Each year a string of cars we can briefly call 'our own' arrive at Autocar towers, ready to be tested over a set of months and subjected to the rigour of a journalist's everyday life.
In getting getting to live with them as if they were ours, we can dig into the less-obvious high-points and gritty flaws that only raise their heads after an extensive period of testing.
Some of our cars provide a much more memorable experience than others. Without further ado (and deliberation), then, here are our picks of Autocar's 2023 fleet.
The long-distance award
For the car we’d most want to take on a very long journey
Winner: Bentley Flying Spur
Runner up: Toyota GR Supra
No need for a play-off or penalties here: the Bentley Flying Spur was just a single vote away from having more nominations than every other car on this year’s fleet put together.
Steve Cropley looked after Crewe’s finest and – unsurprisingly – “enjoyed every mile”. Chief sub-editor Kris Culmer enjoyed reading about Cropley enjoying it so much that he voted for the Bentley without ever having driven it…
Deputy road test ed Richard Lane marvelled at “the magical combination of connection to the machine but isolation from the road”, while Mark Tisshaw (that’s me, by the way) said “nobody does seats like Bentley” while pondering the grammatical protocol for quoting oneself in the third person.
Lane’s road test desk colleague Illya Verpraet, always the iconoclast, was one to put forward the Toyota GR Supra “for its excellent driving position, nice seats and good old ‘dumb’ cruise control that doesn’t have a mind of its own and which helps to make this a very relaxing long-distance car”.
I was surprised not to see more votes for the Alpina D3 S, although in voting for it, Cropley’s My Week In Cars podcast co-host (new episodes every Wednesday from your favourite podcast provider) Matt Prior perhaps explained why: “The Alpina D3 S, so long as it was on the continent so I didn’t have to stress about potholes.”
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