Autocar.co.uk readers have chosen the Range Rover as their Car of the Decade.
Autocar’s resident car experts nominated and championed 17 great cars launched during the past ten years for readers to choose from – or voters could suggest their own star car.
Hi-res pictures of the Range Rover, Lotus Elise, Bugatti Veyron and Nissan GT-R
Of more than 7500 votes, some 18 per cent - nearly a fifth - were for the Range Rover, a car launched in 2001 to widespread acclaim.
“The Range Rover is a fine choice for Car of the Decade,” said Autocar editor Chas Hallett. “Most polls like this have results skewed towards the latter end of their timescale, but not this one. That the Range Rover was launched nine years ago yet remains a benchmark speaks volumes for the brilliance of its design – and for the taste of the people who voted for it.”
The Range Rover saw off strong showings from the MkII Lotus Elise, which took second place with 12.5 per cent of the vote, and the Bugatti Veyron and Nissan GT-R, which each polled 8.8 percent of the total to finish joint third.
Autocar associate editor Hilton Holloway championed the car, saying: “The Range Rover defined a new type of luxury. Technically sophisticated, beautifully detailed, modern and yet retrospective. It was an overwhelming presence, but in way that the majority could admire.”
The second-placed car, the Mk2 Lotus Elise, has also been in production for much of the past decade. The British roadster has defined the classic sports car and Lotus’s success during that time.
In equal third-place, the the Bugatti Veyron and Nissan GT-R, meanwhile, approached performance on a very different tack.
The million-Euro Bugatti Veyron became easily the fastest production car in the world when it was launched in 2005. Autocar’s own video of driving the Veyron at 243mph has achieved cult status on the web.
Nissan’s 2009 GT-R is a recent introduction but offers staggering performance at a (relatively) affordable price of under £60,000.
Other notable placings in the survey went to the Lotus Elise-based Vauxhall VX220 Ford Focus, Audi R8, Rolls-Royce Phantom, Tata Nano and MkII Toyota Prius.
Top ten:1 Range Rover2 Lotus Elise Mk23= Bugatti Veyron and Nissan GT-R5 Vauxhall VX2206 Toyota Prius Mk27 Tata Nano8 Mini Cooper9 Ford Focus10 Jaguar XF
