Testing, testing

“You just needa grey background for the stars to shine”

- ILLYA VERPRAET

For the past few years, I've compiled a feature looking at the year's road test stats in one of the Christmas double issues. It was quite striking in 2023 how the average star rating had gone down from four to 3.5, and there were no five-star verdicts. Not a great vintage, then, 2023.

When 2024 immediately started serving up some really good cars (Dacia Duster, Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, Morgan Plus Four, Skoda in general), I started to wonder whether the tide had turned, or if I was going soft.

So I was quite pleased to join editor and Car of the Year juror Mark Tisshaw at Tannistest in Denmark. This is an event organised by the Car of the Year committee to gather together as many of the year's significant cars in one place to test them back to back. That's why a lot of our recent first drives were in 'North Jutland'.