PH Favourite Cars 2025, two cars for £30k...

... and can you put too much research into buying a car?

By Cam Tait / Tuesday, 6 January 2026 / Loading comments

Nothing sets off a New Year quite like a bit of good news, which I left in Sam’s capable hands for The Gassing Station’s first episode of 2026. And he delivered, having gleaned from his recent Skoda Fabia 130 drive that, if enough people buy its new warm hatch, it will look into building a vRS version, bringing an end to a 12-year absence. Okay, so it’s not exactly earth-shattering news, but given how dire the hot hatch market has been in recent years, a new (and hopefully affordable) Fabia vRS would doubtless be welcomed with open arms and wallets.

Anyway, before we firmly close the door on 2025, we thought it’d be a good idea to run through our favourite cars of the last 12 months. We do ‘car of the year’ a little differently at PH, with our writers choosing their favourite cars of the year rather than arguing over whether X should be ranked ahead of Y. Mostly because the cars that feature on our list are nowhere near comparable with each other, so we opt to give them all a spot in the limelight instead. Nic C chose the Aston Martin Vanquish Volante, Matt B the new Porsche 911 GT3 (992.2) and Stephen D went with the new BMW M2 CS. On the pod, Sam explains how he would up with the C8 Corvette Stringray and why the Americans can now mix it with the best, and I do my best to justify why I gave the Land Rover Defender OCTA the nod over the brilliant BMW M3 CS Touring.

On the more affordable side of the spectrum, PHer Tiglon is looking to kick start the New Year by dropping £30k on a two-car garage. The criteria (and we’ve had to make some of it up to restrain ourselves) is roughly £20k on something interesting yet family friendly, with the remaining balance going towards a more practical runabout. Glossing over the cheap-to-run part of the criteria, Sam’s chosen this Mercedes ML 63 AMG (W166) for £13,990 as the main car, and this simply sublime Lightning Yellow Mazda RX-8 for £7,750, leaving a decent amount of cash to spend on fuel and oil. I, on the other hand, have gone for this superbly-specced Porsche Panamera 4 that’s currently up for auction, while this Focus ST Estate puts two big ticks in the fun and practical boxes for £9,495. Obviously, if you think you can do better, you can submit your own suggestions in the topic here.

If, however, you’re too busy to research a car of your own to buy, then our final topic may come in useful. PHer valiant wants to know ‘how much research is too much?’ when buying a car, admitting to watching reviews from foreign influencers to absorb as much information as possible. So, how do you overdo the hunt for a new car? Do you spend months researching every little issue, or are you happy to drop some cash on the car of your dreams and worry about reliability later? You can chip in to the conversation in the topic here, but only after you’ve had a listen to the pod first, deal?

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