Witnessing the Jeep Avenger win car of the year, admiring a warehouse filled with Skoda's most iconic cars and driving a Cisitalia 202 are just three of the highlights Autocar's writers have come up with for 2023.
In yet another year of new cars, new cultures, new manufacturers and new methods of propulsion, one thing has remained constant - the simple pleasures we get from the cars and the communities that surround them. Read on for the details of our favourite moments.
Matt Saunders: I have motorsport don and regular Autocar reader Jonathan Palmer to thank for my motoring highlight of 2023. It was his suggestion to gather together the greatest automotive exponents of ride quality you can currently buy, along with something older, and take a considered view of the state of the art of ride quality.
It took us a couple of days by the time all of the driving, video and photos were done, and the first of those two days might have been the greyest and wettest that springtime in the Brecon Beacons has yet delivered – and yet the occasion was still brilliant.
We had everything from a new Rolls-Royce Phantom VIII to a 1960s Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III involved, as well as a Bentley Flying Spur and a Range Rover. We had input from the back seat courtesy of JP himself (a self-confessed ride-quality obsessive) and from dynamics engineering consultant Steve Randle; we had some really testing Welsh roads at our disposal; and we had a surprise winner: the excellent, and magnificently plush, BMW i7.
As Palmer turned up in his Agusta helicopter, I knew we were in for a special couple of days. Despite the weather, I wasn’t disappointed. Thanks again, JP.
Steve Cropley: Forget cars and journeys: my highlight was a trip to Milton Keynes and Red Bull Racing to spend 90 minutes with Adrian Newey, one of my two most closely held heroes (the other is Jim Clark, the Lotus-driving F1 maestro of the 1960s).
Newey is well known as that intense-looking bald bloke on TV who rarely speaks but evidently masterminds everything good about Red Bull F1. I see parallels between Newey and Clark: both have or had a mystical capacity to do their jobs better than the opposition, whatever the opposition chucked at them.
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