Our ideal car of 2017: the best bits of the best

Blame it on Brexit, if you like, or maybe we’re letting our standards slip. Whatever the cause, we’re guilty of having brought you nearly £400,000 less road test metal last year than we did in 2016, when the combined value of all the cars featured in the weekly road tests was almost £2.8 million. Clearly we’ve been unwittingly ‘keepin’ it real’ with our choice of test subjects in 2017. We could have filled a whole month’s worth of issues with tests on new superminis, and more than a fifth of our tests were written about reasonably priced crossover hatchbacks and compact SUVs. Don’t blame us: people will keep buying them.

There was, of course, still plenty of speed and exoticism mixed in with the worthy but less exciting meat and potatoes. We tested two mid-engined, 600bhp-plus supercars – and one of them turned out to be quite dominant in our road test year ‘Top Trumps’-style statistics: the McLaren 720S. The other, the Lamborghini Huracán Performante, memorably smashed our dry handling track lap record. Three new cars were awarded near-perfect five-star road test ratings, while a two-and-a-half-star wooden spoon went to a downsized EV that did little to advance the cause of its electrified breed.

But besides all those, which verdicts will history have the most use for? When we’re looking back in 20 years’ time, I should think it’ll likely be to find our tests on the seventh- generation Ford Fiesta (still great, but no longer a class leader), Tesla Model X (an interesting car, but give us a Model S any day), Hyundai i30 N and Honda Clarity (a trailblazing fuel cell-powered saloon that proves how close the hydrogen car now is to the mainstream motorist’s reach).

Of course, there isn't such a thing as a perfect car, but we've picked our favourite elements from the cars we road tested in 2017 and combined them together to try and create one, expertly illustrated above by pic ed Ben Summerell-Youde. So what were the best bits of the best cars we tested last year?

Read all of Autocar's first drives and reviews

WHEELS: Rolls-Royce Phantom: it’s not so much the Rolls’s wheels that do it for me (although the fact that the logo stays upright is always a giggle) but the tyres. The Continental rubber has soundproofing foam around the inner edge, to reduce road noise.

TRANSMISSION: Objectively, you’d go for the PDK in the new GT3, given that it swaps cogs with a precision bordering on the supernatural. But no, it’s the six-speed Sadev sequential in the Caterham Seven 420R Donington. Rarely do redline flat-shifts feel this gratifying.

STEERING: McLaren’s hydraulically assisted rack on the 720S makes it just as tactile at 20mph as it is at 120mph. Not overly aggressive on off-centre pace, either, and ever predictable as you add angle. It even has perfect rim proportions.

SEATS: The new Audi A8’s front seats have six different massage programs, their heaters have three settings and you can make the cushions warmer or cooler in relation to the squabs as you like. There’s adjustable shoulder and thigh support too. Comfy as.

EXHAUST NOISE: No surprises here: Lamborghini Huracán Performante. The tone generated by its ultra-short exhaust tracts seems to have three distinct characters, starting with ‘reprehensibly vicious’ at low engine speeds and moving on from there. Loud enough to wake the dead, but equally soulful.

ENGINE: As four-cylinder turbos go, I reckon the Honda Civic Type R’s is brilliant – but not brilliant enough to outshine the new Porsche 911 GT3’s atmospheric flat six, which feels like it might lift your head clean off your shoulders with noise alone above 8000rpm. Wouldn’t mind giving it some of the 720S’s torque, mind you.

CHASSIS: Alpine A110: it’s a late 2017 entry in the chassis department for me. The Alpine A110 has its engine in the middle and a lightweight aluminium monocoque that lends it a 44% front, 56% rear weight distribution and a balance to die for. Rides, too.

AERO: I’ve no idea how the ‘forged composite’ lacquered carbonfibre on the Lamborghini Huracán Performante is made – and, by the way, I don’t want to know either. But it’s gorgeous. Bigger aerofoils just mean you get more of it to gawp at, so let’s go large.