It's hard to comprehend the sheer number of new cars that get released every year, from refreshed versions of established nameplates to all-new designs filling gaps in the market and introducing new technology.
So where do you turn when you want to cut through the crowded market and decide what to buy? Easy: our huge reviews section. Our in-depth reviews cover the market, telling you what's good and bad about every car.
This list counts down the ten most-read reviews that have been published on our site in the last year.
Autocar's ten most popular reviews of 2017
BMW's new 5 Series impressed with comfort that rivals the 7 Series and 3 Series-like driver engagement, earning an impressive four-and-a-half-star rating.
Check out the rivals: Mercedes-Benz E-Class, Lexus GS, Jaguar XF
The Skoda Octavia vRS was updated for 2017 with a new front end and interior tweaks. The car's looks divide opinion, but the underlying recipe of pace, practicality and subtlety clearly appeals.
Check out the rivals: Volkswagen Golf GTI, Ford Focus ST, Peugeot 308 GTI
The best-selling car in the UK, with 89,504 registrations in 2017 at the time of writing in late-December, well ahead of the 68,396 sales of the next best seller, the Volkswagen Golf. It’s no surprise, then, that our review of the seventh-generation of Ford's supermini is in our top ten reviews of the year.
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Most of us are rooted in reality....
......which means that whilst we love reading about exciting, unobtainable (for most) cars and whilst we know that you, as a testing community, get to tool around in ridiculously priced, heavily optioned press cars, we're actually more interested in what we have to live with every day of the week.
In a perfect world, the Cayman manual would be my car. But the other 360 days a year in the crowded South-East of England, a realxing hybrid waft-mobile which has virtually no dynamic driving kudos with you guys is what is bought. And read about.
No surprise to me about the Toyota CHR......it's an on-trend SUV, looks different from the identikit modeals from all the others, it's built on bulletproof Prius mechanicals, will last forever and will do 50mpg in town.
YouveGottaBeJoking wrote:
Agree, I too like reading about the drivers cars out there but truth be told I have enjoyed driving all the cars I have had that wouldnt have any driving kudos on here and I've often found my own experiences totally different to reviewers, (for example the 05 jazz I had was always criticised for a hard ride that I never noticed) probably because I dont get to drive the sublime cars they do to notice the small failings in others, but I still enjoy reading about them all, none the less.
Must prove something
Maybe it's that we like reading about cars that we don't necessarily want (or can afford) to buy. I bet Honda, Toyota and Alpine dearly wish that this interest translates into sales figures!
With new and exciting products like these around, you have to wonder why car buyers are such a conservative lot. Maybe we're just seduced by discounts and the perceived low risk of buying models like the Fiesta, Astra and Golf?
But well done Autocar for keeping us all informed.