Top 10 best supercar in 2020
1. Porsche 911 (Carrera S and Carrera 4S)
So far, we’ve driven the new 992 generation of the Porsche 911 in both rear-drive Carrera S and four-wheel-drive Carrera 4S guises. Both tests suggested that this eighth-generation, a rear-engined sporting hero is every inch as great a driver’s car because the 991 it's replaced – and if anything stands able to take the sport further faraway from its rivals.
Having grown longer and slightly wider, the 911 is out there in 380bhp Carrera and 444bhp Carrera S forms. Both are twin-turbocharged and, for now, accompany eight-speed automatic gearboxes. Manual examples are expected to arrive within the UK in early 2021.
Both versions use what wont to be called the 911’s ‘widebody’ shell (which has been lightened by more extensive use of aluminum in its construction), while four-wheel steering is now an option even on non-GT-level cars and mixed-width wheels and tires come as standard.
Although there’s the maximum amount reason as ever for the keenest of drivers to stay with the car’s purer rear-driven mechanical layout, the 992’s wider front axle track and quickened steering ratio seem to possess sharpened its handling very effectively. Its turbocharged engine might not have the textural qualities of Porsche’s old atmospheric units, but it makes for very serious real-world performance – and, overall, for a car that is still the ultimate among direct rivals for usability, for rounded sporting credibility, and particularly for the accessible, everyday-use, any-occasion brilliance of its driver appeal.
2. Jaguar F-Type
The sales fortunes of Jaguar’s much-hyped successor for the Lyons-designed E-Type will tell you much about the event of the fashionable sports car market. When it launched in 2013, we imagined the buying public would value it as a kind of prettier and more dependable modern TVR – favoring the biggest-hitting eight-cylinder engines and viewing it as a less expensive and more powerful front-engined rival to the 911.
For a short time, buyers did exactly so. But because the car aged and therefore the focus of the purist sports car market moved towards the Porsche Cayman and the Alpine A110, the F-Type had to maneuver with it. The six-cylinder models grew in popularity until Jaguar created another wave of interest within the car by furnishing it with a four-cylinder engine.
After its latest facelift, the F-Type straddles every inch of an equivalent market territory because it always did. At the highest of the range, the new R version remains a 567bhp, £100,000 upper-level-911, and Aston Martin Vantage rival, while at the lower end, it costs but £60,000 and makes do with slightly below 300bhp.
Jaguar’s new styling treatment for the car certainly gives it some fresh and distinguishing visual appeal. we've so far only driven the range-topping R AWD coupé, but it charmed us with its somewhat antediluvian V8 hotrod speed and noise and yet impressed with its outright handling precision and chassis composure.
3. Lotus Evora
A decade has now passed since the introduction of Lotus’s mid-engined, 2+2 Porsche-chaser, the Evora.
At the time of its introduction, the car brought many qualities to embrace but also flaws to regret. Today, it retains a chassis and steering mechanism that both truly deserve ad. Few sports cars have such immersive, positive steering or a ride and handling compromise so suited to life on British roads, and that’s very true now that Hethel has introduced the cheaper, softer-suspension GT 410 to go with the GT 410 Sport.
However, that which was questionable about Evora’s wider case for ownership back in 2009 has become nothing in need of decidedly problematic for it now. This Lotus has never really had the powertrain its chassis deserved. Although Hethel now conjures the maximum amount as 430bhp from the car’s soulful Toyota-sourced supercharged V6, the Evora’s truculent transmission remains the limit of your enjoyment of it.
A particularly small boot would make weekend touring jaunts difficult, while a decent, inaccessible and comparatively antiquated interior stretches the bounds of acceptability on how simple a contemporary £80,000 sports car need to be.
Still, if you'll find how to enjoy it, you’ll savor every drive in an Evora. Few cars mix the absolutely brilliant with the inadequate quite so strikingly.
4. Chevrolet Corvette
Much has been written about General Motors’ decision to gamble with this, the eighth generation of its iconic Corvette sports car, by switching from a front-mounted engine to a mid-mounted one. there have been objective reasons to try to do it: because it improves the car’s weight distribution and enhances its outright handling potential. And there was a more complex argument: that a mid-engined layout has become expected of an operator within this part of the sports car market, and therefore the old Corvette’s front-engined configuration made it something of a relic to the newest generation of sports car buyers.
Whatever it took to finally convince GM to form the switch, you'll say it had been worthwhile. The C8 Corvette has all of the metal-for-the-money and bang-for-your-buck value appeal as any of its forebears possessed (the car is out there for fewer than the Porsche 718 Boxster in North America), and while its cabin has many ergonomic quirks, it’s the driving experience you’ll come for.
Bristling with small-block-V8 combustive charm, the C8’s engine has excellent throttle response, features a wonderful mid-range power delivery, likes to rev to beyond 6500rpm, and sounds superb doing it. For outright performance, it feels broadly in line with the old C7 Corvette. Perhaps almost fully ‘supercar fast’, then, except for this money, you’re unlikely to quibble with any run-to-60mph figure that starts with a 3.
Back to top
The C8 handled with much stability and precision in our early test drive, feeling instantly more benign and easier to drive quickly than any of its front-engined forebears, albeit slightly numb steering and a predilection for on-the-limit understeer might take the sting of its appeal on target days. thereon front, of course, UK testing should be more illuminating, while more track-ready, better-equipped test cars than those we’ve tested already might well feel better-balanced.
5. BMW i8
The i8 is one among the foremost compelling and weird sports cars we’ve tested in years, not only due to its fascinating plug-in hybrid powertrain, its appealing driving experience, and its otherworldly design but also due to how exquisitely finished it seems like a product – both inside and out of doors – and the way easy it might be to measure with.
It is available in both closed and open-roof body styles. That its outright performance and handling dynamics fall slightly in need of the absolute best you would possibly expect of a £100,000 sports car may be a minor drawback; the matter only really takes the sting off the car’s appeal when it involves tracking driving.
It’s ironic that production of the i8 is about to finish this year because the car that has, for as long as we’ve known it, felt so emphatically just like the sports car of the longer term will officially be one among the past. Another one to grab while you'll, for sure.
6. Nissan GT-R
However long within the tooth, he has become, Godzilla will feel as if he’s in rude health right until his Judgment Day. If out-and-out real-world, any-condition speed is what you crave from your sports car, nothing does it better below £100,000 than Nissan’s self-identified ‘world’s fastest brick’: the incredible, indefatigable GT-R.
But then speed probably isn’t quite all you would like during a modern sports car, and Nissan knows this. it's therefore tried to form the GT-R a more rounded, luxurious, and mature ax-wielding mentalist of a tool over recent years and revisions – and it's made a difference, albeit not an enormous one.
Delicacy and subtlety aren’t this car’s specialisms any longer now than before but, compared with the increasingly digital-feeling cars launched around and about it, the GT-R offers more charm than ever. And, within the case of the top-level Nismo version, it now offers serious track suitability also.
7. Lexus LC
As a keen driver, you are feeling inclined to form a case for the LC. it's a perfectly charismatic and likable V8 engine, while balanced, spry, involving handling makes it feel, at times, more of a natural rival for the Jaguar F-Type or Porsche 911 than the combination of two and four-door sporting grand tourers that Lexus identifies as its true opponents. Hence its inclusion here.
The LC seems large, heavy, leaden-footed, and a touch cumbersome on the road sometimes, so you never quite escape a sense of ambivalence towards it. On the song, its V8 engine is hugely special, and on a smooth surface, its sheer agility and balance are quite something. Equally, the cabin, while remarkably luxurious, wants for much within the way of space for storing, while the car's touring credentials are undermined by a very unpleasant run-flat-shod secondary ride.
Ultimately, counting on what proportion you’re moved by its virtues or irked by its shortcomings, the LC is either a touch of a rough diamond or the dreaded curate’s egg. For us, it’s much closer to the previous.
8. Maserati Granturismo
That Maserati got numerous of the fundamentals right with its GranTurismo coupé makes the car’s remaining few failings all the more frustrating. How difficult could it be to urge the seating position right, for example? Or to repair the odd trim fit defect? Or to perfect the adjustable damping? We’ll never know now that production has been discontinued, with the previous unregistered examples shortly to disappear from showrooms permanently.
More complex and thus more forgivable is that just occasionally we wish the Granturismo’s V8 engine hit a touch harder, for all its aural splendor, which its gearbox felt a touch less clunky and antiquated.
While we can’t ignore such troubles in our overall rating, we might be the primary to admit the Granturismo remained a very desirable and exotic-feeling sporting GT, even in its dotage. It’s a car you did not get to make excuses to shop for or to have, especially now that it’s a case of now or never. And while it’s now how off the sports car class’s prevailing dynamic standards, it’s still a pleasure to drive.
9. Morgan Plus Six
The past few years are transformative ones at the Morgan Motor Company. Having been family-owned and operated until its 110th anniversary, the firm is now majority-owned by private equity and has just launched its first ground-up new car in almost two decades: the Plus Six.
Back to top
Built on an all-new box-section aluminum monocoque chassis with double the rigidity of the old Aero-series Plus Eight, the Plus Six uses an equivalent BMW turbocharged straight-six petrol engine that you’ll find within the Toyota GR Supra. And since the 335bhp that it produces is motivating a car that weighs fully half a tonne but a Jaguar F-Type, you'll believe that this car is quick.
It’s pretty dynamically sophisticated, too, albeit qualified by the very fact that it’s a Morgan – which would have made it a critical mistake to tune this car to feel particularly modern or well-behaved. Electromechanical power-assisted steering makes the Plus Six lighter on the rim and easier to handle than Morgans of old, while apparent structural integrity feels pretty good over sharper lumps and bumps and better again than Morgans of old – although still quite way from Porsche territory.
The Plus Six still delivers greater motive and charm and sense of occasion than outright grip and handling agility – perhaps even as it should. It’s a one-of-a-kind experience, however, and during a market increasingly keen on resto-mods, it's well placed to deliver the maximum amount of business to Pickersleigh Road because it feels it’s right to provide.
10. Alfa Romeo 4C
The 4C should are the car to rocket Alfa Romeo back to the headlines and restore its reputation as a maker of world-class driver’s cars. That it took the Giulia saloon to truly achieve that, a couple of years later, says most of what you would like to understand about this car – of which production has now officially ceased.
This was alleged to be the sports car with which Turin could launch its talons into the North American market everywhere again. that concept was soon quashed by Alfa’s management once they realized that the finished 4C, with its carbon fiber construction and hardcore temperament, would be much too uncompromising for that.
The 4C was withdrawn from UK sale in closed roof form back in 2016. The Spider that remained made a nasty situation worse as regards the car’s price, which was always £10,000 above it need to are so as to actually tempt people out of Porsche Caymans and Lotus Elises even in cheaper coupé form.
The handling is nothing if not direct and involving, and its turbocharged four-pot engine feels pretty potent during a car this light, but it’s lacking a touch on richness. Roundedness and everyday usability are what might prevent you from adopting the 4C – those, at any rate, and therefore the £60k tag.
