2025 Best Cars List: Why the Lotus Emira V6 Still Reigns Supreme
Explore the top automotive highlights of 2025, featuring the Lotus Emira V6. Discover why heritage performance is winning against the EV tide.
10 standout machines defined a year of automotive chaos. While 2025 saw EV optimism retreat, certain cars reminded us why we love to drive in the first place. Automakers have pivoted, postponing new electric models to favor the roar of gasoline engines once again.
The 2025 Automotive Landscape: A Year of Mixed Signals
The year has been a rollercoaster for the industry. Despite the pushback against fuel economy mandates, EV infrastructure has become surprisingly reliable. Amidst an epic Formula 1 season, the market saw a resurgence of interest in traditional performance. Out of the hundreds of cars tested, only a few truly stood out from the pack.
Lotus Emira V6: A Traditional Soul in a Modern Era
Taking the 10th spot on the best-of list is the Lotus Emira V6. Since Geely acquired the British brand in 2017, the path forward hasn't been easy. Heavy electric models have been a tough sell for the purists. However, the Emira, still handcrafted in Norfolk, England, remains a testament to the brand's heritage of lightweight agility and pure driving pleasure.
Authors
Related Articles
SK hynix posted its first 100-trillion-won quarter, with an 80% operating margin. Micron's GAAP margin was 1.0pp higher; TSMC and Samsung were in the 50% range.
Five stories from late September, traced to where the paper trail stops: Korea's export record, Nvidia's Hugging Face 8-K, a US-China AI channel, the UN on AI, and rising births.
Huawei's CANN is open source under a license barring software for non-Ascend chips. Inside China's second CUDA, and the two links still outside it: pre-training compute and 5nm capacity.
Samsung Electronics' union branch revealed that 84% of survey respondents oppose the government's roughly $290 billion (₩400 trillion) semiconductor megaproject in Gwangju. Government, management, the union and shareholders are all reading the same national project in sharply different ways.
SK hynix posted its first 100-trillion-won quarter, with an 80% operating margin. Micron's GAAP margin was 1.0pp higher; TSMC and Samsung were in the 50% range.
Five stories from late September, traced to where the paper trail stops: Korea's export record, Nvidia's Hugging Face 8-K, a US-China AI channel, the UN on AI, and rising births.
Huawei's CANN is open source under a license barring software for non-Ascend chips. Inside China's second CUDA, and the two links still outside it: pre-training compute and 5nm capacity.
Samsung Electronics' union branch revealed that 84% of survey respondents oppose the government's roughly $290 billion (₩400 trillion) semiconductor megaproject in Gwangju. Government, management, the union and shareholders are all reading the same national project in sharply different ways.
Thoughts
Share your thoughts on this article
Sign in to join the conversation