Reviews

One of the best all-round performance cars ever made. Fast, forgiving, and everyday-friendly

It defines this sector and should be its default buy. You simply can’t go wrong.

New eighth-gen Golf remains the lingua-franca of the hatch world. A finely polished machine

Great-looking, great to drive new Volvo should be a fine car to own.

Overlook the fact it’s so good that it’s almost joyless: the latest Golf GTI is very desirable indeed

After a classy cabrio but don't have Audi-like cash? Try this. GTI expensive but worth it; R perhaps not

A Top Gear award winner in 2016, and rightly so – Skoda’s big crossover is all things to all families.

The e-Golf is an EV that works for most of us, most of the time. A truly convincing electric car.

Volvo has made something nicely distinctive here. It'd be impressive even if they'd been practicing for years

Seat’s most complete car. It has no real weaknesses – but we just know you’d rather have the VW…

More grown up and all the better for it. Priced very keenly too - it's a smart shout.

It’s big, expensive and not especially clever, but it is really, really good at ferrying lots of people about. Really, really quietly.

This is among the best compact estates on sale (partly because it isn’t really compact at all).

The Kia Cee'd is the car that lobs the paving slab of reality into the windscreen of preconception. It might be a straight clone of a Toyota/Ford/VW hatch, but it’s a damn good one.

A beautiful, entertaining and fundamentally different hatch.

Not as far behind the Ford Focus as you might think. Vauxhall's facelifted hatch is a very competent thing... but an all-new one lurks around the corner.

A capable machine, but more GT than hot hatch. Think mature rather than arm-wangly Italian

We've had to wait for it, but the new Mondeo has been well worth it.

A refreshing niche that ain’t a crossover, but not as sporty as billed