5 Best Cars for 2025

 5 Best Cars for 2025

What's the best car?" Getting asked that question is an occupational hazard in this business. (And, yes, we realize that it's not actually hazardous, at least compared with the occupational dangers faced by, say, ironworkers who build skyscrapers or zookeepers who feed lions.) When you drive and test hundreds of cars every year as our editorial team collectively does it's a natural query. And our annual 5 Best awards provide the answer.

Since 1983, we've been conducting this exercise: We identify the very best of what's available, not merely our favorite new models introduced for a given year. An onslaught of new or significantly redesigned contenders vies with the winners from the previous year for one of the 5 coveted spots. These days, the price cap is $110,000 (sorry, Ferrari). We gather our staff and contributors from far and wide for an intense two weeks of driving and instrumented testing, interspersed with arguing. And then we vote. The winners are those that best fulfill their intended mission, deliver value to their buyers, and spark driving joy.

This year's list of 5 Best Cars sees eight returning models and two new honorees. Together, they answer that oft-asked question. The best cars you can buy are right here.

Click each individual car to get the full story, or keep reading to find out more about the 2025 "5 Best cars".

Cadillac CT4-V Blackwing: Car and Driver 2025 5 Best Cars

A pinnacle driver's car and one of the world's best high-performance sedans, the small Caddy shows how it's done. Again.

Sports sedans at the hottest end of the market are like the gunslingers in old Westerns. They roll into town each year with their bandoliers full, ready to fire bursts of horsepower, handling, and speed at their rivals. We pit them against one another in "shootouts" to see which will be the last one standing when the tire smoke clears.

In the pitched battle that is 5 Best Cars, the CT4-V Blackwing has once again defended its place as the compact high-performance sports sedan to beat. It's back for the fourth time in a row since it first went on sale for the 2022 model year. Note that neither of its most formidable antagonists, the BMW M3 and the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio, have made the 10Best list during that time. In this class of high-performance turbocharged six-cylinder four-doors, the CT4-V Blackwing rules.