► It’s our best photos of the year
► Browse our favourite pics of 2024
► Supercars, superminis, super images!
CAR magazine employs an array of world-class photographers to capture the cars, people and places we write about. As is customary at this time of year, we like to look back over the past 12 months and celebrate the finest imagery they have created.
You’ll find below our best photos of 2024: from imagery of single-car road tests to road-trip adventures in foreign climes, from portraits of the great and the good of the motoring world to action shots in the pitlane at Daytona.
We hope you approve of our selection. They say a good photo tells a thousand words and we fervently believe that authentic, expert imagery is a key part of CAR’s storytelling. Be sure to sound off in the comments below to let us know which your favourite pictures are – and if we’ve missed any of your best car photos of the year.
1) The fury of 1874bhp unleashed (June 2024)
Electric motors have redefined our notion of power and torque. Even humble hatchback EVs can boast head-spinning outputs, so when we borrowed a £2.7m Pininfarina Batista hypercar for our electric car megatest, we were prepared to have our insides turned out. It boasts the equivalent of 1874bhp and 1726lb ft – and pro photographer Olgun Kordal was on hand to record the moment all of it was deployed in anger on track. We’re told the plumes of smouldering Pirelli have just about cleared European airspace now…
2) Panda-monium! A road trip across Europe in a pair of Fiat Panda 4x4s (May 2024)
Back in May, deputy editor Piers Ward itched an unusual scratch: with a mate, he bought – sight unseen – a pair of mountain goats: two delectable, go-anywhere, original Fiat Panda 4x4s. The only problem was, they were in Andorra and Piers lives in the east Midlands. Cue an epic road trip, captured beautifully by Lee Brimble, whose reportage of the duo scrambling across the Pyrenees, along old smuggler’s trails and through back-road France turned this into one of our most memorable stories of 2024. Read the full Panda 4×4 adventure here.
3) From pitlane to painter: the extraordinary afterlife of ex-F1 driver Stefan Johansson (May 2024)
What to do after a career in Formula 1? Become a painter is what Swedish driver Stefan Johansson did and we dispatched Ben Barry to visit the polymath in his Los Angeles studio. Robert Kerian’s photos are fizzing with colour and energy, reflecting the bright and zingy style of Johansson’s creations of motorsport and beyond.
4) Alien life form: a Tesla Cybertruck basks in the launch glow of a Falcon 9 space rocket (May 2024)
Sometimes the gods smile upon our photoshoots, many times they don’t. But for every wet, foggy, congested location we find, just occasionally good fortune comes our way. And this undoubtedly happened when we parked up the new Tesla Cybertruck in California earlier this spring for one of the first drives by a UK publication in Elon Musk’s radical new electric pick-up. ‘One of the strangest moments of 2024,’ remembers Stateside photographer and long-time contributor to CAR Jamie Lipman. ‘I was setting up a pretty mediocre night shot of the then-new Cybertruck in a Palm Springs neighbourhood, pausing to reflect on how the roofline of the car matched that of the Mid-Century house behind, and then being perfectly photo-bombed by a Falcon 9 launching 52 Starlink satellites out of Vandenburg SFB. All totally unplanned!’
5) Lights, camera, action! Drama in the Ford pitlane at Daytona (April 2024)
CAR’s beat covers everything with four wheels – and some of the most dramatic pictures we capture hail from the arena of motorsport. We sent Ben Barry and Drew Gibson to report from the pitlane at Daytona, as the Mustang GT3 made its 2024 debut. The tension of a tyre change is evident to see, a carefully choreographed dance as engineers juggle tyres, fuel and airguns all in the dark of a night race, as the Ford race car driven by Harry Tincknell comes in for fresh rubber. ‘A swarm of activity from his pit crew, a spin of slicks and flare of V8 and he’s gone into the searing Florida heat, Corvette on his kill list.’
6) Where the rivers run red: Porsche Taycan first drive (May 2024)
A couple of decades ago, this picture would have required the use of an expensive plane or helicopter. Drone technology has made aerial photography easier and cheaper and it’s an extra string to our bow on photoshoots these days. This shot on the Andalusian roads in southern Spain surprised author CJ Hubbard and snapper Jordan Butters, as their Porsche Taycan was framed by a looping highway, a crumbled old bridge and the blood-red Rio Tinto river, polluted by centuries of mineral mining to make it extremely acidic. Hubbard was less bitter about the updated electric Porsche. ‘The Taycan blends style, performance and efficiency in a manner not even the most evangelical Teslarati can deny.’
7) Supercar valley: pause, rewind (October 2024)
European correspondent Georg Kacher has been a staple at CAR magazine since its early days and he well remembers the staple of an exotic supercar shoot in our formative decades of the 1960s and ’70s: the park-up in a sleepy Italian village, with twitching curtains and, occasionally, a gaggle of surprised onlookers. Here Georg is joined by editor Ben Miller, as they survey the majesty of the latest Ferrari SF90 XX Spider and Lamborghini Revuelto. Another understated Olgun Kordal masterclass in portraiture.
8) Reflecting on new Volvo in the Salton Sea, southern California (October 2024)
We’re not quite sure what this armchair and driftwood sculpture were doing in the arid Salton Sea desert, but they made a fabulous throne for deputy editor Piers Ward on his trip to drive the Volvo EX90 for the first time. The lonely, almost lunar landscape in southern California is recorded by Olgun Kordal for our 300-mile first drive.
9) Ferrari vs Lamborghini – the artistry (October 2024)
Technology continues apace and, as usual, CAR magazine is at the vanguard, learning, experimenting, pushing the boundaries of magazine design conventions. When we published our Ferrari vs Lamborghini biopic in October, we broke new ground by commissioning ace photographer Olgun Kordal to create imagery digitally, allowing for these captivating tableaus of historic pairings, created using 3D digital scanning techniques to make vibrant, photorealistic illustrations.
10) Singer basking in the Californian light (April 2024)
What is it about Californian sunlight? Alex Tapley took this shot of the Singer Classic – ‘the car that started it all’ – near the Malibu coast for our April issue and it encapsulates everything we love about photography on the west coast of America. You just don’t get this in Peterborough at this time of year… It’s a perfect backdrop for one of the most timeless shapes in the motoring firmament.
11) Even vans get the CAR hero treatment (April 2024)
It’s not just cars that get our snappers’ attention: the launch of a new Ford Transit is a seminal moment in the UK automotive scene, so we gathered together four of the best workhorses for the CAR magazine Giant Test treatment in our April issue and ace lensman Jordan Butters was on hand to record the moment: cue lifestyle accessories, more lycra than you could shake a Mamil at and one cute dog.
12) Superminis in a super location (July 2024)
CAR magazine started out as Small Car and Mini Owner – and has retained an interest in all sizes and prices of car ever since. We don’t shy away from making heroes of our supermini tests, as proven by this shot of a Hyundai i20 at a Scarborough fairground, taken by Olgun Kordal: a fun-sized car in a fun-sized milieu.
13) Most beguiling interior of the year? The Pagani Utopia sizzles in Italy (June 2024)
Interior shots can grab attention as much as a mid-corner oversteer moment – as proven by Lee Brimble’s luscious picture inside Horacio Pagani’s latest creation. The Pagani Utopia is a hand-built labour of love and Lee’s photo taken in the late afternoon glow of an Italian summer’s day invites you to hunker down low in the bucket seat and wrestle with the delicate mechanical linkage of that manual transmission to stir the V12’s soul. The level of bespoke engineering in this £2.2 million slice of unobtainium is staggering and we hope our photography of such supercars shares the experience of driving them with everyone.
14) Doors to manual and cross-check: it’s the McLaren W1 (November 2024)
Studios are often the first place we get to sample a new car and there’s something pure and focusing about the location. There’s no road or background to distract from the subject: the car takes centre stage. Happily, when we have photographers of the calibre of John Wycherley on hand, we know we’re in safe hands. He took McLaren’s latest creation, the W1, and teased out its character with a clever light show and composition, gullwing doors askance to reveal the hypercar’s sophisticated interior.
15) The finest fast Fords of all time (July 2024)
Just when you started worrying about the Blue Oval jettisoning all interest in enthusiast cars as it ploughs headlong into electrification, along comes our cover story in July. We gathered some of the best fast Fords from the past six decades and Olgun Kordal was on hand to record the moment at the old Bicester airfield in Oxfordshire. It’s an extraordinary collection, stretching from Fiestas XR2 and ST through mainstream thugs like the Capri and Sierra Cosworth all the way to bespoke RS200 rally hero, Mustangs old and new, plus the original Ford GT40. What a legacy. What lunacy. What a reminder that Dearborn must return to its performance cars roots, once it’s reoriented its mainstream range to EVs. Please Ford: let this photo remind you of the highs you’re scored.
16) Launch control, dragster style (December 2024)
The fury of a full launch is captured at Santa Pod, the Bedfordshire home of UK drag racing. Lee Brimble was squatting a few feet away from the sticky launchpad where top-fuel dragsters and funny cars were warming up and slinging down the mile straight in front of a modest crowd. A reminder that motorsport comes in all shapes, sizes and volumes, the length and breadth of the UK.
17) Electric slingshot leads Aston Martin (December 2024)
A beguiling action shot by Olgun Kordal makes the cut from our annual Sport Car Giant Test. The Hyundai Ioniq 5 N has enthralled all who’ve driven it this year and it seems apt that the electric hot hatch is leading the Aston Martin Vantage as the pair power out of a corner. The EV looks serene, all four corners electronically apportioning torque, fake gearchages and noises replicating the technology of yore; the Aston meanwhile is leaving a plume of smoke, as tortured rear tyres wrestle with the 590lb ft torque wave from a shrieking turbocharged V8. Which would you rather be driving?
Which are your favourite car photos of 2024? Be sure to sound off in the comments below!