This year marks the 25th anniversary of PistonHeads. And like all good 25th birthday parties, we’re going at the celebrations hard - and early. As you might’ve heard, we’re going to ask for PHers to vote on the best cars from the past 25 years. Clearly, this is no easy task - hundreds, if not thousands of new models have gone on sale in that time - so we’ve zeroed in on five PH-worthy categories: sports car, hot hatch, saloon (and estate), track car and supercar to help narrow things down.
Which, of course, means we’re throwing you in at the deep end. Everyone has a favourite sports car, and the last quarter of a century accounts for a high proportion of the very best ones. Obviously, it would be impossible (or at least very messy) to include every sports car available to buy new in the UK since 1998, and even the description itself is a hard one to pin down. Accordingly, we’ve had to be selective in both regards: by and large, it is only purpose-built sports cars that have made the shortlist, and everything in the margins (from the towering McLaren 570S all the way to lowly Lexus SC430) has fallen by the wayside - or been shunted to a later category to avoid duplication.
That doesn’t mean the 31 cars we’ve whittled it down to will please everyone, of course - there were enough chairs thrown and tables flipped during the whittling process to highlight the fact. Lively discussion is anticipated, especially when we've opted to include only one generation of a long-running make and model or have chosen a single variant to represent a much broader lineup. Again, this was for the sake of clarity, and it has meant some hard choices - but we're fairly confident that all the big hitters of the past 25 years are represented in one form or another.
If you’re anything like us, that won’t make selecting just one any easier, so we’re giving you the opportunity to vote on up to three cars - which will hopefully reduce the agony of choice somewhat. Polling will run for a week, and we’ll announce the winner next month along with all the runners-up.
If you’re miffed that your favourite car doesn’t come out on top, then fret not. There are still four more categories left for you to vote on, which we’ll post in the coming months. Once we have a winner for each category, we’ll pit them against each other in what’s set to be an almighty group test, with the overall winner – the best car of the past 25 years – to be announced at our special PH25 event at Bicester Heritage on August 12th (you can register your interest here if you haven’t already).
Right, that’s enough from us. It’s time to cast your votes by heading over to our poll here. Remember, you’ve got till Sunday 22nd to have your say. Many thanks for participating!
