From £6000 to £300,000 - take your pick on these motors! (Top ten favorite cars)

Member Name: DarkestGrey

Product:	Top ten favorite cars
Date:	12/04/09 (112 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good looking cars. Although personal taste involved!

Disadvantages: People argue over the 'best' cars for hours when in reality it is probably the humble Nissan Micra!

This is my list of favourite cars and it may seem like a bit of an odd list. Everything from bottom of the range cars through to £300,000 cars. Favourites are a personal thing and here is mine:

10. McLaren SLR
This is basically a highly modified Mercedes SL. Yes, it is expensive and is worth much more than the average house. It is a proper supercar with nice luxury touches such are air conditioning that works, a nice sound system and an automatic gearbox. A luxury supercar, then. This may be getting moved off my list, since the new Mercedes SL AMG actually looks better and you will save around £150,000 if you buy the Mercedes version over the McLaren.

9. Lexus IS200
I almost bought one of these. Talking about the older model, made from about 1999. It is fairly square shaped. It looks like it means business. The interior is also very stylish and in this regard it is unusual for a Japanese car. TWell built, these are not too expensive at the moment, but I took a Mercedes C-Class over this down to the Lexus managing just 29mpg and the C-Class 37mpg for the same type of car as well as the Lexus insurance being more expensive (at least for me). The Lexus looks better, drives better and is built better than the C-Class however.

8. Maserati Quattroporte
These start at around £79,000, much cheaper than they actually look. They are a four door saloon car with a whopping great engine. But who cares what engine it has, who cares how fast it is? Take one look at it. It has so much style, even the Italians stop and stare.

7. Smart Roadster
Almost 'environmentally friendly', these have a tiny 700cc engine (0.7 litres). To give it some performance, Smart added a turbo. The turbo wizzes behind your head when you change gear as this car has the engine in the rear. The blistering performance can be beaten by most Vauxhall Corsas, but the handling of the Smart Roadster leaves a smile on your face for days! Just be sure to get one with the full automatic gearbox, the semi-auto will drive you mad! Unfortunately it doesn't have much boot space and only seats two.

6. Lamborghini Gallardo
The understated supercar. It really does look the business but doesn't have all the "look at me" spoilers. A little smaller than the Murcielago, this one has measurements that will fit down gaps in a normal road and will fit in a country lane without driving your left wheels in the shrubs.

5. Volvo C30
Yes, another normal car here. It looks amazing on the road, especially in white. Strange because I don't normally like white cars. I have got to admit that Volvo make good cars, but good looking cars are not the thing that first springs to mind. The C30 does look good, it also is reasonably priced and one day, one day I may just own one of these.

4. Alfa GT
The Alfa Romeo GT has been around for a long time now, however its looks have not dated. Alfa do not have the best reputation for reliability but they have a good thing for styling cars. The GT is only a four seater and has huge doors which may make it awkward in car parks. I find it looks very much like the loved Brera with the main difference being that your back passengers do not need to be contortionists throughout the journey!

3. Mercedes C-Class Coupe
I know, I know. Many people don't actually like these, but I do. There are a few problems with this car though. It is only a four seater, rear vision isn't brilliant. Having said that, early versions were built in South Africa where the standard C-Class is also built. Quality of their cars wasn't the best from this factory and within a year or so, Mercedes moved production to Germany to improve the quality. The reason is because this was the car that many first-time Mercedes owners were driving and Mercedes wanted them to have a good first opinion. Better built than the C-Class it was based on, the C-Class saloon and estated stayed in South Africa for production, it went on to either be loved or hated. I happed to love the car!

2. Toyota Aygo
The cheapest of the bunch, this car is really good! Everything has been designed to be built cheaply. This is different from designing a car and then working out where you can save costs by cutting corners. When Honda and Rover worked together, the Rovers were basically Honda cars with corner cutting, and you could tell! Look where Rover are now. Toyota on the other hand have made a cracking little car which is efficient, cheap to insure and small. A perfect first car. Before anyone states that this is the same as the Citroen C1 and the Peugeot 107, it isn't. Both the Citroen and Peugeot are identical cars, but are priced higher. Although you should be able to get the car cheaper from one of the French manufacturers, it does mean you will have to haggle. Further, Peugeot and Citroen are known to have higher depreciation than Toyotas. It will be interesting in years to come to see which are depreciating the most, being an identical car. You can't insult someone who drives one a Toyota Aygo.

1. Maserati 3200GT
...and now my favourite. The Maserati 3200GT is the first car that was made when Maserati was under the control of Ferrari. So you expect it to be good then? Well no. It is unreliable, uneconomical, notoriously expensive to service, fairly poor rear visibility, some very dodgy colour schemes and depreciates faster than Royal Bank of Scotland's share price. Some of the colour schemes are so bad (there is an awful mid blue colour, non-metallic) that if you have an accident, the other person could not claim they never saw you! It has a Ferrari engine and traction control system, hence the unreliability (yes, Ferrari are known to be unreliable). I was quoted £3000 for a service when I was looking for one.

Yet I still love it. The 'boomerang' lights at the back set this car apart but they were unfortunately dropped when the 4200 came out since the Americans decided the boomerang lights were too small. This car isn't the usual supercar either. Under £80,000, these things are now available at low prices. I have seen them for £9000, although usually they are more in the £12,000 - £15,000 range for an early model (1999). It seats four people, yes, that's right, four people even though it looks like a two seater. The design of the car is close to perfect, the lines look good from every angle. Inside is also very stylish, stitched material and again, a huge choice of colours were available so expect to find a silver car with a red interior out there!

The Maserati 3200GT is available to almost anyone to buy. Running it is a different story. Expensive insurance, rip-off serving costs and poor miles per gallon. A shame, because I almost bought one!

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They are the cars I like and I am missing some that people may almost expect to be standard. Here's some and why:

Bugatti Veyron - Boring
This is the most boring car I think I have ever seen. It doesn't actually look that good and what's worse is the two paint colours on the car. I took a look at the website and it has a list of the colours. The only nice variation was black/black! Yes, it's fast. Yes, it's unusual but I can't help feeling that this is like buying a scientific experiment. There is absolutely no emotion from me to this car. It's like a Formula 1 car - you can respect it's speed, but it's still a bit ugly.

Porsche 911 - All Look the Same
Perhaps these do drive really well, but do I want to look like I buy a car from the most uncreative manufacturer out there? They all look the same. Everyone that likes me bores me to death with the difference between the GT2 and the GT4 and the 4x4 and the Turbo. I am sometimes scared to talk to people who own Porsches in case it is really possible to die from boredom.

All 4x4's - Not as Safe as People Imagine
SUV's, 4x4's, Chelsea Tractors. Whatever you call them it is simply a case of 'mine is better because it is bigger', or the best 'they are safer'. Unfortunately, according to statistics, you are twice as likely to die in a 4x4 off-road style car than a normal everyday car. This is due to the increased likelyhood of them turning over. ABS and other technological advancements have improved the safety but nothing stops them turning over due to other impacts in the event of an accident. Some models have a tendancy to turn over under sharp turning (avoiding an accident) - unfortunately this can mean that you hit the accident head on (literally) since the car on it's side can hit roof first. Bigger doesn't necessarily mean better. You want a big safe car? Buy a Volvo V70 or something similar.

All Ferraris - Bland
I find Ferrari a bit bland these days. Like Porches, it's like everyone wants them. The two main make of supercar. Unfortunately, Lamborghini, Aston Marton and Maserati are making much better looking cars these days.

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Almost Unavailable Cars:

And of course we all love some unavailable cars as well. Yes a Metro makes it into the list, the Metro 6R4 and the Audio Quattro (original Quattro with a capital Q, not an A3 quattro or A4 quattro etc...). These cars were amazing in their day, the days of B-Class Rally. Amazing, amazingly difficult to control - stupid speeds, poor handling. Unfortunately a string of big rally accidents saw an end to these cars though you do sometimes see them at rallys, still being raced. Very rarely, you may see one on the road, but they are so rare, I couldn't include them in my top ten.

Electric Car:

The last I will mention is the Venturi Fetish. I don't know huge amounts about it, but it was the first electric vehicle I ever know of that looks good and also has good performance. I am unsure that electic cars are the way to go since electic production creates lots of environmental concerns as well - so they are not 'zero emissions', they simply move the emissions away from the car itself. However, it could be the future and the future looks good!

Summary: That's my own personal list, what's yours?