Best cars of 2018: SUV from Volkswagen surprise Irish Examiner Car of the Year
rounds up the best cars of 2018.
MUCH like every other aspect of our lives, the whole distasteful and mind-warping Brexit conundrum impacted greatly on the motor industry, causing fear and uncertainly and prompting another year of falling new car sales and, for the trade, the increasingly worrying spectre of more than 100,000 used cars being imported from the UK.
Then you have growing environmental concerns about the viability of the planet in the face of mankind’s love affair with the internal combustion engine — among other things — and the industry faces even greater uncertainty as it tried to find sustainable replacements.
Hybrid and electric solutions abound, but the automotive sector knows these to be fragile and temporary fixes which will do the job in the short term but are certainly not the ultimate answer.
Throw in cockamamie bureaucrats and civil servants who’ve no idea what they should be doing to help either of the above problems and creating taxation regimes which confuse both punters and the industry itself and do more to stymie revenue rather than generate it, and you have a rancid stew of confusion, dread, distress, and anxiety.
These, therefore, are not easy times to live in for anyone involved in the business of making or selling cars, or even for those who want to drive them.
But the show rolls on and while 2018 was not a classic year for great motor cars by any stretch of the imagination, there were still quite a few nuggets to be found and here we will point you in the direction of a few of them.
As no great fan of the SUV, it is somewhat deflating to note that three of the damn things have taken the top slot in the prestigious Examiner Motoring Car of the Year awards. The Volvo XC90 was one and the Peugeot 3008 was another.
This time around, we’ve arrived at the conclusion that the mighty VW Touareg was the not so much the best car we drove in the past 12 months, but it was the one we most enjoyed driving. It is big, it is gangly, it only has five seats and it’s not cheap, but boy is it good.
That’s hardly surprising as it shares the same platform with the likes of the Bentley Bentayga, the Lamborghini Urus, and the Porsche Cayenne and also much of the same technology. It is easily the best Touareg yet made in the looks department and by some considerable margin is also the most technologically advanced.
And with a three litre V6 turbodiesel under the hood, as well as a very technically sophisticated 4x4 system, it is great to drive and would probably climb the odd mountain for you if asked. It is also comfortable and imbued with a level of quality not often seen in a VW. That’s not to say they make low-rent cars, but that this one is made to a standard the company does not often stretch to.
You might think it odd that the Touareg did not achieve a five-star rating when reviewed in these columns during the year — as some of those listed beneath actually did — but in the context of what it is up against in quality terms, that does nothing to demean the Volks.
Sure it is a step away from the all-things-to-all-men ethos which has so long been at the core of all VWs and it is rare stab at the luxury market (as reflected by its price), but it is a really fine effort and I was certainly charmed not only by its high-end-ness, but its ability to deliver on the road and for its passengers.
It is very big — uncomfortably so for some people — but it is a very honest car and one with only mild pretensions. The same could not be said of so many of its rivals.
No more than was the case for so many manufacturers, 2018 was not an easy one for Ford. The Blue Oval is struggling with an SUV-lite line-up (or at least a line-up that actually appeals to anyone) and reliant on the Fiesta and the Focus to shore up passenger car sales.
Technically this is a 2017 car, but it was only this year we saw the full breadth of the Fiesta range. In the latest iteration, Ford has made a 40-year-old nameplate into a modern icon. Despite major competition from such as the VW Polo and last year’s winner of this prize, the Seat Ibiza, Ford did more than enough with the new Fiesta to keep it ahead of the posse.
A great new look, an excellent choice of engines and a serious wallop of technology was not really enough to squirt the Fiesta ahead of the other two, but the manner in which it comports itself on the road does. This is a fantastic car to drive and has the handling chops of a much more expensive and bigger machine and while the new car is evolutionary rather than revolutionary, Ford has produced a car which is still much better on the road than the one it replaces.
But — and Polo and Ibiza aside — Ford is going to face a whole host of newcomers in this class in 2019 and it is just as well it has a car as good as this one to fight off the invading hordes.
While some will point to the Volvo XC40 as being something of a game-changer in the compact SUV class — and it most certainly is — it is priced at the premium end of the spectrum. The same could be said of the BMW X2, which is another startlingly good car, but bloody dear. And, at the other end of the financial scale was the Seat Arona, which is truly good.
Then along comes one of the most unexpected cars of the year and one of a raft of SUVs coming down the tracks from VW. The T-Roc is stylish, fresh, and well equipped even from entry level. It also has a fantastic 1.5 litre petrol engine.
Sure, you could get picky about the amount of interior space and the use of some poor interior plastics, but the whole package adds up to something which is not only adorable to look at, but is great to drive and live with as well. VW might have struggled to squirm its way out from under the horrific PR disaster that was the whole ‘Dieselgate’ scandal, but one way of doing it is to make great cars like this one.
We all know the cornerstones of this segment to be the Ford Focus and the Volkswagen Golf, but one car which stunned this year was the new Kia Ceed. The evolution of this car from Asian trashcan to something which will bother the big boys has been pretty amazing.
Sure the current Golf and the new Focus are top drawer and it has to be said that the Ford is a particularly worthy machine, but for model-on-model improvement there is little to touch the Kia. The new Citroen C4 Cactus possibly come closest in that department, but the rate of improvement shown by the Kia’s designers and engineers in producing this car is nothing short of miraculous — especially given what went before.
This is a very European car and one which was designed and built with that end in mind. This means that vital factors such as the engine and chassis were specifically created to cater for European tastes and not diluted by financial or engineering considerations forced on the manufacturer by other markets.
That it is even being mentioned in the same breath as the Focus and the Golf indicates just how far Kia has come with this car and further, that it is now ahead of such as the Opel Astra and the Renault Megane in the rankings, is further proof of its charms.
We are not saying that the Kia is better than either of its main rivals, but it is certainly a lot closer to them and the impressive thing is the ground it has made up on them. If you are in the market for a family hatch, the Ceed is a car that cannot be overlooked.
The growing maturity and confidence emanating from Mlada Boleslav in recent years as Skoda consolidates its growing reputation was mirrored with the unveiling of this mid-range SUV.
The company already created many waves with its previous effort, the bigger Kodiaq, but this machine confirmed to anyone who was interested that Skoda has got its finger on the public pulse.
Although handed the thankless job of replacing the hugely popular and versatile Yeti, the Karoq proved itself to be a very affordable, comfortable, well specified and able replacement. It might not be the greatest ever drive mankind has seen, but it is a terribly comfortable and able family car with the right balance of practicality, comfort, and ability.
Technically, the Karoq is a small SUV but, in line with what we have long described as the company’s ‘more for less’ ethos, it is actually bigger than it has any right to be.
It has added further credence to the Skoda canon and illustrated further that the Volkswagen Group’s former bargain-basement whipping boy is no longer the butt of anyone’s jokes.
If a car’s interior alone was to be the sole factor in deciding the winner of this category, then the Mercedes A-Class has all of its opposition beaten into a tin hat. This thing is astonishing. I mean, when you can make the air vents into things of ultra-modern beauty and a vision of car parts as art, then you have to be off to a good start.
What really stands out, though, is the dual digital display which plays the role of instrument binnacle and infotainment centre. I’ve never seen anything like it in what is ostensibly a family hatch — albeit a premium one. This is a truly stunning iteration of something that is so often taken for granted and designed accordingly.
This is the fourth generation of the A-class and it has gestated from being a cutesy small car design exercise into being a fully blown five door hatch. It was something Mercedes initially treated as something jokey, but then realised it could make money — lots of it — from taking small cars seriously.
The new A-Class is its most serious effort yet and the R&D money expended on the car has paid dividends with what is an ambitious and attractive car. Sure it is not without a couple of minor flaws — noisy engines and a ride which is not always comfortable on bad roads — but overall the positive far outweigh any negatives.
Sure, in certain neighbourhoods the Duster would have an approval rating akin to that of a plague of locusts, but you cannot deny that this thing represents value for money.
As Romania’s pride and joy, the Duster is effectively the result of a thorough scraping of the bottom of parent company Renault’s parts barrel. The result, however, is something of a polished gem. It is decent to drive, is hugely economical and offers bags of kit — for the money.
It is also not bad to look at and in 4x4 trim has genuine off-road credentials; the Duster also has the demeanour of a hard-worker who is not afraid to take on the sort of dirty endeavours so many of its contemporaries would shy away from.
In some dynamic respects it is not great at all, but when you factor in the price being asked for the car — the weekly shop for most families costs more — and the fact that the majority of the refinements have concentrated not so much on making it quicker or more engaging, but on enhancing its good points, the whole point of the thing becomes very clear.
Sure it is a bargain basement buy and it is far from being a sophisticate, but it has a place as a popular, cheap and tough addition to the SUV segment.
The medium SUV contender from Range Rover — sitting between the Evoque and the Sport — the Velar is something that seems to be overlooked by the company’s buying constituency. Mammy drives an Evoque and only a Sport will do for Daddy. Velar sort of falls between the cracks.
By overlooking it, however, people are missing a trick here. Very car-based, built as it is on the same platform as the Jaguar XE and XF, it is a beautiful thing to behold and it also rides and handles like no SUV you’ve ever experienced. The interior too is sumptuous, features some amazing design touches and is as technologically advanced as is imaginable.
There are two downsides — the engine and the price. The car may not be equipped with the best engine Jaguar Land Rover has ever made — but it does the business — and it could be rightly considered to be wildly overpriced, but just the sheer gorgeousness of the thing stands it aside from the growing number of contenders in this segment.
There have been a raft of ‘hot’ cars hitting the streets this year — the Fiesta ST (fantastic), the Yaris GRMN (fantastic, but you can’t get one), the Audi RS3 (very cool and very hot at the same time), and the BMW M5 (completely outrageous).
But our favourite of the lot was the new Honda Civic Type-R. Various iterations of the Type-R have been with us down the years, but none has had the charisma and the sheer naked ebullience of the latest one. All edgy styling and outrageous visual presence — to the point where you will get constant ‘Batmobile’ comparisons — the Honda is not, however, just about looks.
Featuring a heavily turbocharged four pot engine for the second time in its history — rather than the earlier V-Tec screamers (which were a blast, back in the day) the Civic now boasts an output in excess of 315 bhp which, in a titanium-strengthened and aluminium-lightened chassis. This, you might fairly think, in a front-wheel drive package will lead you directly to the nearest tree, but that’s not the case.
It handles like a dream and while you can access wheelspin in first, second and third gear and engaged in plenty of other vicarious activities, the Type-R never gives you the impression it wants to kill you. Indeed, once you fathom the depths of the sensational performance and tie that in with the wiles of the chassis, you are left with nothing other than a car which is a modern day classic.
If the earth doesn’t move for you when driving this, then you’ve got serious problems in the underpants department.
The original CLS was an instant hit for its four-door-as-coupe looks and prompted quite a few impersonators, which is very understandable in such a copy-cat world. Making a second-generation version of the car, then, was going to be a difficult trick to pull off, but Mercedes managed that. And now they’ve gone and built an even better third generation model.
But when the source material for your inspiration comes in the shape of the latest Mercedes E-Class, then you’ve got a very decent starting point. The CLS is a beautiful thing to behold and drives like an executive car should. The interior is astonishing as is the apparent noiselessness when you’re giving it the beans.
But don’t kid yourself that this is about pace and performance, because it’s not. It is about elegant and timeless cruising and feeling really good about yourself as you do so.
The whole debate about autonomous cars is by now about as interesting as Brexit.
But with the A8, the Ingolstadt manufacturer has given us a true glimpse of the future. Indeed, there is so much technological muscle on this car that much of it is illegal in many countries around the world because their laws are too ancient to cope.
Demonstrating ‘eyes-off and hands-off’ technologies to an extent that we have never experienced before, this Audi is truly a sign of the times to come. It is a truly pioneering car and probably a little too far ahead of itself.
But, as an indication of the possible — not to mention the probable — it truly is a thing to be spoken of in awed, hushed tones. It might not be the best luxobarge ever built, but the depths of its abilities are something we might never get to the bottom of.
Truly awesome.
