35 YEARS OF BBDC

There have been plenty of changes to 'Handling Day' since 1989 - although in some ways, not much has changed at all. Illya Verpraet takes a look back

The fundamentals of Autocar's BBDC event have never changed: we assemble a field as varied as possible of that year's best driver's cars and then decide which is the most fun.

However, making the field varied is a more difficult exercise now than it was 34 years ago, because the bottom has fallen out of the performance car market.

In 1989, the cheapest contender was the £9350 Renault 5 GT Turbo and the most expensive the £47,697 Ferrari 328 GTB. In 2023, the most affordable, the Honda Civic Type R, costs more than the Ferrari did back in the day. Even with inflation in mind, that's a sobering statistic.

We've also brought science and democracy to the process over the years. In 1989, there were no scores, no lap times, not even a basic factfile on the contenders.

"The original motivation behind this rare gathering of contemporary handling greats, and we make no bones about it, was to have a good time," David Vivian explained.

One thing that hasn't changed is Porsches doing well. Rather than arriving with a brown envelope in the glovebox, they're just incredibly consistently good. Is the following sentence about the winning 1989 944 S2 or this year's 911 GT3 RS? "The [Porsche's] limits were very high, yet it approached them with such grace and easy confidence, it was virtually impossible not to be seduced." It could be either.

HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE

'Handling Day' was conceived for us to see how road cars would behave when pushed to the limit on a track, so it remained a track-only event for years, with just a mention here and there about a car's behaviour on the road. It took us until 2004 to include a score for road driving. Not that it made a massive difference to the overall result: the Noble M400 was simply brilliant wherever you drove it.