Paddy McGuinness, Freddie Flintoff and Chris Harris have unveiled their cars of the year, with the Hyundai i20N taking the top prize at the TopGear.com Awards.
The presenting trio chose three distinctly different motors as their personal favourites during a virtual ceremony on Top Gear’s YouTube page on Tuesday.
McGuinness went for a £4 million (€4.6 million) Aston Martin Victor for the “driving experience”, while Flintoff opted for the Ginetta G55 Supercup, which brought tears to his eyes in the series.
Harris voted for the Porsche 911 GT3.
However, Car of the Year was won by the Hyundai i20N.
Explaining his choice, McGuinness said: “This car might cost £4 million, but the air con wasn’t working, there’s no cupholders, everything you’d normally find in a high-end car, forget all that, this was purely about the driving experience.
“And the heat inside… it was relentless, I was continuously having to wipe the sweat out of my eyes. I’ve never driven anything like it before, and I probably never will again.”
Excited about his driving coup, McGuinness added: “The boys were unsurprisingly quite jealous, especially as the previous series I got to drive a £3.5 million DB5, which they weren’t best pleased about either.
“It shows the producers’ thinking though – these are expensive cars, they need to be in a safe pair of hands. We’ve all seen Harris spinning about doing doughnuts, and with Fred there’s always the possibility of him turning it over, no one wants that. It’s just one of them things they’ll have to deal with.”
Flintoff said: “The one car I experienced more emotions in than anything I’ve ever driven before was the Ginetta G55 Supercup.
“From going for my race licence, to competing in my first endurance race alongside Chris, and being the underdog as well, it was such a surreal experience.
“I really doubted myself, there were times I was nearly in tears, but, honestly, I had so much fun.”
Harris said: “Porsche is so impressive right now, because it’s smashing it on the EV front, and then there’s also the Cayenne Turbo GT, which, although I have no interest in it at all, I’m told drives unbelievably well.
“You’d think those would be distractions, but amongst all that there’s this little car that Porsche makes called the GT3. It doesn’t make many of them, but it smashes it out of the park every single time. I’ve done 47,000 miles on my 991-gen GT3, and the number of people that park them in garages… go out and drive the bloody thing!”
During the ceremony, 18 of the awards handed out had been voted for by the Top Gear team.
As well as Car of the Year, the i20N also won Performance Car of the Year.
Other winners included the Ford Mustang Mach-E, which was named Family Car of the Year, the Mercedes EQS was crowned Luxury Car of the Year, and the Lotus Emira was chosen as the Car We’re Most Looking Forward to Driving in 2022.
Hyundai was named Manufacturer of the Year.
– The ceremony is available to watch now on the official Top Gear YouTube page, and the December issue of Top Gear Magazine is out now.
