Autocar Awards 2025 winners: the best cars on sale today

This year’s awards took place on Tuesday evening at a venue in central London. Which cars won in 2025? Read on:

Once you’ve got your bearings there’s nothing else like a 911 S/T. As you dial into the unique relationship between steering response, the grip of the front axle and the suspension’s roll rates, you realise you’re driving an automotive polymath. Flowing but drumskin-tight; composed but mischievous; supercar-special but easy to rub along with; cutting-edge but old-world.

It’s an unbelievably pure and expressive car from a handling perspective. And, boy oh boy, there’s that powertrain to explore, plus those fabulous, 911-typical driver ergonomics to revel in. The S/T will go down as one of the all-time great 911s because it isn’t just a paint-by-numbers attempt to fill yet another hardcore 911 niche. It has a definite identity – and it is one that sparkles.

As a large estate car rather than a trendier SUV, the Superb exemplifies practicality. It uses up-to-date technology to improve the driving experience and enable useful functions without losing sight of how they’re actually used and whether they’re fit for purpose. While most other VW Group brands have done away wholesale with buttons and physical ornamentation, Skoda remains somewhat traditional – within reason.

The Skoda Superb isn’t flashy, and it isn’t revolutionary. The problem with revolutions is that they break stuff. Instead, over four generations, Skoda has iterated on the concept of the sensible estate car, using proven VW Group components where it can and doing its own thing when there’s a better way.

The result is something quietly but decidedly fit for purpose, which is why there’s no doubt that the Skoda Superb earns its name more than ever – and five stars in the Autocar road test.

The Ioniq 5 N is an entirely new kind of driver’s car. In pictures you could think it looks like a new hot hatch. But it’s bigger, heavier, more powerful and more expensive, and it’s packed with hardware – and software – designed to entertain. It has two electric motors – one at the front, one at the rear – driving all four wheels, with an e-differential at the back and a system total power output of 641bhp. So even though it weighs a not inconsequential 2235kg at the kerb, the Ioniq 5 N is an extremely fast car.

Cars that truly change the game have always been vanishingly rare, and that remains true in the topsy-turvy era the automotive industry is currently weathering. Yet the Ioniq 5 N is just that: a game-changer. The electric driver’s car has landed, and it will slot into most of our lives with ease – and plenty of smiles.

The A290 is a car developed by the same people who gave us unadulterated thrillers such as the Renaultsport Clio 182. Such a car should be as easy to drive quickly as it is engaging on a twisty road; the fact that it’s electric will then naturally not be the main focus. And that’s exactly what happened here.

“It picks up where Renault’s hot hatches left off,” wrote Matt Prior after his first drive.

We crowned it the winner of our Best Fun EV test earlier this year and  – putting its powertrain to one side – it’s one of the most involving, responsive affordable driver’s cars we have seen for a while. It might not be the first electric car to break the mould and show the world that EVs can appeal to enthusiasts, but the A290 rewrites the formula in an appealing, unique and accessible way.

It’s not the most powerful, the biggest or the most efficient car ever, but neither was the Clio 182.

Suffice to say, the Artura was already a good car when it very narrowly missed the podium at Britain’s Best Driver’s Car of 2022. Since then however tweaks and changes have upped the drama (in the right way) and its dynamic appeal, and it fairly waltzed to BBDC victory last year. Its versatility as a mid-engined supercar really is special.

You feel like you could, perfectly comfortably, do the office commute in it, run errands and take it on trips away. And, because it’s so easy to get into and so lovely just to drive ‘normally’, you would want to. That singular usability also runs parallel with a level of performance, handling precision, control feedback and all-round driver engagement that absolutely nothing else could compete with on track last autumn.

This is the dynamic package that properly moves the game on, though. The Revuelto has a bigger footprint than the Aventador but is in another dimension of handling appeal, partly thanks to a new, ultra-fast-computing control unit that marshals the ESP, torque split and torque vectoring.

It all boils down to the fact that the biggest, baddest, fastest Lambo now feels cohesive and ready to entertain its driver, inviting them to take certain liberties, as Ferraris do.

The Aventador held you at arm’s length, but you can get stuck into the Revuelto, which, in a 1001bhp supercar with a naturally aspirated V12 and looks that stop traffic, is quite an experience. It’s also the outright fastest car we have yet tested, toppling Bugatti’s Veyron Super Sport. A dream car? Yep, and then some.

The Dacia Duster is not the cheapest car on sale today; it’s not even the cheapest Dacia. In fact, save for the recently introduced Bigster, it’s the most expensive car Dacia sells. But it is outstandingly good value, because it simply offers so much for so (relatively) little. Don’t make the mistake of labelling the Duster as a bare-bones budget car, though.

It’s a fashionable and popular SUV, for starters, and it really leans into the junior off-roader feel with boxy yet confident looks, big wheels and an expansive, flat bonnet. Hop in, and the angular dashboard and pillbox windscreen could almost fool you that you’re in a Defender.

The Dacia Duster capitalises on the seemingly obvious idea of offering buyers everything they need, nothing they don’t and just enough of the things they want. At a time when most new cars are becoming eye-wateringly expensive, it’s no wonder that Dacias have become wildly popular with private buyers.

NB: Dacias are sold under the Renault name in certain markets such as Australia and New Zealand.

Now, however, the tax and WLTP certification systems are changing to make PHEVs work harder to earn their place. And, wouldn’t you know it, we’re getting better cars as a result. The Golf eHybrid shows precisely how. It is, on the face of it, just another Golf. It’s priced pretty much like one, and it looks like one – no novelty headlights or flashy detailing here.

And it drives like one, for the most part. But best of all, it has an excellent official range of 88 miles (142 km), which means that many owners able to charge at home will rarely have to fill up with fuel  - and in most places helps the car achieve a very low tax rate. Bravo.

As we’ve come to expect from Kia’s product, the EV3 doesn’t just play a numbers game that only looks good on paper. Instead, this is an appealing, well-rounded car that stands up to comparison with a growing crop of rivals. On the road, it asks very little of its driver. The EV3 just adapts to their driving style with intuitive controls, adjustable regenerative braking and a pleasantly middle-of-the-road handling balance.

If you go for the entry-level Air trim on smaller wheels, it rides gently too. The airy interior seats you on comfortable chairs with a raised driving position; ahead of you are just enough physical switches, as well as a slick infotainment system – an eight- and an 80-year-old would feel equally at home here. And both of them should have no problem storing all of their stuff in the big boot.

The Fiat Grande Panda could easily have been dull and unimaginative. Something that, because of cost-cutting and its relatively low asking price, was bereft of unique, headline-grabbing features. But it didn’t turn out that way.

The Grande Panda is what happens when a car maker pays attention to and respects not only its heritage but also out-of-the-box thinking to give its new model some genuine appeal among both loyal and first-time buyers.

Few rivals are able to match the Fiat’s levels of character. Its equipment levels are equally impressive. As standard, you get nifty 16in white steel wheels, a 10.25in touchscreen, air conditioning, cruise control, rear parking sensors and a feature so clever you wonder why it wasn’t introduced decades ago: a retractable charging cable.

Land Rover’s new hero Defender, the Octa, is an intriguing performance car that we have come to know really rather well in a pretty short space of time. It was only in January of this year when the chance came to take to the coastal roads, mountain trails, valley basins and sand dunes of the Western Cape, South Africa, in this car.

As introductions go, it was every bit as ambitious as the Octa’s dynamic brief, and it demonstrated very fully what this Land Rover is all about: not physics-bending on-road performance, but rather a boosted envelope of usability every bit as long as it is broad.

Most two-and-a-half-tonne super-SUVs achieve their sub-4.0sec 0-62mph acceleration times by switching onto performance road tyres. Some increase on-road cornering grip by doubling down on their sport suspension settings, giving up ground clearance and wheel articulation along with all the true off-road capability that goes with them.

Some become so wedded to the notion of fast road or track use that any meaningful dual-purposeness simply evaporates out of the window. They become luxury super-saloons on stilts. Not this one.

If, 15 years ago, when the unimpressive MG 6 was launched, you had said MG would one day win this award we don’t think you would have been taken very seriously. Even four or five years ago, when MG’s products were all stolid, uneventful, uninspiring to- look-at, low-priced value products, would you have predicted this?

The Cyberster (pictured) isn’t the core vehicle in the MG range, but it epitomises just how far this manufacturer has come. It has been nearly two decades since SAIC took over the defunct MG brand, seeking a name that was recognisable to Western consumers and managing it carefully (some customers think it is still a British brand). It has a design and engineering hub in the Midlands, but the core work, and the manufacturing, is performed in China.

But it’s that blend – a name we recognise and some European influence on design and driving character, but with the cost advantages of Chinese ownership and manufacture – that has been behind the meteoric rise in MG’s popularity. You could point to the sales growth of the company around the start of the decade as a reason alone to make it our Best Manufacturer.

But it’s the quality, the value and now the design appeal of the products that really make it compelling. The Cyberster represents a yardstick for where MG has come from, but it also feels like a springboard for what it will bring us next.

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