. Generally I’ve found once your final image goes beyond 35mm or 50mm equivalent field of view, the panorama fails to merge or the Photoshop function starts to make wacky assumptions about distortion.