Autocar Awards 2024: the UK’s best cars

Join us as we celebrate the finest cars and the people who created them.

Click through to discover the winners of each category.

When BMW introduced a 545e version of the previous-generation 5 Series, it was a real ‘have your cake, eat it and lose weight’ kind of car: a plug-in hybrid that ticked all the sensible company car boxes while also a decent sports saloon with a wonderful straight-six engine.

Now that the 5 Series has entered a new generation, BMW has naturally repeated the trick. Compared with its predecessor, the 550e has more power and more electric-only range, and it retains a pliant ride and a good dose of dynamism.

There are other PHEV saloons and there are other PHEVs with six-cylinder engines, but none that offer it all at once, let alone execute the formula so well.

The ‘G60’ 5 Series hasn’t had the easiest time here at Autocar, having been launched in pure-electric i5 form. But as is probably not entirely surprising from a company whose name translates as Bavarian Engine Factories, it all comes together when you add an engine.

BMW’s B58 petrol straight six is not only very versatile, but its smooth, willing and sonorous character transforms a very competent PHEV into a truly compelling one.

The four-cylinder 530e is more than quick enough, handles well, has competitive electric range and efficiency and uses its battery power very cleverly to make sure that you get the best of both worlds as often and for as long as possible.

It’s a very recommendable PHEV in its own right. But the 550e has that indulgent, big-engined feel that no amount of acoustic trickery can replicate.

It also has as standard the adaptive suspension that’s an option on lesser 5 Series, which gives it the duality of purpose that you expect from a powerful BMW. It’s a quiet, wafty cruiser most of the time and despite its considerable size can muster surprising agility.

The 550e (and by extension the 530e) shows the PHEV has finally come of age. 

A brass-tacks focus is starting to appear in the electric car market – and it’s welcome because it has arguably been missing from the sector for the past decade.

It has been easier for car makers to play in niches and around the fringes of the car market with their debutant EVs so far than to aim right at the market’s core.

Selling an electric car to someone who habitually runs a three-car garage and has plenty of back-up options for when it doesn’t suit their particular needs on any given day is the easy thing to do.

It’s much harder to sell one instead to someone who must depend on a single car to do every type of journey and has a clearly defined budget to spend. But it’s these harder sales they must find a route to and ultimately crack. 

Which is why affordable, usable, multi-talented and genuinely appealing electric vehicles like the Cupra Born are going to be so important over the coming years.

Out of a field of a dozen £40,000 electric cars that we tested back in March – comprising every kind of rival we could assemble, from Tesla and Volvo to Jeep, Vauxhall, MG and Smart – the Cupra Born rose to the very top of the pile.

It beat cheaper cars, roomier cars, more powerful cars, those with longer ranges, and those with more established premium-brand appeal. It had a little bit of everything: enough practicality and rationality to satisfy your head that it might be a sound decision, but enough dynamism and star quality to reach those other parts as well.

Out on the road, the car’s modest footprint also contributes to the neatness and agility of its handling and the sweet spot it seems to occupy for performance and efficiency.

The car’s taut body control and its energetic, well-balanced handling make you more interested to drive it than so many EVs manage to – and there’s even some rear-driven amusement to be found from chassis electronics that don’t suffocate any enthusiasm.

It has been so before but the Cupra Born remains the car that we would recommend to anyone looking to replace their hard-working family hatchback with an electric alternative that they can afford.

V8-engined muscle cars are very thin on the ground in the UK, your only options being the Chevrolet Corvette (which is really more of a sports car anyway) and the new Ford Mustang – a 440bhp bruiser that you can now buy for a shade over £55,000, making it the cheapest V8 car of any kind on the market.

And that’s where muscle car USP comes in – something that the Mustang has mastered over an uninterrupted 60-year production run and sales amounting to 10 million.

It’s a cheaper, charismatic and ultimately more charming way of matching key rivals on performance and perhaps beating them on sheer kerb appeal.

This new seventh-generation Mustang has a lot riding on it, stemming from a lineage that gave the pony car its reputation as the go-to traffic stopper for a very loyal type of customer.

But Ford wanted to attract new customers with this car: specifically millennials and zoomers. Therefore the brand made it the most technology-rich Mustang to date, coming with twice the computing power of the one it replaced, twin 13.2in digital screens, the ability to receive over-the-air software updates and Ford’s latest Sync 4 infotainment system.

And while that might sound like sacrilege to those who remember the somewhat agricultural old Mustang variants with low-stress V8s, the ‘S650’ still feels like a true muscle car.

Under acceleration it really comes alive, tensing up around you and building via a raspy crescendo to its 7500rpm redline.

A 0-62mph time of 5.3sec (in GT form) may be slower than its major competition, but the way the Mustang gets to that speed is as rewardingly dramatic as it is gloriously satisfying.

The new car has primary and secondary ride quality that’s easily comparable to that of more expensive German rivals, the suspension isolating you from lumps and bumps with a reassuring, rubbery solidity.

And that’s exactly why we like this Ford so much. Its breadth of abilities are more impressive than they have ever been, and nowhere else will you find the same amount of car for the money.

The Hyundai Ioniq 5 N is a real game-changer.

Anyone worried that an electric future might spell the end of fun on four wheels can rest easy, because the Ioniq 5 N is a car that’s huge fun to drive on road and track and also happens to be electric.

This feels like the first EV to take all the opportunities that electric propulsion offers and put them to use to create something laugh-out-loud entertaining. The silent and violent acceleration thing has been done to death by now. While the Ioniq 5 N can do all that, it also offers a more layered experience with its simulated gearchanges.

At the same time, it can use all its instant power – and some very clever tuning – to create a brilliantly interactive chassis that entertains at road speeds or on track.

While N cars have so far been a good interpretation of a well-trodden concept, the Ioniq 5 N does something entirely new. Even before you get to the very convincing fake engine noise and gearchanges, the way the car drives is a revelation.

You wouldn’t naturally associate ‘steering on the throttle’ with a 2.2-tonne electric SUV, but you had better believe that the Ioniq 5 N allows exactly that.

Yes, it can do lurid drifts on track, but this EV has plenty of subtlety to it: it all feels completely natural and, despite the Ioniq 5 N’s considerable footprint and 641bhp combined output, not threatening at all.

It’s laugh-out-loud absorbing at ten-tenths yet still amusing and genuinely engaging on an average B-road.

Many people still find engine noise and gearchanges to be an essential part of a good performance car and at the press of a button, the Ioniq 5 N transforms into a convincing ICE-powered car.

The virtual gearbox delivers the full complement of jerks, bogs and imperfect torque curves you would get with a real eight-speed automatic.

It has these features but that it offers you the choice and lets you completely tailor the driving experience to your preferences. Its completeness makes it a car that you want to drive as often as you possibly can; soften off the dampers and it’s genuinely comfortable and has a truly usable range.

Advances in battery and motor technology are likely to allow the formula to be evolved even further, but the Ioniq 5 N is the first EV to break the mould and show how electric power can enhance the performance car experience.

Europeans don’t tend to think of Kia as a player in the large car market, which might be one of the reasons why the EV9 has made such a splash since its introduction to our shores at the beginning of this year.

Elsewhere in the world, North American Kia buyers know all about the Sorento-topping Telluride seven-seat SUV and the Carnival MPV. In Korea there’s the K9/K900 full-size executive saloon as well. And the firm is about to introduce a full-size -pick-up truck, the Tasman.

Kia’s designers aren’t afraid of sheer scale, in other words. When it comes to the EV9, there’s a wonderful, totally prepossessing, take-me-as-you-find-me confidence about this electric seven-seat SUV. It’s here to steal business from the European elites. Under the skin, it’s good enough to do exactly that.

Everywhere you take the EV9, people ask you what it is. Within a couple of years, there will be smaller EV3 and EV5 SUVs that look a lot like it, which should help to claim this new design language as Kia’s own.

For now, though, this is a like a car just landed from a sci-fi movie set. People stare at it on the street; theyseek you out in shops and cafes to talk excitedly about it and to ask what it’s like.

The positive effect that interest will have for Kia, as the reflected glory trickles down to more affordable price points, could cause yet another shift of gear for the company’s European growth curve.

Quite apart from being something of a 5m-long design manifesto, the EV9 is also an impressively usable, really spacious and versatile electric family car.It’s competitive with anything that you might buy from Audi, BMW or Mercedes-Benz for performance and range – and probably cheaper by a five-figure sum.

This company has been talking about taking on the big players for many years. Those players have been on notice. Now the talking is over.

Lamborghinis don’t win this magazine’s annual Britain’s Best Driver’s Car (BBDC) contest. It isn’t that they lack feel-good factor, or that they aren’t rapid enough against the clock when we time the carsfor their hot lap.

Anyone lucky enough to have really uncorked, say, a Huracán STO knows that not for one millisecond does it feel anything less than laugh-out-loud special. No, the reason why Lamborghinis don’t win BBDC is because they tend to lack that final 10% of chassis feedback and, for want of a better phrase, three-dimensionality in their handling.

Then along came a Sant’Agata supercar less likely than any other in history to take the BBDC title yet which went and dominated the contest.

Honestly, nobody expected the propped-up, knobbly tyred Huracán Sterrato to take overall victory in 2023’s event. 

So how did the Sterrato – an esoteric fever dream of a semi-experimental, soft-roading supercar – come to defeat, the Porsche 911 GT3 RS and the Ariel Atom among many others?

The answer lies in the limitations imposed on the chassis by the car’s need to work on dirt tracks and the like. Short, unyielding suspension springs would have the Sterrato shedding underbody cladding the moment it left a paved surface. So the engineers lengthened the springs and dialled back the suspension rates.

The result is a supercar with all the inherent balance and 90% of the responsiveness of its traditional mid-engined brethren but which breathes with the undulations and direction changes of a good country road like nothing else.

It means that this Lamborghini is among the most confidence-inspiring performance cars out there. 

As usual with Lamborghini, the chassis was only half the story – or perhaps, in this case, three-quarters of it. After all, we’d had the Sterrato’s particular 5.2-litre V10 at BBDC before, where quite rightly it alone hadn’t been enough to secure a win for the car that housed it.

However, when you take such a fine chassis and garnish it with a naturally aspirated engine that will go down as one of the greatest ever to grace a road car, the result is clearly going to be spectacular.

In the end, the Sterrato driving experience resonated with the judges. Here was a supercar that worked at any time, on any road, in any weather. Who could have predicted that lowering the limits of grip and body control would make the Huracán more versatile and enjoyable? Well, as it happens, all of us here, and many of you as well, I suspect.

How gratifying it is to find a car manufacturer as committed to the future of the small car as the Renault Group, which through its Renault and Dacia brands makes some of the most appealing small cars in existence.

Alpine will have its own versions of upcoming small Renaults too. Of them all, though, none is as complete a small car as the latest Clio, a car that our road testers believe is the latest class swot for all the right reasons – and not just because there’s less competition, following the demise of the Ford Fiesta and several others.

This is a car that would compete at the top of the class regardless.

No matter what it were put up against, the latest Clio would compete admirably on style, value, driving and more. It has been a supermini staple for decades, but with the latest iteration, Renault has gone to great lengths to drive up the perceived quality, refinement and composure to what we might call big-car levels.

It feels terrific inside, regardless of which trim level you choose, and matches that with excellent refinement.

It’s still competitively priced and well equipped, and from a value perspective even the most basic versions come with the kind of equipment that you would realistically want or need.

And today it’s the most fun supermini to drive. Its handling is agile and enjoyable, just as a supermini’s should be, its steering is responsive and its ride is absorbent yet also controlled. And it combines this with high levels of stability and isolation, too. Gone are the days when a small car was a chore to drive.

So whichever version you choose, from the most affordable 1.0-litre turbocharged petrol with a manual gearbox through to the more sophisticated E-Tech hybrid (our preference is for the outstanding value base models), the Clio is an excellent supermini, a standout car in the segment and easily our choice for best small car of 2024. 

It is, we will admit, strange to have a box-fresh, six-cylinder 5 Series among our award winners and yet see the gong for the best saloon going to an electric Volkswagen.

No, this isn’t a mistake. It’s just that the famous hatchback specialist of Wolfsburg, which has by its own admission had an especially shaky start in the EV era, has recently turned out an immensely well-rounded executive car that would slot into almost anyone’s life with ease.

This big electric Volkswagen begs to be underestimated. It presents as a comparatively nondescript four-door fastback and dispenses with the aggressive front-end styling that’s now commonplace in every class of car. It’s subtle, restrained… dare we say it, classy.

Elsewhere, the ID 7 isn’t especially quick or light by the standards of its peers, and neither does it rewrite the rules on range or charging speed or, well, anything. It is, in truth, profoundly unremarkable.

However, it is also the first car in a good few years to well and truly bottle what traditionally made Volkswagens so difficult to beat: possessing almost no obvious weaknesses and having plenty of quiet confidence about it.

This is an electric saloon that makes few if any demands of its driver, combining superb road manners with an intuitive drivability that makes any journey a cinch.

What’s more, should you ever feel the need to press on in your ID 7, you will discover that it has a composed, rear-driven balance to its handling that can make B-roads unexpectedly enjoyable. Volkswagen has even priced it sensibly, from £51,000.

So, our advice to those who like the sound of a BMW i5 or Mercedes-Benz EQE but find them too dear (and also possibly guilty of a slight style-over-substance approach) would be to give the ID 7 a go.It really is excellent. 

In some dark and stupid corners of the internet, you will find people calling Toyota an outdated legacy car maker, daft in being slow to full electrification, foolish to pursue hydrogen avenues and havingleft its best days behind it.

It won’t come as a surprise to the sensible, though, that Toyota at the start of May recorded full-year operating profits of ¥5.35 trillion (£26 billion). In 2023, it sold more than 10 million cars worldwide for the first time. Couldn’t we all do with a crisis like that?

In truth, harder times are ahead. Chinese car makers operating in core sectors will threaten every mass-market car maker, with no exceptions. But while we wonder how some will survive the onslaught, Toyota has several key things on its side.

For one, there’s the reputation of its vehicles for exceptional durability and reliability, hard-earned over decades of making cars that people simply expect to last and last well. It isn’t a coincidence that its market share is huge in some of the world’s most remote markets.

Second, while Toyota might be behind the curve on introducing fully electrified cars, its proven hybrid powertrains offer great efficiency in everyday driving.

But where we think Toyota has an edge in an increasingly difficult, crowded global market is in that it’s a company run from the top down by people who understand and love cars and driving.

Last year, Akio Toyoda stepped down as CEO to become chairman and let someone younger guide the company, but under Koji Sato Toyota has shown no indication that it will let up in making cars that car people want to buy and, crucially, drive.

Toyota engineers admit that without enthusiastic leadership, it wouldn’t be able to make cars like the GR Yaris, GR86 and GR Supra.

At virtually all points in the car market, from the most affordable supermini to the most rugged 4x4, Toyota competes – and that’s what makes it our best manufacturer for 2024.