21st century icons: the best car of every year revealed

2003 Rolls-Royce Phantom

Having revived one classic British brand with Mini, BMW repeated the trick a few years later at the opulent end of the car market. The subsequent incredible success of the seventh Rolls-Royce Phantom kick-started a new era for a marque whose very name is a byword for luxury.

The Phantom was in fact the product of a new firm - Rolls-Royce Motor Cars - created by BMW. The old Rolls-Royce Motors essentially fed into Bentley, with the Volkswagen Group buying both from Vickers in 1998. Except Vickers didn't own the Rolls-Royce brand name: the aerospace company did, and BMW did a licence deal (later buying other brand assets from the VW Group).

In 2003, both firms entered bold new eras: Bentley with the Continental GT, Rolls-Royce with the Phantom. The latter used a BMW 6.5-litre V12 and other components but sat on its own bespoke platform. Prices started from £250,000 and production ran for nearly 15 years. Rolls-Royce has slowly added to its product line and grown, and the stately, fabulous Phantom remains the heart of the brand. 

2004 Aston Martin DB9

The very identity of the Aston Martin DB9 is a fine example of how carefully nomenclative model history is written by the car industry. Back in the early noughties, it was decided that the replacement for the popular DB7 couldn't possibly be called the DB8, lest anyone mistakenly assume that this V12-engined grand tourer might be powered by nothing more than a lowly V8. Today, its latest successor is called the DB12. And guess what kind of engine that uses.

Beneath its skin, the DB9 really was the first Aston Martin of the modern era, blooding as it did the company's all-aluminium Vertical-Horizontal model architecture when it entered production in 2004. As such, you could say every DB, Vantage and wider Aston Martin model that followed it for more than a decade from DBS to Virage to Rapide and eventually even on to the second-generation Vanquish all flowed off its platform

The DB9 represents Aston Martin in its most bold and expansive of moods, at a time when it had former Porsche executive Ulrich Bez at the helm and the financial clout of Ford and the Premier Automotive Group behind it, fuelling the corporate optimism. It broadened Gaydon's horizons and showed which way the future lay. 

2005 Bugatti Veyron

Ferdinand Piëch's legacy looms large. The long-serving Volkswagen Group head was known for his affinity with experimentation, and it's a characteristic that resulted in the two-time Le Mans-winning Porsche 917, the ultra-slippery C3 Audi 100 and the 261mpg Volkswagen XL1. For those creations alone we must be thankful, but of all the enigmatic Austrian's commendable feats of engineering, the Bugatti Veyron will forever be the best known and most impactful.

It was at launch the world's fastest and most powerful production car - and only a handful of new cars in the subsequent 20 years could beat it in a game of Top Trumps. Its headline figures still sound like the preserve of some cartoonish fantasy machine: 8.0-litre W16 engine, four turbos, 1479bhp, 268mph, £2 million. Oh, and an exorbitant development bill of around £1 billion, meaning all 450 examples were sold at a loss to the Volkswagen Group.

But who puts a profitability figure on their bedroom wall? Right up there with Concorde, the Flying Scotsman and the International Space Station as an era-defining feat of engineering, the Veyron will be remembered as a monument to the pursuit of absolute mechanical supremacy and a reminder that truly great things can be achieved when the company accountants are sent home early.

2006 Nissan Qashqai

When Nissan began to develop a European-honed replacement for the unsuccessful Almera family hatchback, the early focus was on a compact MPV but worries over its commercial potential prompted a shift in direction. Nissan engineers spotted the growth in popularity of larger SUVs and thought that could be applied to the C-segment - and since it was a family car, it didn't really need the off-road ability or rugged cladding of a category that had been developed from 4x4s.

Development was, for the first time for a Nissan, led by the firm's UK technical centre in Cranfield, and the result was a machine with the coveted big wheels, high ground clearance and seating position of a larger SUV but without the go-anywhere ability that few people needed. European production took place in Sunderland, and within a year Nissan had sold 100,000. Rivals took note, and now every mainstream car firm has its own compact crossover, most of which are still referred to as Qashqai rivals.

2007 Fiat 500

When it finally went off sale this year, after 17 years and more than 2.5 million units sold, the reborn Fiat 500 still didn't look like an old car. Well, it did, of course. It was meant to - that was the whole point. But the design wasn't tired or played out; the recipe still felt fresh and it still held huge commercial appeal. The fact that its replacement, due on sale later this year with new tech and hybrid power, looks basically the same is testament to the staying power of this cutesy, 1950s-inspired silhouette.

Nobody will look back on it more fondly than Fiat's bosses, who might have found themselves out of a job years ago were it not for the roaring success of the 500. Before 2007, Italy's oldest car maker was in a bad way: the company was poorly managed and its cars were plagued by design and quality issues that turned buyers away from the showroom in droves. From holding half of the Italian car market in 1990, it had dropped to a share of just a quarter by 2003.

Much was riding on the 2007 replacement for its smallest car, the Seicento. Using existing architecture in a new, tightly packaged format, the Frank Stephenson-designed 500 was cheap to develop and cheap to build which meant it was cheap to buy. But its retro-modern looks and style-conscious trimmings meant it also had the sort of premium cachet that had hitherto been largely absent from the city car class. It also drove with a zip and verve reminiscent of its 1957 namesake.

It was a true people-pleasing proposition, and it remained a recommendable contender as rivals came and went. No surprise that Luca de Meo, who led the 500 programme, would later deploy a similarly conceived revival of the 5 in his ground-up reinvention of Renault. If it ain't broke...

2008 Ford Fiesta

Meet Antonella, a 25-year-old physiotherapist who lives in London and buys her clothes at Topshop. She argues endlessly with her friends about which brands are hot (or not), but they all agree the iPod is brilliant. Antonella, thought Ford, was the perfect customer for the sixth-generation Fiesta. She didn't really exist, but the creation of this imaginary amalgamated embodiment of young, fashion-conscious female demographic represented a dramatic shift in how the company devised its cars and tapped into a more progressive, youthful audience.

This remarkable gamble yielded an edgy, futuristic design when most rivals had gone blobby: the new Fiesta was Frutiger Aero on wheels. Despite focusing on Antonella, Ford didn't betray its commitment to dynamic excellence fun cars are for everyone, after all. The Fiesta was easily the best supermini of the time to drive, and in hotter ST form it earned a place in the pantheon of hot hatches.

The combination brought unprecedented success. The sixth Fiesta was the UK's best-selling car in every year of its life and remains a mainstay of British roads. Sadly the Fiesta is no longer with us, and neither is the iPod, but thanks, Antonella.

2009 Ferrari 458 Italia

We had all experienced and enjoyed a good decade and a half of mid-engined Ferrari before the arrival of the 458. The F355 was loved, the 360 Modena was also good and the F430 had been terrific. But when it came to replacing the last of those three, Ferrari already knew that a new McLaren would also be coming - a rival with a mid-mounted V8 engine and a carbonfibre tub, produced by Maranello's well-funded and biggest rival in motorsport. Ferrari knew, in short, that the 458 Italia would have to be something special.

It was exactly that. When it arrived, the 458 felt like it moved the game on by a generation and a half. Our senior road tester Jamie Corstorphine (ironically now McLaren's product strategy director) said at the time: "It is a truly exceptional achievement." The 458 was a car that the MP4-12C couldn't live with, and it set a tone that competitors have been playing catch-up with ever since.

2010 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG

The Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren was an unusual beast that blended the supercar, hypercar and grand touring genres in a large and very expensive technological showcase. But Mercedes could only sell two-thirds of the planned production, and so its successor was designed to be a very different car. Instead of straddling sectors and being complicated by involvement from McLaren and Gordon Murray, the SLS was conceived as a purer sort of supercar.

It was half the price of the SLR and, most significantly, was the first model developed from the ground up by AMG. The SLS ushered in a new era of Mercedes design language, featured the world's most powerful naturally aspirated production engine in the form of the 563bhp 6.2-litre 'M159' V8 and had stunning gullwing doors. The SLR had, to a degree, lacked identity, but there was nothing uncertain about the SLS: it was a supercar through and through.

Performance was essentially identical to the significantly more powerful SLR, and in our testing it outpaced a Ferrari California to 100mph by 1.2sec. It had the drama and the looks to match, being wider than an S-Class and boasting an extra 112bhp over the already over-the-top C63 AMG. We said it felt like "a hot rod polished to the nth degree", which is exactly what an AMG should feel like.

2011 Range Rover Evoque

The Range Rover Evoque's arrival marked a significant shift for Jaguar Land Rover. As one of the early premium compact SUVs, it was stratospherically successful for the company, catapulting it into an entirely new buyer base. It soon accounted for one-third of Land Rover's sales, and while it remains a premium product, the sight of so many of them on the roads shows the Evoque has also entered the mainstream.

The flagship Range Rover may be far more profitable in terms of price per unit, but the Evoque elevated Jaguar Land Rover in a way none of its models managed to do afterwards until the new Land Rover Defender came along. For further evidence of the impact the Evoque had, think back to when Land Rover added a convertible to the line-up.

It was short-lived (39 of them are for sale on Autotrader at the time of writing, if you're in the market), but the fact that a cabrio was even deemed worthy of production reveals the significance of the Evoque at the time. The current Evoque is only the model's second generation, launched in 2018. There have been plenty of facelifts since, but it's due an overhaul (despite its looks ageing well) and an all-new model is expected in the next couple of years. 

2012 McLaren P1

When Ron Dennis revealed the P1 at the 2012 Paris motor show, we knew we were looking at a piece of the future. What we didn't realise was just how much this flagship supercar - McLaren's first since the F1 - was rewriting the playbook for the future of its breed. Turbocharging, a carbonfibre monocoque, hybridisation and active aerodynamics: the P1 had it all, wrapped in 'biomimicry' bodywork whose lines took inspiration from sharks and manta rays.

It was a visionary product that still feels contemporary today. As does its performance: we extracted a 2.8sec 0-60mph from the P1, and a decade on the Ferrari 296 GTB only went one-tenth quicker. Another facet of the P1's genius is more subjective than any of the extraordinary hardware or breathtaking speed. McLaren had thrown the kitchen sink at this supercar in terms of engineering complexity, and yet it remains joyful to drive.

It had verve and mischief and exploded the myth that McLarens were effective but dull. Hallelujah! There is fun in the gene pool! It was something McLaren would later tap into, notably with the 600LT. The big picture, of course, is that the P1 signalled the true arrival of fresh-faced McLaren Automotive as a force. Ferrari had the LaFerrari, Porsche had the 918 Spyder and the guys from Woking had an answer to both of those cars. The P1 was the moment McLaren became a player. 

2013 Volkswagen Golf

Cracking the difficult second album is one thing, but nailing the third is harder still. And then there's the fourth and fifth to worry about. But a seventh? How could that possibly be as groundbreaking or as genre-shaping as the smash-hit original? It's Dig Out Your Soul versus Definitely Maybe: no contest. So it's frankly extraordinary that the seventh-generation Volkswagen Golf stands proud as the high point of a legendary lineage that stretches back for more than half a century.

Making huge strides over its predecessor in terms of material quality, refinement, athleticism and efficiency, the Mk7 Golf was an expensive-feeling and massively versatile rebuttal to the notion that affordable family cars couldn't be desirable. The Focus, Astra, Corolla and Civic simply could not keep up.

And this era of GTI, particularly the facelifted Mk7.5 version, is perhaps the absolute zenith of sporting VWs. Expertly achieving the near-impossible balance of value, accessible driver reward, raw desirability and everyday utility, it is the closest any car has come in recent years to perfecting the hot hatch formula and remains a benchmark for the segment even now. 

2014 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV

Drive a modern hybrid or electric vehicle and there are a great many things you will take for granted - and the Outlander PHEV played a significant role in popularising many of them. Paddles to adjust the brake regeneration; a smartphone app with nifty features such as turning on the headlights from afar; the ability to run as a range-extender: all were seen on this early plug-in hybrid SUV.

It may not have been the most scintillating thing to drive, but as a technological showcase and a more palatable route into electrification for the masses, when the Nissan Leaf had a range of less than 100 miles it deserves a place among the most influential cars of the 2010s. 

2015 Bentley Bentayga

Porsche pioneered the luxury SUV long before most of its competitors, back in 2002. But when Bentley's equivalent arrived 13 years later, as SUV popularity had definitively taken hold, Matt Prior observed: "Bentley has established a reputation as a maker of sporting cars that must also be luxurious. It's hard enough to make a luxury saloon that can do the thick end of 200mph in safety and security, while retaining the 'luxury' part of the tag. Now throw on top of those demands the additional need for this vehicle to travel into sand dunes or to tow several tonnes of horse and trailer, and you start to appreciate the task Bentley has set itself."

Happily, he concluded: "The Bentayga fulfils with ease one of the widest remits ever given to a car. Terrific performance and refinement." Ten years on from its arrival, the Bentayga has benefited from a significant update and accounts for an unsurprising and significant 40% of overall Bentley sales. 

2016 Seat Ateca

The Ateca somehow managed to reinvigorate Seat while sparking its decline. Before the Ateca, the Spanish company ticked along as the Volkswagen Group's vaguely sporty brand, selling plenty of Ibizas and Leons. But its first SUV was a game-changer, attracting new, mainstream buyers to the brand. For a while, the Ateca was the family SUV to have.

But boss Luca de Meo was frustrated that there was a profit ceiling for the Ateca - how much customers were willing to spend on a Seat. The solution? A new and very profitable Cupra brand.

2017 Tesla Model 3

Tesla's story began sedately. We used to see Roadster prototypes, those Lotus-developed sports cars, whizzing around the test tracks we use, and we saw them as something of curiosity. It was followed by the quite credible Model S and, later, the gullwing-doored Model X. But Tesla was still on the edge of the mainstream industry. The Model 3 changed all of that. It was a Tesla for the mainstream once they had worked out how to build them in larger numbers.

Some traditional industry players were having a naff time after their diesel cheat devices had been discovered. So with Tesla's reputation as a squeaky-clean Silicon Valley disruptor, with a charismatic leader who wasn't (then) perceived as a liability, and having made an investment in the Supercharger fast-charging network that even today just about gives the brand competitive appeal, the Model 3's success was set. It was the world's top-selling EV between 2018 and 2020, before that place was taken by the Model Y.

Things have been, er, interesting since, but the Model 3's role in driving widespread EV acceptance secures its position as one of the most significant cars of this century. 

2018 Jaguar I-Pace

It's hard to believe that Jaguar is already edging towards the start line of one of its semi-regular 'bold new eras', given that the launch of the I-Pace, its most outlandish and transformative new car in decades, still feels so recent. 

Even eight years after it was revealed, the I-Pace doesn't feel particularly outdated on paper: with an official range of nearly 300 miles, a fast charging speed of 100kW, 394bhp and a sub-5.0sec 0-62mph time, it's still just about competitive with today's more mainstream crop of electric cars - although it is outpaced by the newer entrants into the premium electric SUV segment that it in effect created.

It was pivotal in proving that electric cars could be truly desirable and capable, rather than dreary and compromised. And, unlike its American contemporary of the time, it didn't need party tricks such as gullwing doors and a 'Fart mode' to curry favour with early adopters.

Instead, the I-Pace was simply a convincingly classy premium SUV that happened to be electric: it was airy and luxuriously appointed inside; its striking, cab-forward silhouette looked the business; and it far outpaced anything else without an engine for dynamic appeal, effectively masking its 2300kg kerb weight to offer agility and responsiveness on a par with the best sports saloons of the time. Jaguar beat its rivals to the punch with the I-Pace; had it followed up that success sooner, it might not need its impending bold new era. 

2019 BMW 3 Series

As Golf is to hatchback and Defender is to SUV, so surely is 3 Series the absolute byword for executive saloon. Now well into its 50th year on sale and approaching an eighth generation of reinvigoration, this BMW remains an embodiment of everything Munich does properly. In so doing, it is perhaps one of the best-rounded and most versatile cars on sale anywhere in the world today.

Today's G20-generation 3 Series is already seven years old (how did that happen?) but is still so dynamically rewarding, thoughtfully packaged, well built and practical that there is really no reason to stop hailing it in its various forms as the definitive premium mile-muncher.

An electric powertrain, a new platform and a totally new look beckon next year, and while the next iteration will move the game on yet again, we will no doubt always look back on the current car as a 3 Series high point with timeless appeal - maybe one day bestowing upon it classic status comparable to that of the E30. 

2020 Land Rover Defender

The 'new' Defender shows what works for the modern JLR or just Land Rover, if you prefer still to think of it that way. The Defender has integrity and authenticity as a product because it's brilliantly versatile and capable; it also has a bit of the retro-cool positioning that has so often helped to sell cars in big numbers since the turn of the century. But it's studiously modern; it's comfortable, safe, refined and fully featured, with just a hint of luxury, a wide choice of powertrains and every digital convenience you could want.

Much agonising and teeth-gnashing went on during the conception of this car, because Land Rover knew it was remodelling its own crown jewels. But the remarkable commercial success of the design that JLR chose is all the justification needed to show that it was the right car. In 2024, when the Defender had fully nine in-house JLR model rivals with which to compete (before the Jaguars ended production, at least), the Defender accounted for more than one-quarter of all JLR sales.

Above all else, the new Defender has proven that, even where JLR's most unique and purposeful cars are concerned, bold and outstanding design really does the business for Gaydon. And given what's going on with the Jaguar brand at the moment, that's a message that could hardly be better timed. 

2021 Kia EV6

It has become almost a cliché to compare fawningly the Kia of today with the unknown brand that pitched up on our shores in 1991 with a rebadged Mazda 121 and an unblinking focus on affordability above all else.

This is a company that now commands a huge 4% share of the European market, with a wide spread of segment-leading cars, some of which hold real premium cachet - and no car has embodied that meteoric rise quite as well as the EV6. Kia's first bespoke EV didn't just prove itself worthy of consideration for electric SUV buyers; it all but redefined the segment standards for style, athleticism and efficiency, not to mention range and charging speed.

With a chassis that struck a balance between poise and refinement, a tech-heavy cabin that had more than a whiff of spaceship about it, and a spread of powertrains that catered to milemunchers and speed demons alike (the range-topping GT has more power than the Porsche 911 GTS), the EV6 set new standards for its maker and raised the bar for mainstream EVs. 

2022 MG 4 EV

The MG 4 kick-started a dramatic turnaround for not only its maker but also the fortunes of the broader electric car market. If you wanted an EV just three years ago, your choice was either to pay well above £40,000 for something with a range that barely edged 300 miles or to save some money and accept a car that could do hardly more than 100 real-world miles on a full charge. Even those low-end models were not exactly cheap, though: a Mini Electric hatch would have cost you £31,000.

Then came the 4, offering 218 miles to a charge for just £25,995. Not only was it fantastically well priced, it was also a huge step up the road for the brand itself, transforming MG into a genuine market competitor for the first time since the millenium. The 4 was nothing short of a wake-up call for the best and brightest of Europe's key players, catching them in their complacency after decades of domination with combustion engines.

MG has been rewarded with massive success with almost 45,000 sales to date. That success has utterly transformed the brand's image, too, to the extent that the £55,000 Cyberster roadster is far from the ridiculous a proposition that it might once have seemed. History will remember the 4 as the first electric people's car, and although it's getting on a bit now, its influence continues to send ripples throughout the trade.

2023 Dacia Duster

Dacia's modern reincarnation isn't influential in the manner of a technological breakthrough. No, it has been a lot more subtle than that. When the Romanian concern first arrived on the scene with Renault backing (2005 across Western Europe, 2013 for the UK), most manufacturers were unsuspecting of the success that it would achieve. Many had given up trying to sell really cheap cars in Europe, so how would a €5000 car work?

Perhaps the difference with Dacia was that these were fundamentally very well-engineered cars but with all of the frills and fripperies stripped out of them. It turned out there were huge numbers of customers who remained perfectly satisfied without soft-touch plastics and bewilderingly well-featured infotainment systems, as long as the tool at hand, the car itself, worked well.

But the major leap forward has come with the latest, third-generation Duster: it has polished that value USP near to perfection, being barely more expensive than its predecessor in these inflation-ridden times, while bringing far better road-holding and comfort. It's no wonder the Duster continues to be the second-most-popular car in Europe for private buyers only behind its Sandero stablemate.

2024 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N

Engineers talk. Mostly they talk about the cars they themselves helped to develop, but it's when they get onto the subject of somebody else's car that you really want to pay attention. How does this relate to the Ioniq 5 N? Because we have rarely known positivity like it. Off the record, engineers from rival companies laud this Hyundai's sense of fun and the ambition of its simulated gearchanges that are chalked up as a very cool idea.

They consider the 641bhp N to be a breath of fresh air for the performance EV and they respect its ability to deliver thrills and practicality for a sensible price. Many of them hope to one day work on a similar project. The Ioniq 5 N has for sure benefited from the fact that it comes laden with little in the way of baggage. Unlike the Porsche Taycan, it doesn't have the weight of six decades of brilliant driver's cars sitting on its back.

That meant Hyundai was free to create an electric car designed purely to put a smile on your face, whatever the method. You can argue that its transitions from grip to slip at the back axle can at times feel a bit binary and that those gearchanges are of course entirely make-believe, but the fact remains: the Ioniq 5 N is the first electric car in which you would head off for a B-road blat simply for the hell of it rather than it being an incidental part of getting to your destination.

For this reason alone it goes down as a game-changer and, even in this compendium of esteemed metal, among the most significant cars of all. 

2025 Renault 5

Without getting too corporate about it, perhaps the greatest testament to the appeal of the reborn Renault 5 is that a whopping 84% of its UK buyers so far have, until now, never owned a Renault before. That's an absolutely unheard of rate of conquest, and it lends weight to the emerging notion that electric vehicles are at their most enticing when the very fact that they're electric is incidental rather than being the driving factor behind a buying decision.

This is a supermini that snaps more necks on the high street than a McLaren, has an interior that's as tech-laden and sumptuous as that of any executive saloon and drives with a pep and charisma that's more than reminiscent of some of France's best hot hatches. The 5 follows the Mini and the Fiat 500 down a well-trodden path by exploiting an often disillusioned car-buying public's sense of nostalgia in this case in a bid to sweeten the electrification pill.

But this is no cynical marketing exercise and, like those two cars that went before, it's completely transforming the fortunes of its maker while establishing new benchmarks for affordable personal mobility. Oh, and it doesn't have an internal combustion engine. Not that it really matters.

How we did it

Picking the most significant cars isn't easy: we were looking for models that had a major impact on the industry, whether by commercial success, pushing performance or influencing design trends. The Autocar team was invited to list contenders for each year; from the long list that resulted, we then picked one car for each year. The one-car-per-brand rule did complicate things at times, because some firms have produced several significant models over the past 25 years, but it was less of an issue than you might think.

Besides, we weren't short of contenders. If anything, the biggest challenge was determining a car's significance: it's a relative term, after all. It became harder when we were choosing cars for the more recent years: occasionally time provides a clearer context. The Ineos Grenadier, for example, was on the shortlist for 2023, but it's the future success of that firm that will determine whether the Grenadier will be a significant milestone or a transient curio.

The easiest and most difficult years to pick

The easiest year to pick was in fact the first one: the new Mini of 2001 was the first entry written on our list, and nobody could suggest a credible alternative (although one team member did argue for the MG ZT). The next easiest pick was 2024: some great cars came out last year, but surely none as truly game-changing as the Hyundai Ioniq 5N.

Other years were far harder: 2013 included the Tesla Model S, the Toyota GT86, the hypercar 'holy trinity' and a step-change Ford Fiesta ST. Some years, meanwhile, were somewhat shorter on key contenders: 2016's shortlist included the Jaguar XE and Toyota C-HR.

What might change?

Our picks for the final five years of this exercise required a bit of projection: significance is often revealed over time, so it's hard to know how well some of our selections might age. For 2023, for example, we plumped for the Mk3 Dacia Duster over the Ferrari Purosangue and Ineos Grenadier. Those two very different SUVs have been successful but don't feel like game-changers. But if the Purosangue boosts Ferrari's fortunes or Ineos realises its potential, that could change.

This year's pick, the Renault 5, was also an easy choice for now based on sheer instant impact. But it will take time to be certain its influence holds once the initial appeal has waned. We did consider the Fiat Grande Panda, but since that is later in the launch cycle, we've yet to judge if it will transform the firm's fortunes in the way it might.

If we revisit this feature in 2050, which forthcoming cars could represent 2026? Well, it's pure prediction, but if the Volkswagen ID Polo is the affordable EV its maker claims, it could be a game-changer; then again, the BMW iX3 is also supposed to rewrite the EV rulebook. And what about the first of the radically new luxury Jaguar EVs? If that works, it could transform the fortunes of the proud British brand.