Best British cars – the finest driver’s cars to come out of Great Britain
Britain has produced countless performance car icons over the years – these are evo’s favourites
While the British car industry isn’t known for consistently turning out back-to-back group test winners, it has produced some of the world’s most revered performance cars over the years; models that capture the innovation, engineering brilliance and charm it takes to deliver the Thrill of Driving in its purest form.
When viewed through an evo lens, narrowing this portfolio down to a list of ten, rather than struggling to make it up to ten, is the problem at hand. Read on for a rundown of the best British performance cars we’ve driven, with the new Aston Martin Vanquish, Bentley Continental GT and the next wave of McLaren, Lotus and Jaguar models threatening to join this list in the future.
Top ten British cars
McLaren F1
We start with perhaps the ultimate British car – the McLaren F1. When Gordon Murray lays out a design brief, only the technology of the day will get in the way of him seeing through his vision. With the F1, that brief was to create the ultimate road-going supercar.
The engine – Paul Rosche’s glorious 618bhp S70/2 6.1-litre BMW M V12 – and six-speed manual transmission take it most of the way, but they really are the cherry on the cake that is the F1’s entire constitution.
From the steering, to the handling, even to the view out and its compact dimensions. It’s all a product of Murray’s fanatical devotion to light weight and driver interaction, and his disdain for lazy engineering.
The result is a car that, even over 30 years on from its introduction, sets standards when it comes to the Thrill of Driving.
Lotus Elise S1
It’s arguable that a number of principles that drove the conception of the McLaren F1 found a home in the Lotus Elise, which is why like the F1, it remains a high watermark today. Small, lightweight, tactile and compliant – as a tool to pick apart a dipping, undulating British country road, the Lotus Elise was a revelation.
A shoo-in, then, as one of the best British cars. But it’s not just the sum of its parts that makes the Lotus Elise so compelling; it’s the fascinating execution and journey to that end result.
Yes, the F1’s place as the first all-carbon car makes it incredibly innovative – as well it should have been given it cost over £600,000 when new. But the Elise, for its price certainly, was arguably just as ingenious, debuting the bonded extruded aluminium structure that went on to define an entire generation of Lotus sports cars.
Aston Martin adopted a similar construction method that it continues to employ today, too. The lightest and most pure Elise is the Series 1, which weighed just 731kg and used a compact, lightweight Rover K-series engine, perfectly in-keeping with the car’s philosophy.
Caterham Seven evo25
British engineers love extremes as much as they love minimalism and as such, the Caterham Seven makes the Lotus Elise look like a Range Rover.
You are that much closer to the elements, that much closer in literal reach to the road passing beneath you and the noises you associate with motorised transport are that much louder; of the engine, the gearbox, the wind passing all around and the road surface grazing the tyres.
The Caterham Seven is a masterclass in the essentials of the Thrill of Driving, and this is true from the basic three-cylinder 170 version, right up to the utterly manic 620R. The perfect performance car on which to base a special edition celebrating 25 years of evo, then.
It figures that the Caterham Seven evo25 should find a place on our list of the best British cars, because it’s our idea of the perfect Seven for use on both the road and on track. It combines a 210bhp Duratec motor, five-speed manual gearbox and 420 Cup suspension with comfort seats, the more practical ‘Trackday’ roll-cage and full weather equipment – heater and all. Caterham perfection.
TVR Sagaris
TVR is on the other end of the spectrum to our other entries thus far, putting a particularly English spilt-pint, Marbella tan flavour of flamboyance at the top of its list of priorities over engineering excellence and outright precision.
But over the years it’s turned out some glorious machinery, with the Sagaris the pinnacle of the breed. It was the last TVR to be produced and benefitted from a number of detail changes that made it less quirky to live with and more functional.
While it probably still wasn’t enough to tempt buyers out of their BMWs and Porsches, it had much going for it. A low kerb weight of under 1100kg and a sublime straight-six that doled out over 400bhp endowed the Sagaris with a claimed 3.7sec 0-62mph time and a top speed of 185mph – thoroughly modern performance but achieved without modern niceties such as airbags, traction control or even ABS.
It could be a handful on the road and it didn’t respond well to being taken by the scruff of the neck, but if you were more measured with your inputs you could enjoy a whole lot more of what it had to offer – precise and instant turn-in, a balanced chassis and phenomenal pace.
Aston Martin V12 Vantage S
Aston Martin is perhaps the most beloved British brand. Indeed for all its years (most of them) of unprofitability, it’s survived by producing achingly desirable and beautifully designed GTs that even the hard-headed finance types of a certain giant American motoring monolith couldn’t ignore.
But in spite of how tumultuous the Ford era was, it arguably gave way to Aston’s very best era so far; that of the 5.9-litre V12 and the aforementioned VH aluminium platform.
The car that perhaps best sums up that era and is probably an example of Aston at its best, is the V12 Vantage S. We love the V12 Vantage at evo. Such a big powerful engine in such a small car was always going to be hilarious, but not necessarily excellent dynamically. Thankfully, the V12 Vantage turned out to be almost precision-honed for the job of delivering driving thrills.
The V12 Vantage S then double-honed it, first puffing the voluminous V12 up to 565bhp, then adding a seven-speed manual transmission. Perfect? No – that ‘box is a bit notchy – but Astons, especially the V12 Vantage, endear in a way that isn’t contingent on objectivity.
McLaren P1
Wrongly billed as an F1 successor when it arrived in 2012, the McLaren P1 was in a way lucky to escape the shadow of the Almighty. But then, to say it was luck would be to do the P1 a disservice, because it’s one of the most thrilling hypercars of any era, let alone its own.
It was a first taste of McLaren Automotive at its best, with as much of a sense of humour as it has absolute technical majesty. A carbon monocell chassis, interlinked hydraulic suspension with variable ride height, Akebono carbon-carbon brakes and a hybridised powertrain with torque fill are just some of the highlights.
But translated out of Ron Dennis speak, it’s a car that can drop on its shocks and pop its enormous hydraulic DRS-capable wing ready for a monstrous lap, dropping the jaws of all in its presence in the process before even turning a wheel. It’s a car that has a combined 907bhp, that can eviscerate the rear tyres and dissolve like putty in the driver’s hands for spectacular big smokey drifts, having only just broken a record time the lap before.
It’s a technical tour de force that engages the driver in the most binary, interpretable way, presenting a banquet of awe and adrenaline at every rung of its performance envelope, from winding country roads to the very fastest Grand Prix circuits. The P1 is bleeding-edge motorsport science – itself a craft Britain masters – and quintessential hypercar theatre, triple distilled on four wheels wrapped in flow-formed carbon.
Jaguar XE SV Project 8
In its standard form the Jaguar XE wouldn’t be getting close to a place on this list. That speaks volumes as to the extent of its transformation into the Project 8. This Jaguar SVO skunkworks machine is a genuinely serious performance saloon.
Project 8 is a machine that wears its heart on its sleeve – there’s no chance you could call the huge front and rear spoilers or blistered arches subtle – but they’re there for a purpose. And that’s to make the XE seriously fast. The body is almost exclusively made from carbonfibre or aluminium, the track’s wider and those 20-inch rims are wrapped in Cup 2s and hide 400mm front discs.
Performance is courtesy of a 592bhp V8 which brings up the benchmark sprint in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it 3.3sec – impressive for a 1.8-ton machine. But it’s not the Project 8’s straight line speed that’s its most impressive party trick as on the road it’s rapid, responsive and remarkably refined.
It feels light on its toes and the extremely precise steering allows you to perfectly position the big Jag. It’s balanced, has colossal grip thanks to its four-wheel drive and Cup 2 rubber (although it can be a little skittish in the wet) and the brakes wash off speed without complaint. It’s an amazingly rounded machine, and if you forgo the Track Pack that ditches the rear seats in favour of a roll cage, you could almost call it practical family transport.
McLaren 750S
While the P1 was a heady peak for McLaren, the 750S and indeed the 720S that preceded it, distilled limited-run million-pound thrills, minus the electrified element, into a production supercar anyone can order if they are sufficiently well-heeled.
It affirms that the supercars of today really are faster than the hypercars of yesterday.
The 750S sets benchmarks for raw pace and technical acumen but also raw thrills and interactivity. The 720S that preceded it was McLaren shaking off any stylistic conservatism with a jaw-dropping design, and while the 750S is more of the same visually, it now has a shot of 765LT-style aggression in its DNA.
In an age of hybridised and electric rivals, the 750S is the consummate supercar.
Aston Martin Vantage
Aston Martin’s post-VH era of sports cars and GTs has shown so much promise but some of these models have been flawed in key areas, from ergonomics to dynamics and sometimes even in terms of style. Not everyone got on with the Vantage of 2018, on all those fronts.
The new Vantage, a development of that car, is a total debug. More than that, the Vantage is now on a level of form that puts it next to supercars, rather than sports cars.
Nevermind that it’s arguably the prettiest Vantage since the original V12 of 2009, it’s also one of the most transparent and engaging to drive, while also being one of the most powerful.
That it follows in the footsteps of the slightly undercooked 2022 V12 Vantage is if anything confusing, given the new car is on another realm of capability in terms of deploying its 656bhp potency. Absolute power doesn’t corrupt absolutely if harnessed with the kind of capability the Vantage displays.
GMA T.50
We now come full circle with Gordon Murray’s spiritual successor to the McLaren F1: the GMA T.50. Everything he couldn’t do in the early 1990s, he wanted to do here. Everything he found in hindsight to be wrong with the F1 – even if he was the only one who saw it that way – he wanted to do right this time.
In some ways, the T.50 has been painstakingly refined – the result of a detailed audit of the F1. In others, though, it’s a totally different animal.
That Cosworth V12, which famously rounds the tachometer all the way to 12,100rpm, kicking out 656bhp along the way, has a character at full chat closer in kin to McLaren’s 1991 F1 car than its 1993 road car. Its design has more of a ‘60s-inspired sensuality – minus perhaps the fan at the rear – than the F1’s quite contemporary, modernist look. But the core tenets of the F1 are built upon and are enshrined in GMA’s motto: Driving Perfection.
The T.50, with its deftly-honed passive suspension, only partially-assisted steering, obsessively-crafted gear shift, sub-1000kg kerb weight and cacophonous V12 is every bit the new standard bearer to take over from the F1.
