New issue out now: it’s the 2024 Top Gear Awards

EVs going unsold, sports cars and hot hatches fading into obscurity, hybrid assistance adding weight to just about everything. Yet, out of the gloom comes shards of sunlight. And if anything can find those shards and help them shine even brighter, it’s the annual Top Gear Awards – helping you to avoid buying rubbish for over 30 years.

Want to read about all of this year’s winners? You can click here to order the Awards issue online and have it delivered direct to your door. Or perhaps you’d like even more from TG? Start a subscription today and save 50 per cent to get six issues for just £16.50. Bargain.

And yes, hybrid tech is being applied with abandon to performance cars these days, but manufacturers also know if they don’t celebrate the combustion engine now, then when? Cut to Jethro Bovingdon in this month’s issue driving a pair of 800+bhp super GTs to decide which is best – Ferrari 12Cilindri or Aston Martin Vantage.

Then there’s SUVs and crossovers, multiplying faster than Gremlins in a downpour and the scourge of centre of gravity and estate car fans everywhere... except the car industry is nothing if not adaptable, so when one section of it becomes saturated, the diversification begins. Like Hyundai’s unnecessarily good looking Santa Fe that we take on a life affirming tour of New Zealand to visit our most far-flung subscribers. Or the new Dacia Duster that seems to answer everything you could possibly ask of it, but no more.

Hybrid supercars, like the Lamborghini Temerario, might be poised for a hostile takeover, but 2024 also gave us the McLaren 750S – peak distillation of the modern, non-hybrid supercar; total fireworks on track, and yet still so usable and thrilling on the road. 

Nowhere do we see more convergence towards white goods than with lookalike, drivealike and soundalike EVs... and yet, here’s the brilliant new Renault 5 to prove that with a little thought and a lot of love, it’s possible to build EVs we want and can also afford. So raise a toast to the car industry that, despite the doom mongers, continues to deliver.

To read about all of this year's award winners and to get your bonus 2025 calendar, grab a copy of the mag or start a subscription now.