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Every year since 1989 Autocar has collected together the finest new cars from the previous 12 months and subjected them to a rigorous test on both road and track.
Using our team of highly experienced road testers, we set out to find the best driver’s car of the year. 2018’s contest was as competitive as ever – but there was only one winner.
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How we test
Informally we call the event ‘handling day’ because vehicle dynamics are the primary interest: not power, not vehicle size or weight, and not strictly the type of powertrain, either.
All of these things, though, have a bearing on what a car feels like to drive: how it steers, how well it turns, how it rides, and, most importantly, how it tells you about all of those things.
Over the years, cheap cars have won, expensive cars have won, ones with very little power have won and ones with a lot of power have won. We have superb examples of all of these this year. Which means that finishing first is as ringing an endorsement as a car can get, and finishing last isn’t really last at all.
Every single one of the cars we took to Wales, where the sun shone and rain fell, on quiet roads we know well, and on the superb Anglesey race circuit, for three solid days of testing. But there will only be one winner.
We featured 10 cars, and we’ll start with the car that came in 10th and work our way up to the car we believe is the finest driver’s car available to buy right now:
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10th: Jaguar XE SV Project 8 - £149,995
OVERALL SCORE: 161
Sadly the identity of the car going home with a wooden spoon in the glovebox was fairly clear from quite early on in the competition. It is absolutely true and important to say that just to be invited is an achievement so you might argue that all ten were winners in a way, but if there was a disappointment in North Wales, the Jaguar was undoubtedly it.
Road test editor Matt Saunders put it best when he said, ‘the Project 8 felt a bit kettled up and got in its own way on Welsh B-roads, and its size didn’t help matters either.’ It wasn’t aided in the mountains by being left-hand drive either, but there were other factors at play too: the car’s mass, and the confidence-sapping lack of front end feel being the most prominent.
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10th: Jaguar XE SV Project 8 - £149,995
It had plenty of grip and admirable stability, but even here it was hard to balance. In short, it felt too much like a hotrod to stand a chance against the many much more sophisticated machines ranged against it.
ANGLESEY COASTAL CIRCUIT LAP TIME: 1min 17.2sec (4th fastest)
Jaguar XE SV Project 8
Price: £149,995
Engine: 5000cc, V8, supercharged petrol
Power: 592bhp at 6500rpm
Torque: 519lb ft at 3000rpm
Gearbox: 8-speed automatic
Kerbweight: 1745kg
Power to weight: 339bhp per tonne
Torque to weight: 297lb ft per tonne
Top speed: 200mph
0-62mph: 3.7sec
Tyre spec: 265/35 R20 (f), 305/30 R20 (r), Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2
Why it’s here: Jaguar’s SVO division has made its most extreme car ever. Would be rude not to have it.
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9th: Ford Fiesta ST - £18,995
OVERALL SCORE: 166
On the road you can see why right now there’s no car of similar price we’d rather drive than the little Ford. As Matt Saunders puts it: ‘the driving experience demands plenty of you, and unlike plenty of the other cars it’s much less about precision, purity or fluency than responsiveness, vivaciousness and willingness to entertain. But the more you’re prepared to physically engage with the car, the more you get back.’ In short, it’s a hoot.
What we did not expect was for its composure to fall apart quite so suddenly on the track. Matt Bird, our visiting judge from sister ship Pistonheads, wrote: ‘A right giggle up to a point, but scrappy and unsatisfying beyond that. Controls become a bit baggy right at the limit.’
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9th: Ford Fiesta ST - £18,995
And so they did: on track it felt too soft and while it would adjust its rear end according to throttle setting, the acrobatic agility of the previous ST has been somewhat dampened.
ANGLESEY COASTAL CIRCUIT LAP TIME: 1min 23.6sec (10th fastest)
Ford Fiesta ST
Price: £18,995
Engine: 1497cc, 3cyl, turbo petrol
Power: 197bhp at 6000rpm
Torque: 214lb ft at 1600-4000rpm
Gearbox: 6-speed manual
Kerbweight: 1262kg
Power to weight: 156bhp per tonne
Torque to weight: 170lb ft per tonne
Top speed: 144mph
0-62mph: 6.5sec
Tyre spec: 205/40 R18 (f and r), Michelin Pilot Super Sport
Why it’s here: The brilliant hot supermini would deserve a spot here even if it hadn’t won our budget driver’s car contest earlier this year.
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8th: Lotus Exige Sport 410 - £85,600
OVERALL SCORE: 179
Before I explain why a Lotus Exige 410 came only 8th in a contest plenty might reasonably have expected it to win, I should say first that that, in points terms, it left the Fiesta and Jag for dead and was hot on the heels of the cars that occupied the two places immediately above it.
Even so and despite knowing plenty about all these contenders well in advance, we’d expected more of the lightweight Lotus. There was, of course, plenty that it did just right. Its body control on both road and track was pretty awesome, its apex speed even more so.
Saunders celebrated ‘the simplicity and honesty’ of his character, a trait every judge could relate to. Despite our reservations, it still felt like a proper Lotus, and there is always something to be celebrated in that.
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8th: Lotus Exige Sport 410 - £85,600
But when our attentions turned from road to track, where you’d expect a car such as this to excel, problems remained, as witnessed by the fact that just one judge rated its circuit performance above 19 out of a possible 25.
In short it was hard work, physically just to hoof it around the circuit and mentally to keep it properly balanced. We’re all up for a brain and body workout but the rewards have to be there, and the Exige, for all its raw speed, came up slightly short. Even in race mode it understeered too much on entry and lacked traction at exit. Surely with this much potential a limited slip differential would have been desirable?
ANGLESEY COASTAL CIRCUIT LAP TIME: 1min 18.0sec (5th fastest)
Lotus Exige Sport 410
Price: £85,600
Engine: 3456cc, V6, supercharged petrol
Power: 410bhp at 7000rpm
Torque: 310lb ft at 3000-7000rpm
Gearbox: 6-speed manual
Kerbweight: 1108kg
Power to weight: 370bhp per tonne
Torque to weight: 280lb ft per tonne
Top speed: 180mph
0-62mph: 3.4sec
Tyre spec: 215/45 R17 (f), 285/30 R18 (r), Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2
Why it’s here: The Exige once narrowly missed out to the Toyota GT86 in this contest. This last version is the best yet.
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7th: Aston Martin Vantage - £120,900
OVERALL SCORE: 181
Aston Martin will surely be as pleased its new Vantage beat such a purpose-built weapon as the Exige at it will be alarmed by how it split opinion. Of the three Matts on the judging panel messrs Prior and Bird placed it ninth and last respectively, while Saunders rated it an outstanding fourth.
Frankel and Prosser split the difference. Bird described his view of car on the road thus: ‘it feels like a disjointed car, some parts that are good in isolation but never feels to create a cohesive whole like the very best stuff here.’ On the flip side Saunders said it was ‘really pleasingly deft, with sophisticated close body control in Sport Plus. A product that’s clearly been tuned with immaculate care.’ You’d hardly believe they were driving the same car.
While it did well on the road, it was hampered by its width and quite limited visibility. But the chassis offered a useful range of settings and was never less than accurate and indulgent.
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7th: Aston Martin Vantage - £120,900
And most judges thought it even better on the track, where it exhibited not just raw speed and technical fluency but an almost limitless tolerance for indulging the inner caveman that appears to lurk within the entire test team. It’s worth noting too that while many came wearing dedicated track rubber, the Aston went throughout wearing standard Pirelli P-Zeroes.
ANGLESEY COASTAL CIRCUIT LAP TIME: 1min 18.4sec (7th fastest)
Aston Martin Vantage
Price: £120,900
Engine: 3982cc V8 twin-turbo petrol
Power: 503bhp at 6000rpm
Torque: 505lb ft at 2000-5000rpm
Gearbox: 8-speed automatic
Kerbweight: 1600kg
Power to weight: 314bhp per tonne
Torque to weight: 316bhp per tonne
Top speed: 195mph
0-62mph: 3.5sec
Tyre spec: 255/40 R20 (f), 295/35 R20 (r), Pirelli P Zero
Why it’s here: Aston’s smallest and lightest is often its best. We already love it among its peers.
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6th: Audi R8 RWS - £112,520
OVERALL SCORE: 184
The Aston beat the Exige by just two points and was itself beaten by the Audi R8 RWS by a mere three – that’s how close it was in the midfield of this competition. But we have a funny feeling Audi will be happier with that result than its closeness would suggest. The R8 was Mr Consistent, no judge placing it higher than sixth nor lower than eighth.
It there was one thing that made the Audi stand out, it was an absence of anything truly outstanding in either direction. We didn’t much like the feel of the brakes, and some of us thought its brakes merely adequate for the job, but if you read through the notes, there’s a lot of admiration for its balance and poise (Saunders) and its steering and damping (Bird) and nothing to mark it down.
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6th: Audi R8 RWS - £112,520
It scored fractionally better on road than track but in truth wherever you took it, it just found a way of working in that environment. Is it the best R8 of the current generation? By a mile. Was there an enormous amount of love out there for it? Not so much. The best driver’s car Audi has produced in many a year it undoubtedly is, but an Audi it still remains.
ANGLESEY COASTAL CIRCUIT LAP TIME: 1min 18.2sec (6th fastest)
Audi R8 RWS
Price: £112,520
Engine: 5204cc V10 petrol
Power: 533bhp at 7800rpm
Torque: 398lb ft at 6500rpm
Gearbox: 7-speed dual-clutch auto
Kerbweight: 1590kg
Power to weight: 335bhp per tonne
Torque to weight: 250lb ft per tonne
Top speed: 198mph
0-62mph: 3.7sec
Tyre spec: 245/30 R20 (f), 305/30 R20 (r), Pirelli P Zero
Why it’s here: With 4wd and a V8, the R8 won this contest on its debut. But rear-drive makes this version better.
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5th: BMW M2 Competition - £49,285
OVERALL SCORE: 203
You could not accuse the BMW M2 Competition of failing to engage with the judging panel on an emotional level. And while it’s placed just one position ahead of the Audi, if you look at the total points it scored (203/250 compared to 184/250), you can see it’s playing a completely different game. Another five points and this almost affordable 2-series would have been on the podium…
Indeed its prevailing handling characteristic even resulted in a new term adding itself to the Autocar road testing lexicon: foolaboutability – the willingness of a car to be driven with complete security at apparently irretrievable angles of attack for as long as a corner may last. If there was a prize for going sideways only the Aston would put up the slightest resistance.
In many ways it was, to me at least, a pint-sized, cut-price version of the car I’d hoped the Jaguar would be: practical and civilised enough to make eminent sense as a daily driver, yet on the right road (or track), endlessly indulgent and fun.
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5th: BMW M2 Competition - £49,285
Saunders called it straight: ‘Some cars make me sorry that we don’t have a value-for-money check on our ‘Handling Day’ voting. The M2 Competition is one of them. While it’s a very different prospect than the Alpine, it has appeal as a driver’s car that’s every bit as compelling.’
ANGLESEY COASTAL CIRCUIT LAP TIME: 1min 20.1sec (8th fastest)
BMW M2 Competition
Price: £49,285
Engine: 2963cc, 6cyls in line, twin-turbo petrol
Power: 404bhp at 5250-7000rpm
Torque: 405lb ft at 2350-5200rpm
Gearbox: 7-speed dual-clutch auto
Kerbweight: 1625kg
Power to weight: 249bhp per tonne
Torque to weight: 249lb ft per tonne
Top speed: 155mph (limited)
0-62mph: 4.4sec
Tyre spec: 245/35 R19 (f), 265/35 R19 (r), Michelin Pilot Super Sport
Why it’s here: Currently the best driver’s car BMW makes, and BMW makes some great driver’s cars.
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4th: Porsche 911 GT3 RS - £131,346
OVERALL SCORE: 207
And so to our fourth placed car, the Porsche 911GT3 RS, and if you’re now raising your eyebrows north, somewhat staggered that it failed to land a place on the podium, consider this: on track it scored the same number of points as the car that went on to win outright.
Also, it missed that podium spot by a single, solitary point. On the track, then, the Porsche was incredible. Saunders reckoned it had ‘the most predictable, malleable, truly absorbing track handling’ and the best engine of the group. Bird said that just pouring his praise onto the page made him want to get out and drive it again. We were wowed all over again by the completeness of the track package: the brakes, the grip, the turn in, the traction... on the circuit it was almost flawless.
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4th: Porsche 911 GT3 RS - £131,346
But it came at a price and there’s no doubt that had we a standard GT3 or Touring, it would not have been undone on the road section. The RS didn’t disgrace itself, not even close. But Porsche’s decision to make this the most track-oriented GT3 RS to date showed with every turn. Too stiff to flow with the road, the rewards were there, but so too would they have been in a GT3, and you’d have needed to work less hard to access them.
One final thing, one more reason the GT3 RS came up the tiniest fraction short. We have had another year like this, but only one I recall, and it was the year that the 911R beat the Ferrari 488GTB and McLaren 675LT at this very circuit. As Saunders put it ‘in another year, it might have won’, so who better than our road test editor to tell us what actually does…
ANGLESEY COASTAL CIRCUIT LAP TIME: 1min 14.7sec (3rd fastest)
Porsche 911 GT3 RS
Price: £131,346
Engine: 3996cc, 6cyls, horizontally opposed, petrol
Power: 513bhp at 8250rpm
Torque: 347lb ft at 6000rpm
Gearbox: 7-speed dual-clutch automatic
Kerbweight: 1430kg
Power to weight: 359bhp per tonne
Torque to weight: 243lb ft per tonne
Top speed: 194mph
0-62mph: 3.2sec
Tyre spec: 265/35 R20 (f), 325/30 R21 (r), Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2
Why it’s here: It’s here because it’s the latest GT Porsche 911. It needs no more reason than that.
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THE FINAL THREE
You’ve got to draw the line somewhere. Sporting convention suggests you should rule it across the page just under your third-place finisher. You hang a medal of a different precious metal around the neck of each contestant admitted; take a few exuberant podium snaps, if you like.
And then, in our case at least – with the memories of so many V6s, V8s, V10, flat sixes, straight sixes and turbo fours still competing to ring in your ears – you very calmly wend your way home.
And, in the end, that’s what we did – minus the neck ornamentation. But, as will become apparent when you get to the end of this test bonanza and take in our table of judges votes, if what you are about to read had been a duel it might have been a fairer denouement. At the end of the day, this contest has come down to choosing between the Alpine A110, the Ferrari 488 Pista, and the McLaren 600LT:
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3rd: Alpine A110 - £51,805
OVERALL SCORE: 208
The Alpine A110 is little short of a revelation on the road – and that revelation deserves your attention first. Matt Bird called it 'just lovely. Lithe, lissom, limber, brilliant. Glides along treading the line between absorbency and involvement perfectly. Proves that sports cars ought to be small; that light is still right.'
For Dan Prosser it was “the first car I drove on the road. And as I stepped out of it I remember thinking aloud, ‘I don’t think I’ll have any more fun than that’. Pliant setup and long wheel travel make it so well suited to bumpy and uneven roads, while its compact size and modest tyres mean you can use all of its performance.”
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3rd: Alpine A110 - £51,805
The A110’s many praises were sung by others, too – but all came back from a drive fizzing with enthusiasm about how refreshing it was to enjoy a sports car so perfectly optimized for the road. One with the pace and grip to excite you, but no more of either than you can use easily on a daily basis. And one that seems to strain every sinew and give of its best without needing to be driven to extremes.
On a good B-road, at speeds that needn’t attract unwanted attention, the A110 was fluent- and dexterous-riding; responsive, precise and poised but vivacious and playful with it; powerful enough to accelerate with decent urgency, but small and light enough to feel effete.
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3rd: Alpine A110 - £51,805
Matt Prior wrote that there was 'absolutely nothing wrong with it that a limited slip diff and another 50 horspower wouldn't sort out.' And yet for more than one judge, no other car attracted more votes for its on-road showing.
ANGLESEY COASTAL CIRCUIT LAP TIME: 1min 20.6sec (9th fastest)
Alpine A110
Price: £51,805
Engine: 1796cc 4cyl turbo petrol
Power: 249bhp at 6000rpm
Torque: 239lb ft at 2000rpm
Gearbox: 7-speed dual-clutch automatic
Kerbweight: 1103kg
Power to weight: 225bhp per tonne
Torque to weight: 217lb ft per tonne
Top speed: 155mph (limited)
0-62mph: 4.5sec
Tyre spec: 205/40 R18 (f), 235/40 R18 (r), Michelin Pilot Sport 4
Why it’s here: Light and engaging, set the world alight when it arrived at the start of the year.
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2nd: Ferrari 488 Pista - £252,765
OVERALL SCORE: 223
The Ferrari 488 Pista has a performance level you’d take delight in taking full advantage of probably as often as you drove it, meet one in which the punctuation between your first full-throttle adventure and your second may be rather long – and the sheer effort of mental processing power that pause contained necessarily considerable.
The Pista is monstrously, preposterously fast. It accelerates with a violence you very rarely find in a car with numberplates, feeling less like a car at all while doing so and more like it might be invisibly but very firmly attached to some distant F35 fighter jet (albeit one that you can’t actually hear over the angry yowl of the V8 engine). For Andrew Frankel, its pace was 'epic'; for Matt Bird, it was 'intense, visceral, out of this world.'
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2nd: Ferrari 488 Pista - £252,765
But Dan Prosser’s comments hinted at the elephant in the room, which other judges noted also: that the car 'has a level of performance that you really struggle to tap into on the road.'
That’s the risk any car with a particularly healthy feeling 710-horsepower engine runs, of course. But this one has such a dramatic, torque-filled power delivery that, in this tester’s experience at least, it is the first Ferrari whose sheer pace seems to know no end. Maranello has been talking for years of ECUs that deal out more and more torque, in a step-by-step process, as you shift up – but the 488 Pista is the first Ferrari to really feel like it’s doing that.
In some cases, the car seems to pick up more mid-range potency in that way than it seems to lose as a result of the change in gearing, even. Shift from 2nd to 3rd without taking your foot off the throttle stop and it feels as if another engine has suddenly attached itself to the driveline. It’s incredible.
As well as that astonishing engine, the Pista leaves you in a bewildered sense of awe with its supreme outright grip level, and with steering that’s light, direct and precise even by modern Ferrari standards – but that doesn’t inspire immediate confidence.
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2nd: Ferrari 488 Pista - £252,765
For some, that made for a combination sufficiently highly-strung to be problematic. Andrew Frankel recorded that it was 'the most civilised (and best) Ferrari V8 special I’ve driven, after the Challenge Stradale, Scuderia and Speciale; but like all of those, it’s still not as nice to drive on the road as the standard car upon which it’s based. You can’t use what it’s gained, but feel the compromise in ride and refinement at every turn.'
For Matt Prior, however, we heard different: that the Pista was 'very enjoyable on the road,' and had 'a ride which is good enough, even if the steering is over-light and quick by comparison to some.'
ANGLESEY COASTAL CIRCUIT LAP TIME: 1min 11.4sec (1st fastest)
Ferrari 488 Pista
Price: £252,765
Engine: 3902cc, V8, twin-turbo petrol
Power: 710bhp at 8000rpm
Torque: 568lb ft at 3000rpm (7th gear only)
Gearbox: 7-speed dual clutch automatic
Kerbweight: 1433kg
Power to weight: 495bhp per tonne
Torque to weight: 396lb ft per tonne
Top speed: 211mph
0-62mph: 2.9sec
Tyre spec: 245/35 R20, 305/30 R20, Pirelli P Zero Trofeo R
Why it’s here: As the hardest version of Ferrari’s best sports car, it couldn’t not be here.
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WINNER: McLaren 600LT - £185,500
OVERALL SCORE: 225
It’s a big day for any car maker when you enter Autocar’s ‘Handling Day’winners’ enclosure for the first time. A warm welcome, then, to McLaren Automotive: and commiserations to Porsche (the Real Madrid CF of Autocar Handling Day with eleven stars on its shirt breast), to Ferrari (who’ve won it five times, five times – and also play in red), to Lotus (four wins) and to the rest.
The brilliant 600LT ended up taking this year’s ‘BBDC’ spoils by just two points out of a maximum 250; it was a worthy winner, being the preferred champion for three-out-of-five judges. Like the Ferrari, it attracted a perfect ‘25’ only once and almost-perfect ‘24’s just twice.
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WINNER: McLaren 600LT - £185,500
We’re a tough crowd, clearly. But, on balance, the McLaren’s superior road composure and its remarkable ability to involve at any speed just about won out over the Ferrari’s greater outright pace and grip, and superior on-track handling balance and adjustability. By a whisker, the 600LT’s capacity to be more rewarding more of the time swung the result in its favour – although it could hardly have been closer.
Woking has already hit dizzying heights with the £750,000 Senna this year, and might go on to similar ones with the equally high-end Speedtail in 2019 – but the 600LT shows its attention can be lavished just as generously on cars at the more attainable end of its showroom range, and to spectacular results. It is a superb track car and a quite sublime fast road car – and now it’s officially the very best new driver’s car of the year to boot.
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WINNER: McLaren 600LT - £185,500
In the words of Dan Prosser,'the 600LT is mind-blowing. It feels so fast once the turbos are spooled up, I love the seating position and the sense of being sat right at the pointy end, and I adore the sense of connection you get through the steering.'
ANGLESEY COASTAL CIRCUIT LAP TIME: 1min 13.1sec (2nd fastest)
McLaren 600LT
Price: £185,500
Engine: 3799cc, V8, twin-turbo petrol
Power: 592bhp at 7500rpm
Torque: 457lb ft at 5500-6500rpm
Gearbox: 7-speed dual-clutch automatic
Kerbweight: 1431kg
Power to weight: 414bhp per tonne
Torque to weight: 319lb ft per tonne
Top speed: 204mph
0-62mph: 2.9sec
Tyre spec: 225/35 R19 (f), 285/35 R20 (r), Pirelli P Zero
Why it’s here: The 570S is arguably the best car Woking makes. The driver's-spec 600LT is based on that and is already a five-star car.
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JUDGES SCORECARD
Maximum possible score for a car is 250 points.
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LAP TIMES, ANGLESEY COASTAL CIRCUIT
It may look like a sizeable lead to carve out over a 71-second lap, but if anything the 1.7sec laptime advantage of the Ferrari 488 Pista over the rest of the Britain’s Best Driver’s Car 2018 field actually seems to understate the car’s advantage on accelerative potency and outright grip.
Take a look at the spot comparison of prevailing speed we took on the exit of Anglesey’s Target corner and you get a better idea of what the Ferrari’s capable of. Here we compared speed on corner exit at exactly the point at which each of the cars passed downwards beyond 0.8g of lateral load on its way straight again. That the 488 Pista is the only car in three figures here, travelling fully seven miles an hour quicker than the next quickest car, says it all about its remarkable levels of adhesion and acceleration. In only one place was the Pista anything but the quickest car on test: at the apex of the off-camber Peel corner.
We did everything possible to ensure a fair laptime comparison, but with ten cars to get through on a day with plenty of other testing going on, some compromise to perfect like-for-like test conditions was unavoidable. As such, on Michelin Cup R tyres fresher than they were at the time of testing, the Porsche’s laptime might have been a second or so quicker. For similar reasons, both the Aston Martin’s showing and the Lotus’ might have been subject to lesser improvements – though neither likely to be worth enough to move it up the table by more than one place.
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THE JUDGES
Left-to-right:
Andrew Frankel
Has been to every BBDC contest since 1990 but still as excited as ever to attend. Understands better than anyone what makes a great driver’s car.
Matt Saunders
Autocar’s road test editor put the show together and holds the best job title in the business. Which means any verdicts you disagree with are down to him.
Matt Bird
A terrific road tester seconded from PistonHeads, where he works with former Autocar tester Nic Cackett, but uses more understandable similes.
Matt Prior
Road tester of 20 years who has hung around Autocar long enough to get an unfathomable job title. Handsome, stylish, charming, and author of these captions.
Dan Prosser
Was forced to spend an unreasonable amount of time in a roofless car in the rain in November at last year’s BBDC (a Caterham Seven 420R), but encouragingly was delighted to come back.
Words by Andrew Frankel and Matt Saunders
Photos by Luc Lacey and Olgun Kordal
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