All of 2020's Best Sports Cars Reviewed _ Autocar Best Driver's Car Shootout

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome to britain's best drivers car 2020. now this is a feature that autocar has been running annually for the last 31 years and it's been a little bit more complicated to arrange than usual what with this and that but the premise remains the same we take the greatest sportscast launched this year we take a bunch of expert judges at me and we decide which is the most fun car to drive right i'm going to let you into a small secret if i may this test was going to happen in wales but at the moment in wales you can't even buy a duvet so we've relocated very short notice to castle which is cool because this is a circuit i like very much however it does mean we're rather limited on time but no worries because we've got a great circuit a great set of cars and we are just going to crack on and i'm going to start in the bmw m2 cs so the m2 cs is a front engine rear wheel drive 6 cylinder turbocharged bruiser of a car mega engine really strong it steers really nicely body control is absolutely outstanding and it has got that kind of balance that you hope and expect for from a front engine rear wheel drive bmw m car now we had to go in it on the road yesterday and it has got a really good chassis a really good chassis it's it's quite fun but the whole shell feels really rigid and it's just very faithful and predictable and seriously good fun and it moves around it slides around a bit but the back is exactly where you want it to be it's really pointy i have an awful lot of time for this car i think it is absolutely superb it's a lot of money and whether it is worth the extra over a standard m2 competition i don't know but if you want something really special from your m2 this is the place to come and so to the toyota gr yaris which should be great in the wet it's a real hero on the road proper real proper little car feels so agile so darty so if we put it in sport mode i think that gives more power to the rear out of all the modes that you can put it in it's a little four wheel drive hot hatchback with a three cylinder 260ish horsepower engine there isn't a reasonable amount of lean but it has got loads of grip and it's fast a real snickety manual gearbox of course you can carry so much more speed than you could in that bmw which was wearing michelin cup two tyres this has got loads of grip loads of poise wow so on the road the steering fell ever so slightly nam is the wrong word but it's not loaded with feel however once you start getting more lean and more force into the chassis and onto the tyres that transmits back through to the steering rim and there's loads more feel my goodness this is so good and so fast this is wicked right there is stability off down there so let's see how it behaves i'm going to pick your corner at castle comb i think to start messing around with a car in the wet because this is a circuit is very very fast so maybe just through the chicane we'll just mess around with it a bit it's just really well behaved it's really really thoroughly well sorted i can see this car doing really well it might be a different story if it were totally dry i suppose but i can see this car impressing a lot of people what a cool car okay this is the ferrari f8 tributeo a car whose engine they liked so much they named the whole car after it was sport mode at the moment the little malatino can be put through to various stages from wet all the way through to everything off actually on the morning i speak to you somebody tried the everything off in an 812 on a london bridge and managed to bin their car very very quickly so you know we'll be a bit circumspect but my experience with the kid engine via ferrari is that typically once you can get heat into their tyres they are very very docile in these conditions it's slightly hard to get into the tyres so uh yeah we'll see how it goes what i love about mid edge and ferrari is that they are for a really powerful car so approachable and just not intimidating in the slightest which is amazing really given the amount of power they've got where the engine is you know all of their mechanical layout suggests that they should be angry mid-engines really fast difficult to drive monsters in the way that an old beard engine supercar would once have been absolutely none of that they're just really friendly all the time just want you to have a lot of fun but at the same time also fear simply fast and make a brilliant for a turbocharged car make a brilliant noise great gearbox really good brakes and slightly snappy in these conditions but nothing really frightening or intimidating i absolutely adore the way mid-engine ferraris behave now you may just hear in the background a slight tremor in the ferrari's engine note it was a misfire to the extent that we had to retire it from the contest later diagnosed with a cracked spark plug my guess it would have been top four easily or perhaps even better in this contest various recent versions of the mid engine ferrari have even won the contest outright and so to the silence of the porsche thaican which i think is the first i've been doing 15 of these and i don't remember having an ev at this event before i suppose we could have brought the tesla roadster when that was a thing but i don't think we did so this is the first ev driver's car i suppose so let's see how it gets on well as gonna say this car doesn't feel its weight on the road but actually when you try and stop all of this weight on a circuit it does want some stopping i think the i think it is there but then unlike most internally combusted cars i suppose when you ease off the deceleration isn't naturally there you don't get the engine braking straight away so you've got to kind of do it all even though i've got the regen turned up onto its higher setting no gears to worry about of course and it's got loads of grip loads and loads of grip and it does not feel almost fast it doesn't feel its weight until you start trying to slow it and then the brakes are actually a little bit grabby on the road you don't notice but because you put so much more effort into them on a circuit i guess it's usually doing regen on the road and very rarely using the discs whereas on circuit just going through that regen phase really quickly and into the brake discs zone much quicker so it just has a thing as you lift off and start to break it just has a thing it doesn't like breaking through that standing water well that's no surprise just as you lift off and start to break it just has a thing a hesitancy where it goes oh and then yes i'll give you lots of anchorage we'll quite often invite big heavy cars to this contest and they don't always do very well but we thought well we'll see how the porsche gets on what i like is the fact that in corners it generates loads of grip and feels more agile than it should but to the same extent there's no getting over the ultimate physics but blimey it's really really capable and then when you put your foot down that's 80 and then that's 90 and that's 100 it really and that was 110. it really shifts in a straight line love this car i'm impressed by this car really enjoy it on the road really feels like a porsche in character not surprising it's not brilliant on track it's not a track car what it is is a really interesting really good driver's car that feels like a porsche does we're probably putting it outside its natural comfort zone okay so to the aston martin v8 vantage or just vantage i think it's an advantage roadster and what a noise that engine makes we go proof down because hey why not it's not raining at the moment that engine makes a cracking noise i hope you can hear me with the wind and then it's not too bad that is the four liter amg v8 and we just fancied another front engine rear drive car in the mix that can do that sort of thing oh great crackle on the overrun i don't think you fully hear that with the hood up so aston calls this car it's it's hunter if you like it says it is its most extreme angriest sports car that will be until the good engine ones arrive i guess but it's still fairly gt-ish i'll tell you what you can feel is the wobble that this chassis has when you take the roof off of it it is not the stiffest shell in the world wants to move around a bit that's okay i'm happy to let it it's all about the noise and the grunt and the anger right let's see if i can get the esc off entirely now it's off completely pick your moments and let's see what kind of balance this car has it's finding reasonable grip in the wet to be fair to it and i do like the fact that if you just sort of trail the nose into a corner it turns in quite well and then when you get back on the power it straightens its line see what else it'll do if you go wild yeah just will indulge in nice big lazy drifts because you know what engines at the front rear wheels are driven it's a 4 liter v8 with turbos and a limited slip differential and the one thing aston does do quite well is chassis balance so although the inherent problems with this car you take the roof off you make it more floppy you put all the extra weight at the back and it's only an aluminium structure in the first place so not always and it doesn't always feel the stiffest structure it's quite an endearing quite an appealing car i don't think he's going to win but i think a lot of people are going to come away having said you know what yeah i rather enjoyed that it's a real sort of sunday morning trip out for a cup of coffee sort of car i think all right so welcome to the inside of a 911 porsche turbo s you know what that means really fast right how fast oh mighty fast so fast the sound feels the sound seems almost augmented i don't know if it is lots of corner and grip given the conditions which are improving it's really capable no denying that a high speed corner here you come through at like 70 and there's a little lead quite good steering feel but it just eats up the next straight the brakes are phenomenal it's incredibly short-footed what it just stops brilliantly it steers nicely i don't get loads back but it's very smooth the chassis is unbelievably capable really really well sorted it gets on at a hell of a speed but that is the thing about 911 and 911 turbos of late i think they are quite for not the favored drivers cars among 911s because they're so capable aloof is the wrong word because the steering does give you lots back it does tell you what's going on so brilliantly brilliantly able and that i grab you in the way that a gt3 does and put all the engineering right in front of you to feel there's less adjustability than there is in some other 911s i mean this is seriously good seriously capable and if you said to be now right you've got one of these cars and you've got to drive it to germany and by the way it's november tomorrow i think i'll probably say yeah i'll have for 9 11 please thanks very much but that isn't strictly the idea behind this contest the idea is somebody says right it's sunday morning there's a decent road you may end up at a decent track what car are you going to take i don't think it would be this brilliant though i can see that it is it doesn't leave me cold that's the wrong phrase cold is the wrong phrase just doesn't leave me warm does that make sense this car is going to be brought to you by the numbers 765 and the letters l and t tell you what one thing about mclaren's you can always find a sensational driving position so it's a drying track so let's put the powertrain into track handling i will leave on sort of sport at the moment and see how dry it is so one of these fearsome mclarens it does rather feel like you're at the pointy end of something in this car in a way that the ferrari doesn't feel that intimidating from the off this does pedals are brilliantly set up so if you want an effort break you can okay quite explosive from the off so the colleague just went out and said what it wasn't as fearsome as i was told i don't know on that showing okay it feels like a mclaren it makes the same noise it has brilliant brilliant steering absolutely flat body control as you turn in so there is grip there and the front end is pointy really feel it struggling to gain traction as the circuit dries out a bit some grey clouds overhead still has a very mclareny feel to it i mean these cars get better and better and better but fundamentally the mclaren feel is still the same you turn they turn they have really crisp turning but sometimes they start to push on a little bit into understeer and then when they do let go into oversteer there's no limited slip differential so it's kind of done on brake steer and then power so when they do let go crikey they can sometimes let go very very quickly so what do i like about it i love the steering i love the body control i love the ride on the road and it is exciting and there's no question that this is among the most exciting of all but and there is a slight but it doesn't have the same joyousness for me in the chassis that the ferrari does and it doesn't just communicative though the steering is i'm just waiting really for the moment when the turbos really wind up and they kick the tail sideways and i don't entirely know when that's gonna happen but what it does it can happen quite quickly this is a wee bit less spiky actually now there's a little bit of heat into the tyres than i thought it might be right then to an aerial atom iv this is here because it's the reigning champion it won this contest last year there is a load of standing water i just turned down a pair of waterproof trousers that might be my biggest mistake of the day as was bringing a helmet with no visor but atoms are brilliant because they're so immediate and so direct you know a proper lightweight small sports car they steer brilliantly oh god i don't want too many right-handers oh wow that is terrific even in the wet you can rely on it you can lean on it a bit oh that is cool it's just such a everything talks to you you're involved in it all the way because the steering is unassisted the brakes are unassisted there's no abs it's just you a manual gearbox an engine and the chassis so even in wet conditions and it's really wet at the minute it's really honest faithful bloody fast god i love this car this is such good fun i'm freezing cold soaking wet through i'm having a whale of a time how does anything compete with this how does any car in the world launch this year compete with the rainy champion yeah this is brilliant oh this is brilliant this is the best drivers car we've got here for me i've got one more car to try which is a lamborghini hurricane rear-wheel drive but from what i felt on the road yesterday and haven't driven it before it's not as pure and experienced as this but we'll see and then i'll have to see what everybody else thinks but i think i know what i think what a pure joy every second in one of these and so finally then to a lamborghini huracan rear-wheel drive which we've been told is a little bit loud by the marshalls here so i'm gonna go i may not rip it out but that's okay it's pretty wet anyway so i'm not sure i really want to rev it out to eight and a half you sit quite high in it really it doesn't feel naturally low like the mclaren or even like the ferrari but the view out is terrific that little letterbox view got big paddles and the nice thing about this rear-wheel drive hurricane that you don't get with the all-wheel drive versions is the fact that the steering is completely uncorrupted because the front wheels are not doing any powering they are just doing steering so there's a really lovely flow to it even in really wet conditions that you don't get in one without power is pushed to the front and it shuffles it around instead it's quite a natural easy balance it still does have that unbelievably spectacular engine if you want to use it adopts a nice easy angle out of a corner on the slide i've got the esc in sport mode i've got the actual driving mode into sport rather than corsa just because i think it'll probably pay not to have too much anger underfoot but it's really enjoyable it's not angry it's just they're still quite quite like it picks up a bit of weight as we build cornering forces sort of not loaded with feel in the same way that mclaren is but it is there is feel in that rack and there's some grip at the front to lean on and then there's a bit of movement at the back if you ask a lot of it then you have to ask a lot of it because this engine is naturally aspirated so you want to be further up the rev range before you get big amounts of torque and power oh it's really nice in that sort of faster corner through there and actually it's deceptively fast it's like 95 miles an hour through there it just sort of straightens the line on the way through it's a trustworthy agile rewarding car to drive even in these conditions which i did not necessarily expect i've come away impressed with this car i like it a lot and so to the final scores we have five judges who each give up to 25 points for a car's performance on the road and 25 for the track for a maximum of 250. in reverse order then the bmw m2 aston martin vantage and porsche tycoon finished kind of in a group together then came the lamborghini huracan and porsche 911 turbo similarly close the top three was tight the gr yaris does a sensational giant killing job finishing just a few points away from a tie for first place where the aerial atom and mclaren 765 had 219 points apiece but because two judges place the atom first and only one place the mclaren first it's the aerial that gets the knot and the reason that this is the best car to drive of the year is the reason that although it's like 10 degrees drizzling and miserable and i shouldn't have worn an open advisor helmet i'm still having a brilliant brilliant time in this car everything is just so linear and responsive steering is unassisted the brakes are unassisted there's no abs there is traction control but basically what happens is down to the driver if i put in that much steering i get that much response if i put in that much steering i get that much response it's just a wonderfully involving engaging process on track it is superb it's so agile so adjustable and responsive and it feels like a sort of benchmark for everything else in a way that back in the day otaka used to bring a cater 7 to this event every year and in the end they just stopped saying well actually we won't include it in the results because it's just going to win let it just be the benchmark by which other things are measured and against the other cars here that's kind of how the atom 4 feels to me it feels like the car the others are benchmarked against but they will never compete with because this weighs so little it has so little else going on other than the things that make it good to drive you could argue the mclaren has the same but they've decided to make a car that's good to drive above 120 130 miles an hour this is not like that this is fun all the time which is why it has nothing on it other than what you need so even though the rain is firing into my eyeballs like pinpricks and i am shivering and although they say there's no such thing as bad weather just bad clothing and they're totally lying i'm having a great time in this car this is just one of the greatest modern driving experiences you could possibly want i absolutely adore the aerial atom iv and it is quite rightly the winner of autocar's britain's best driver's car shootout of 2020 for more shootouts sensible car reviews so on and so forth keep coming back to this channel maybe subscribe would love an up thumb and a subscription we do appreciate your support of the channel we're also in all good news agents every wednesday at autocar dot go at uk all the time and if you'll excuse me i'm going to go and find a warm radiator to go and sit next to just as soon as i've driven this car until it runs out of fuel\n"