With Brexit, the US election and the passing of many a childhood hero, 2016 has been an especially heavy-going year.
The last 12 months will be remembered for the amazing cars that have hit our roads too. Here, we pick our best cars of 2016:
Audi Q2
Everyone always expected Audi to enter the highly lucrative compact SUV market eventually. With the Nissan Juke and other hiked-up superminis selling like hot cakes, slapping the highly desirable Audi badge on the kind of car that was already in much demand was essentially a license to print money.
Low running costs and an upmarket cabin made the Q2 the compact SUV to have.
Read more in our extended feature
Bugatti Chiron
How do you follow something as awesome as the 1,000bhp Bugatti Veyron? With this: the 1,479bhp Chiron.
Costing £1.9million, it can do 0 to 62mph in less than 2.5 seconds or if you prefer, 0-124mph in under 6.5 seconds.
The Chiron is so savagely quick that its speed was limited to 261mph, but with the limiter disabled, it can surpass 270mph. Oh and did we mention it looks like a work of art?
Find out five crazy facts on the Chiron
Mercedes-AMG GT R
Because the standard 455bhp GT wasn’t rapid enough, with its 3.8 second 0-62mph dash, we got this – the GT R – in November, which completed the benchmark sprint in 3.6 seconds instead. Worth every penny of its £143,245 asking price.
Jaguar F-Pace
The first SUV from Jaguar had to be better than good, and it was. Bold styling, a brilliant drive, and the kind of refinement you’d expect from the big cat set a new pace for the SUV market.
Audi R8 Spyder
We’re making no apologies for sticking another Audi in here. The drop-top R8 takes everything that was great about the standard fixed-roof R8 and simply adds an electronically-operated fabric roof. Genius!
With 532bhp to exploit, the R8 Spyder can blast off to 62mph in just 3.6 seconds. Almost enough to rip your hair out.
Find out more on the convertible R8
BMW M2
The high-performance take on the 2 Series has been the subject of much praise on Motor-Vision in 2016.
This 365bhp hot hatch featured in our quickest cars you can buy run-down and was also picked out as one of Jeremy Clarkson’s star cars. It made Ol’Jezza “actually dribble with joy” and pinched the original 286bhp M5’s place as his favourite M car.
Ford GT
As if the blue oval wasn’t content with owning the hot hatch market with the Focus RS and Fiesta ST200, it wheels out this 600-plus bhp beast.
Only 500 were going to be built originally, but demand was such that Ford recently took the decision to double the production run.
You can’t just rock up to a Ford showroom with £400,000 in your back pocket and expect to drive off in one though. Prospective owners have to apply and fill in a questionnaire to prove they’re worthy of having one.
Honda NSX
Financial struggles meant that Honda took longer than it initially planned to offer a follow-up to the original NSX, but the 26-year wait was sure worth it.
This unique supercar combines the raw grunt of a 576bhp V6 engine with three electric motors to hit 62mph in under three seconds, making it a worthy rival to the Audi R8 and McLaren 570S.
What were your favourite cars to emerge in 2016? Let us know in the comments below.
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[…] favourites were all laid out in our best of 2016 feature from last week, but looking at the other end of the scale, which cars haven’t been so great in […]