Capture the magic: These are the best car photos we took in 2025

And also as usual, they’ve been bringing home some great photos – here are some of the best. Plus, we choose our favourite concept cars of 2025, and also our favourite artistic impressions of upcoming cars.

We would always say the Anglesey Circuit in North Wales feels like a Gran Turismo track made real: it's just too perfect to exist. The way the track drops away as you round Peel, with the Irish Sea and Snowdonia in front of you, is breathtaking and it's made even better by Maserati's mad track car.

Even amid the rush to return the 296 to Maranello for our flight home, we couldn't resist pausing to get this shot.

We shoot on the roads around Wantage quite often, due to its central location and great sightlines, and our favourite time to be there is just after the harvest.

That ‘chasing the sunset’ vibe in our 1990s retrospective feature earlier this year was all thanks to a glimpse of winter sun.

Photographing cars in the rain is rarely a fun experience, but the results can more than outweigh the misery of standing in a roadside hedge while the water sheets over you. We shot this in a spring and we think it was storm possibly the heaviest downpour we've ever been caught in.

The Members' Meeting is my favourite Goodwood event, with cars but smaller crowds. Ironically, I sought out some people panning through them to get some colour in the foreground.

Any number of photos from this launch could feature here, but this is a favourite. Not just for the contrast and composition but also because the pit garages were the only respite from the 40deg C-plus heat at Misano.

More than any Autocar subject before it, the immense scale of the Bentley Bentayga-Bruder combination required an aerial view to be fully appreciated. Testing such a significant set-up on my family's field was a particularly memorable experience.

The island of Jersey has some wonderful sights, and combined with excellent weather we were able to create some remarkable imagery.

On the northern tip of Denmark, this new A390 soaks up the late-in-the-day Jutland sun.

We finally got a shot we’d been chasing for years, on track, helped by our test-drivers’ skills.

This is one of those shots where everything just fell into place. Two of the best-looking cars in a decade (the Vanquish especially), an amazing backdrop just outside Scotland's highest village and the sun breaking through the clouds at just the right moment.

We love Morgans anyway, but the new Supersport is another level of cool. Art deco lines mixed with contemporary finishes give it a retro-futuristic feel like nothing else, especially in the burnt orange of this example.

Goodwood's Festival of Speed was again chaotic yet memorable. The central sculpture was impressive (and a personal favourite out of recent years' designs), while the Red Bull Fl cars were incredibly loud and smokey.

This car belonged to one of our contributors, but sadly this will be our last photo of it as it’s since been sold. The autumn leaves complete the shot, reflecting poise and power.

You never know what you're going to have to deal with on a car launch: you're dropped into often entirely unfamiliar territory with nothing but a camera to take photos and Google Maps to guide you. In Vale Serrão, Portugal, we stumbled across an abandoned lakeside hotel with an arch that framed the Ferrari nicely.

With the setting sun painting the sky with warm, golden hues, the Defender Octa stirred up a dramatic cloud of dust during our off-road triple test. Launching our drone to capture this spectacle from above,  we were witness to a breathtaking scene: the swirling dust, illuminated by the fading light, looked like smoke, making the distant hills appear to be ablaze.

Let’s now look at our favourite artist impressions of the year:

Alpine releases so many off-the-wall concepts that they deserve to be turned into something with real-world dimensions. This would be an epic big brother to the A110, making use of what Alpine must have learned during its endurance racing programme.

In terms of design, we think the standard Micra falls way short of the Renault 5 from which it's derived. But if you give the base car an unashamedly shouty Nismo bodykit, then we think it can hold its head up high.

Here we combined Subaru's electric rallycross car with its fairly mundane Sport Mobility Concept, which we thought would provide the brand's new EV face. We were wrong, but I thought it looked fresh and cohesive, and I loved the idea of a tiny Alpine A290 rival with a pink STi badge.

Badge-engineering perhaps, but if Audi could squeeze some people-carrier practicality into the Volkswagen ID 3 platform and apply the original A2’s slippery shape, then it could prove to be very popular – and not yet another SUV!

What about our favourite concept cars of the year? Read on:

I'm a big fan of the Jaguar Type 00 concept that was initially sketched by Massimo Frascella, but it missed being featured here by just a month (I'm sure he's gutted). However, I believe his TT recreation embodies the design direction in which Audi should be heading.

The Concept Three's taut, sculpted surfaces and crisp lines were intended to appear like they had been shaped from a single sheet of steel. Something this compact and with running gear from the loniq 5 N could be an awesome combination.

This appeared on my radar after I delved deep into Skoda's history, as celebrated in our recent Skoda supplement. I think this digital-only concept balances retro and futuristic design with some really characterful styling touches.

With some designs, you need only one element to bring your mind back to an earlier car, and with the Peugeot 205, for me it's the vertical leading edge of the C-pillar and the indentation on it for a badge. The rest here is just pure fun, with a fresh three-claw light graphic.

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