► The CAR team names their top drives of the year
► And no, it’s not all supercars
► There’s even a van!
Each year we put hundreds of cars, through their paces. New, old, EVs, big V12s, cheap, expensive… you name it and one of the team has probably driven it.
You can read about how we test at CAR, but what if you asked us individually what are favourite cars of 2024 were? Well, you might be surprised (or not) by the results.
Keep reading to see what our car reviewers rate, and be sure to let us know in the comments what your favourite car of 2024 has been.
The best car I drove in 2024? Maybe. Certainly the most memorable. Surprising, too. Surprising because the ‘standard’ SF90, for all its technical ambition, has always struggled to elicit anything like the emotional reaction a very fast, very powerful and really quite pretty Ferrari should. It struggled to really burrow its way into many hearts.
And at the press conference in Maranello, not much about the harder, faster SF90 XX version of the car made any sense. ‘XX, so it’s track only?’ No. ‘Nearly twice the money, so it’s wildly more powerful?’ Er, no. And yet. Come 2065, when I’m rocking in a chair, eating biscuits and arguing with my caregiving droid, the day I spent bothering some of Emilia-Romagna’s finest hill roads in the XX Spider will still be right there in my mind; memories alive and vital with noise, with colour and with the breeze-blown perfume of summer like it happened yesterday.
The agility and braking I was ready for. It was the way the hybrid V8 accelerated that was instantly and maddeningly additive. The V12 LaFerrari before it you revved. The SF90 XX just exploded each gear ratio like a true shot through a watermelon, the relentless electro-mechanical shove of the thing at once exhilarating and bewildering. A couple of weeks later, at an event at Bicester Heritage, I watched a bunch of GMA T.50 owners revving their (non-hybrid) V12s for the crowd. A great spectacle, sure. But, having had my worldview reset by the XX, it was like watching old boys messing around with steam traction engines at a county fair.
To be entirely honest, we already knew the 911 S/T was a stunningly good version of the 911 from when we first drove it in 2023. But it’s my choice in 2024 on account of a late-evening drive at the end of our Sports Car Giant Test in southern France.
It wasn’t a particularly well-sighted road and it was quite narrow in places, but both factors played to the 911’s strengths. The crispness of the chassis and the way it combined delicate reactions with savage power is a memory that will never leave me. A true great of the genre.
Fourteen years ago, 15-year old me I was queuing up at London Xcel to get my Pagani poster signed by Horatio Pagani himself. Earlier this year, I was making a world-first video review of his latest hypercar, the Utopia. Pinch me!
Sufficed to say, this was a career highlight and the car itself was phenomenal. Sure, it doesn’t have the outright numbers or whippet-like agility of a cheaper, hybrid Ferrari, but the Utopia is about so much more than that. It sounds like PR spin, but I’ve never been in a car – let alone driven one – that delivers a more enthralling combination of science and art.
Strapping a racing engine from the 911 GT3 line into the middle of a lighter and more playful Cayman chassis sounds like a match made in heaven. Well, I’m pleased to report – and possibly to satiate some fantasies – that the result is exactly that. The GT4 RS is an intoxicating specimen.
With that 4.0-litre flat-six engine bolted in right behind me, and all the induction noise I could ever want, the aural experience was savage, unyielding, almost overpowering at times. Curiously, though, the car itself wasn’t quite such a brute. It was approachable – validated by the fact that even a young greenhorn like me, still wet behind the ears after only a handful of months in the job, could get in and feel as though they were driving it hard. One for the ages.
My 2024 has spanned a wide range of weird – from the electric Mini Moke to the Torsus Praetorian – and included some of the quickest cars I’ve ever driven. Though since doing 0-62mph in under three seconds turns out to be deeply unpleasant I’ve not selected the Taycan Turbo GT or the Audi RS e-Tron GT as my winner.
While the Ioniq 5 N’s artificially interactive drivetrain may be too Gran Turismo for some tastes, it unquestionably moves the electric performance car sector on in ways no-one else has even yet attempted. Brilliantly bold, with sublime attention to detail. It’s superb.
I hate where Alfa Romeo is going. I’m not excited by its planned range of electric cars – and I certainly wouldn’t pay to have one on my driveway (even if I had the means). But the Giulia Quadrifolio? That’s a different kettle of fish. This is a car I’ve dreamed of driving since it was unveiled in 2015 and, this year, Alfa finally handed me the keys. Needless to say, I immediately sodded off to Cumbria to drive it on some roads I know.
There’s no other word for it. It’s glorious. A perfectly proportioned saloon with a rev-hungry Ferrari-derived 514bhp V6 engines, a chassis that’ll slide at will and the most talkative steering system this side of a Lamborghini. There’s nothing else on sale today that’s quite as special. Sack the BMW M3 off. You want one of these.
Yes, I know – accessible, much? Only 15 of these were ever built and likely far fewer are still on the road. But when you’re given the key to a completely restored, ultra-rare Bentley while you’re out in Monterey, California for Car Week, you don’t say no.
As I said at the time, driving this car completely shifted my perspective on ride quality. I stand by it. Some have pointed out that I should try a DS when it comes to experiencing how a car should glide along the road and… yes, I should. But until then, this will more than suffice. It’s a gorgeous machine that proves that oodles of power, tonnes of grip or spaceship technology aren’t necessary to stir the soul. Gorgeous. Glamorous. Graceful.
There’s something unsettlingly intuitive about driving the AMG GT 63 Pro. Weighing in just below £200,000 and packing in 604bhp, you expect it to be a car you tiptoe in, coaxing it through every apex and then having its twin-turbo V8 send you to orbit soon after. Only it was anything but difficult to drive.
Around the undulating, challenging and incredibly rewarding curves of the Ascari circuit (another visit is a must in 2025) I found myself pushing hard in the AMG and full of confidence. Leaning on the brakes, trailing them in and then squeezing on the throttle felt second-nature. Simply put, the Mercedes did everything I wanted, and how I expected it to.
Take the brilliamt Audi RS6. Slap on a ridiculous bodykit in a skunkworks area of one of Audi’s plants. Give it an incredible livery inspired by the incredible Audi 80 Quattro IMSA-GTO. Then swap out the usual adaptive air suspension in place of adjustable coilovers. Tweak the engine for more response, but crucially with no extra power. And then fit some of the best carbon bucket seats ever. The result is the Audi RS6 GT, which, if you haven’t guessed by now, is truly remarkable.
I’m not a betting man but I bought several lottery tickets during the week I had with it. There aren’t enough superlatives in this world to describe it.
The best car I’ve driven this year is not a car at all, although you could probably squeeze one in the loading bay of the Renault Master if you wanted.
This is partly down to the fact that my job as vans editor means I spend more time in commercial vehicles but also because the Master absolutely nails its brief like no other new vehicle I’ve tried in a long time. It’s got loads of space, a cabin that will feel modern for a while to come, it drives well and it offers some stonkingly impressive numbers.
Those include the biggest electric range in its class despite it having one of the smaller batteries, an impressive payload in both EV and ICE format and, best of all, a really eye-catching price. You can have one of these for less than most medium vans. Sure, this isn’t the sexiest entry on this list, but it is seriously impressive nonetheless.
Can I cheat and have two? I’m picking two bookends of my motoring year – one an EV that feels like it’s from the future and one a landmark French car that mobilised millions across Europe and the world from the early 1960s through to the ’90s.
The Lucid Air blew me away when I drove it in the summer, for its think-different approach, its mesmerising efficiency and its sophisticated, anti-Muskian vibe. Its UK launch can’t come soon enough. By way of contrast, a drive around Paris in an original Renault 4 was catnip in this digital age – a reminder that canny, quirky design and analogue thrills still matter.
Perhaps best is the wrong word, but it’s certainly the car I’m most fond of. I’d briefly had a go with Nissan’s box-stock R34 GT-R many years ago but drove it two miles tops, so a few days in its company for Driving the Classics was in order.
I’d remembered the interior being not too dissimilar from a Nissan Primera I once owned but forgotten the pace. Even now, it feels genuinely quick, while the chassis lives up to its reputation. It’s almost dainty compared to most of the modern stuff I drive, and gloriously feelsome. Now, who wants to lend me a tuned one?
The electric G-Class, the G580. Merc’s execution is outstanding. I drove it on and off road on the same day as I drove the rest of the current line-up, and a day after I drove three earlier Gs, and it’s the best of the lot.
It seems able to deal with any surface you’re likely to find, and does that clever thing of letting you do it all unaided if you want to, but having the clever tech on standby ready to intervene if/when you realise you’re stuck or about to plummet to your doom.