Our Favourite Cars We Drove In 2025

We don’t envy car manufacturers in 2025, having to reckon with constantly shifting and inconsistent regulations and targets, ever stronger competition and tighter profit margins. Despite all that, though, plenty of manufacturers are still managing to knock out some truly excellent cars.

As the year winds down, these are the ones we’ve driven that have made the biggest impression on us, whether through phenomenal handling, exquisite luxury or simply the ability to put a massive smile on our faces.

Lexus RC F Ultimate

The Lexus RC F Ultimate, a Euro market run out special for Lexus' flawed but charismatic V8 bruiser, came a bit out of nowhere. So out of nowhere, in fact, that it was never really announced – more offered up last year as a hush-hush special to loyal fast Lexus customers.

But when we found out Lexus had one on its UK press fleet at the start of the year, we simply had to have a go, and boy are we glad we did. That 5.0-litre 2UR-GSE V8 will go down as one of the all-time great engines of the late combustion era, and combined with the slightly more hunkered down Track Edition base of the Ultimate, it makes for one of the most charismatic cars of recent years. Also, blue carbon fibre!

Read our review here.

BMW M5

It’s big, it’s heavy, it’s controversially gone hybrid and it’s not particularly pretty. The G90 is a new kind of BMW M5, but it still does what an M5 should. It’s relentlessly fast when you fancy playing the touring car drive, comfy and refined when you don’t, and thanks to lots of electronic trickery, still just about as playful and spirited as an M car should be.

Read our review here.

Maserati GranTurismo Trofeo

Maserati may have been making headlines for all the wrong reasons at the moment, and that’s a shame, because it rather overshadows the fact that its cars are the best they’ve been in years. The 542bhp V6-powered GranTurismo Trofeo combines a corking engine and sparkling chassis for one of the best grand touring cars on sale right now.

Read our review here.

Land Rover Defender Octa

Trying to turn the rolling tower block that is the Defender 110 into a sports car should be an exercise in total futility, but Land Rover somehow pulled it off with the Defender Octa. That’s thanks in no small part to a 626bhp BMW V8 and fancy-pants hydraulically crosslinked suspension, both of which imbue the Octa with a hilarious turn of pace and handling totally at odds with how high you’re sitting. Oh yeah, and it’s an absolute hoot off-road too.

Read our review here.

Abarth 600e

The Abarth 600e’s close relative, the Alfa Junior Veloce, impressed us last year, immediately becoming one of the best-driving electric cars on sale. The 600e pairs that same platform, complete with that crucial limited-slip diff on the front axle, with a dash of lurid paint and old-school hot hatch attitude that you can’t help but smile at – and it's cheaper than the Alfa, too. It’s far from the most practical small EV you can buy, but for pure fun, not much else in its class comes close.

Read our review here.

Skoda Superb Estate

Our time with the 261bhp, all-wheel drive Skoda Superb Sportline coincided with a 1000ish-mile Easter road trip to the Scottish Highlands, and the big red estate didn’t miss a beat. It was comfy and efficient and on the motorway bits, quick and surefooted on the twisty Highland roads, and provided enough room for four adults and all their clutter. It may not be very sexy, and you might still be the butt of the odd Skoda joke, but for a car to just handily slot into your life and do everything brilliantly, there’s not much better on sale.

Read our review here.

Aston Martin Vantage Roadster

We loved last year’s updated Aston Martin Vantage so much that we nominated it as one of our 2024 Car of the Year finalists. The Roadster takes everything we loved about it – thunderous V8, massively improved interior, spectacular ride and handling and jaw-dropping looks – and lops the roof off for an added bit of drama. What’s not to like?

Read our review here.

Audi RS6 GT

It’s a 621bhp, twin-turbo V8 estate car dressed up to look like an old IMSA GTO racer – need we say literally any more?

We do? Okay. The Audi RS6 GT takes the already phenomenal outgoing RS6 and just makes everything slightly better – a bit lighter, a bit more responsive, a bit harder edged, all without losing the key all-rounder appeal of a big, fast estate. But most importantly, stripes.

Read our review here.

Renault 5

It’s not that often the world’s motoring press and its car buying public are in such unanimous agreement on a car, but the reborn electric Renault 5 is a rare exception, and with good reason. It looks fantastic, it’s affordable, and it’s better to drive than any electric supermini realistically needs to be. Moreover, its arrival feels like a real BMW Mini or new Fiat 500 moment, and seems to be proving to lots of doubters that hey, EVs can be cool too. And if you’re still not convinced, there’s always the ludicrous Turbo 3E to look forward to.

Read our review here.

Morgan Supersport

We went into the Supersport expecting the usual Morgan hallmarks – beautiful handcrafted interior, trad looks and a vibe that makes every drive feel like an adventure. That’s all there, but what we weren’t quite ready for was how bloomin’ excellent it is to drive. More than any Morgan that’s come before, it feels like a properly serious, modern sports car, but without sacrificing what makes the brand so special.

Read our review here.

Bentley Blower Jnr

It costs as much as a BMW M3, will get dusted in the performance stakes by most city cars, and is really only usable for sunny day jaunts to the pub. When you perch behind the big wheel of Bentley and Hedley Studios’ 85 per cent scale electric recreation of the Le Mans Blower, though, none of that matters, because it just makes you smile uncontrollably. That, above any kind of rational consideration, is what we look for in a car.

Read our review here.

E46 BMW 330ci

This isn’t a new car, but that’s kind of the point. The 20-year-old BMW 330ci we recently drove, complete with a few unobtrusive modernisations from eBay, was a reminder of how sweet even relatively normal cars could be not that long ago. 

A buttery six-cylinder engine, rear-wheel drive, a manual gearbox, no ADAS bleeps and bloops and handsome, understated looks. Today’s cars may be more capable and advanced than ever, but this little silver Beemer was a reminder that that’s not always a good thing.

Read our review here.

Alpine A110 S

We’re more than familiar with the Alpine A110’s charms at this point, but the chance to take a proper road trip in a car – in this case to this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans – is when you’ll really get to know its strengths and its flaws.

Fortunately, several hundred miles of pristine Autoroute, city centres and backroads revealed very few of the latter with the sensational little A110 S Alpine sent us. It was comfy and frugal on the motorway, easy to manoeuvre around town, swallowed up a couple of big overnight bags despite its modest luggage space, and was downright sensational when some good roads opened up in front of us. We’re very much going to miss the A110 in its current form when production ends in February.

Read our feature here.

Volvo XC90

Though the current Volvo XC90 has been around for a decade now, it still remains arguably the standard bearer among enormous family haulers. Through various updates, its interior has doubled down on that irresistible Scandi minimalist vibe without becoming a frustrating mess to operate (unlike other Volvos), and for doing big miles in, it’s as supremely comfy a cruiser as ever.

In a world where most SUVs seem to insist on trying to be sporty, the laid-back log cabin vibe of the XC90 is ever more welcome. It’s a superb tool for lowering your pulse and making you slow down and take in the world, and that’s something we could all do with from time to time.

Read our review here.

Audi RS4 Edition 25 Years

Do we feel guilty about putting two fast Audi estates on this roundup? Not one bit. Not when the runout RS4 Edition 25 Years is basically a love letter to the genre, painted like a giant sports banana.

More to the point, with its boost to 464bhp, adjustable coilovers, Quattro Sport centre diff and fettled suspension geometry, it’s the car that the outgoing B9 RS4 always should have been. Yes, its near £116k list price was rather on the steep side, but as a sendoff to the small, fast, non-electrified Audi estate car, we can’t think of many ways it could have been done better.

Read our review here.

Lamborghini Temerario

Look, it’s a 907bhp Lamborghini with a V8 that revs to 10,000rpm. Do we really need to elaborate more on this one?

We fully admit to being a little nervous about whatever would come along to replace the Huracan’s wailing V10, and while the Temerario’s hybrid powertrain may not sound quite as scintillating, it’s a truly spectacular thing to drive: agile thanks to the torque vectoring tricks pulled by that electric front axle, spectacularly fast thanks to, y’know, 907bhp, and with a whole new soundscape thanks to that astonishing engine. Forget about the lack of V10 – this is a proper Lambo through and through.

Read our review here.

Honda Prelude

The reborn Honda Prelude may not be the scintillating sports coupe many (including us) hoped it would be – it’s more a laid-back, cruising-down-the-coast-with-Smooth-Radio-on kind of car – but what an absolute delight it is in the year 2025 to get to drive a brand new coupe from a mass market manufacturer.

This kind of car was everywhere around 25 years ago, but has been driven to near extinction by the brutal way the crossover has encroached on its habitat, so even if it’s a relatively underpowered hybrid, we have to give Honda all the applause for going ahead with the new Prelude at all – not least because, with its Civic Type R chassis bits, it’s also pretty decent to drive.

Read our review here.

Cupra Formentor VZ5

The regular Cupra Formentor is utterly fine, a relatively stylish, nicely built all-rounder of a crossover that can be pretty sweet to drive when fitted with the 329bhp, 2.0-litre turbo four-cylinder also found in the Audi S3.

The VZ5, though, doesn’t have that engine – it has the 2.5-litre turbo five-cylinder from the Audi RS3. That not only elevates the Formentor to a 385bhp car that’ll hit 62mph in 4.2 seconds and max out at 174mph, but it gives it one of the most memorable soundtracks of any car on sale right now. It’ll be a rarity in Britain, with an initial 250 coming to our shores, but at least it’s coming, and in RHD too, unlike the last time Cupra stuffed this engine in the pre-facelift Formentor.

Read our review here.