What is the best car of the 21st century? It’s not an easy question to answer, but as the calendar counts down to 2025 we thought we’d have a go at finding the answer.
The challenge is defining what makes a car great and how do you narrow it down across the entire breadth of the car industry – from electric city cars to wildly powerful hypercars. Since 2000 there have been some many important and impactful new cars that have helped shape and define not only what we’re driving today but what we’ll be driving in the next 25 years.
With that in mind we’ve taken a look back at all the great cars of the 21st century and compiled this list. It’s by no means meant to be definitive, and will have a clear Australian bias, but this is the line-up we landed on.
Each day this week we’ll publish five entries in our list, counting down to the big reveal on Friday. Let us know your thoughts – what’s your favourite car of the last 25 years?
10. 2021 Aston Martin Valkyrie
Adrian Newey has been the leading designer in Formula 1 since the early 1990s and throughout that time he has made it clear he wanted to try his hand at creating a road car. Aston Martin and Red Bull gave him that chance and the Valkyrie is the result.
It was a long gestation, first revealed as the AM-RB 001 concept in 2016, it took more than five years to create this most extreme of hypercars. As you’d expect from Newey, it features some of the most extreme and complex aerodynamics ever seen on a road car, while power comes from a bespoke 6.5-litre V12 engine.
Even amid the hypercars from Bugatti, Keonigsegg, Mercedes-AMG and others, the Valkyrie stands out as something special.
9. 2013 Ferrari 458 Speciale
All you really need to know is that this was the last naturally-aspirated V8 Ferrari the Prancing Horse produced. The turbocharged 488 replaced it and now the 296 GTB is a V6 turbocharged hybrid, so for true driving enthusiasts the 458 is the last of its kind and the Speciale the ultimate version of it.
More powerful, lighter, sharper the Speciale has become a collector’s item because of what it represents, but also the pure driving thrills it gives the person behind the wheel.
It doesn’t matter that newer models are even more powerful and go quicker, the screaming 4.5-litre V8 makes this car live up to its name – special.
8. 2013 Porsche 918 Spyder
Around the same time Ferrari’s 458 Speciale was farewelling the past, Porsche was introducing the future of performance – hybrids. While hybrid vehicles were already commonplace by 2013, with the Prius a global best-seller, the 918 Spyder was the first plug-in supercar.
Combining a 4.6-litre V8 with a pair of electric motors the 918 punched out a seriously impressive 652kW and 1280Nm, while also being able to drive on electric-power alone for up to 19km. What Porsche really demonstrated with the 918 was that hybrids didn’t have to be just for efficiency, electric motors could add performance too. This is a concept that has now become increasingly popular with sports car makers and has allowed them to still provide fast, fun cars while also meeting increasingly strict government-imposed emissions standards.
7. 2002 Ferrari Enzo
Not the prettiest car of the 21st century, but this isn’t a beauty contest. Instead this is a study in function over form, pushing the envelope of technology at the time to try and make a road car as close to F1 as possible (more than a decade before the Valkyrie).
It became the last purely V12-powered Ferrari hypercar (its replacement, the LaFerrari, opted for a hybrid-assisted V12) and featured a carbon fibre body and F1-style transmission.
In some respects this was Ferrari correcting the mistakes it made on the F50 that preceded it, but the Enzo deserves to stand on its own as a car that helped to define the brand. This became the poster kids put on their bedroom wall and probably inspired a generation of Ferrari fans that are now buying into the brand.
6. 2015 Ford Mustang
The Ford Mustang for the world. After spending the first five generations of Mustang focused only on North America, sometime in the early 2000s Ford decided to share the pony car with the rest of the world.
They introduced independent rear suspension and put the steering wheel on the other side, but at its core it was still the same American icon it always was – and people loved it. It became the best-selling sports car in Australia, with the 5.0-litre V8-powered GT arriving at just the right time to appeal to those mourning the loss of the Falcon.
While we never received the red-hot Shelby GT500 in Australia, we were lucky enough to get the Australian-made, Herrod Performance-built R-Spec. While the movie-themed Bullitt and track-ready Mach 1 that served to extend its appeal.
Discussion about this post