Bad weather, an unfamiliar circuit and equally unknown public roads made Autocar’s annual Britain’s Best Driver’s Car (BBDC) shootout divisive in 2025. It’s a good job the adjudicating testers aren’t like a trial jury, then, needing to come to a unanimous verdict before being let out of the pit lane.
There can be no deadlock at ‘Handling Day’: everyone has their say, casts their own scores, and the voting system unfailingly settles on a winner. And last November, in the Cumbrian damp of M-Sport’s Dovenby Hall test track and its surrounding roads, it promoted an old master to the top step of the podium one more time.