Iconic British Built Cars Top of Autocar Poll

Autocar readers have overwhelmingly voted for the British-built Range Rover as their Car of the Decade, in a poll run on autocar.co.uk during the past month.

The poll received 7500 votes with the Range Rover taking 18 per cent, nearly a fifth of the votes.

The British-built Range Rover was launched in 2001 to widespread acclaim. In the Autocar poll it beat off stiff competition from the MkII Lotus Elise, also built in the UK, which took second place with 12.5 per cent of the vote, and the Bugatti Veyron and Nissan GT-R, which each polled 8.8 per cent of the total to finish joint third.

Commenting on the Range Rover’s victory, Autocar’s Editor Chas Hallett said: ‘The Range Rover is a fine choice for Car of the Decade. Most polls like this have results skewed towards the latter end of their timescale, but not this one. That the Range Rover was launched nine years ago yet remains a benchmark speaks volumes for the brilliance of its design – and for the taste of the people who voted for it.

‘Both Land Rover and Lotus deserve a pat on the back for producing such iconic vehicles that still appeal through the passage of time. It’s a great achievement.’

Autocar’s Associate Editor, Hilton Holloway, championed the Range Rover, saying: ‘The Range Rover defined a new type of luxury at launch, technically sophisticated, beautifully detailed, modern and yet retrospective. It has an overwhelming presence, but in way that the majority could and can still admire.’

The second-placed car, the MkII Lotus Elise, was also in production for the vast majority of the past decade: the British roadster has defined the classic sportscar and Lotus’s success during that time.

In equal third-place, the Bugatti Veyron and Nissan GT-R, meanwhile, approached performance on a very different tack.

The million-Euro, 252mph Bugatti Veyron became easily the fastest production car in the world when it was launched in 2005.

Nissan’s 2009 GT-R is a recent introduction but offers staggering performance at a (relatively) affordable price of under £60,000.

Other notable placings in the survey went to the Lotus Elise-based Vauxhall VX220 Ford Focus, Audi R8, Rolls-Royce Phantom, Tata Nano and MkII Toyota Prius.

Autocar’s resident car experts nominated and championed 17 great cars launched within the past ten years for readers to choose from – or voters could suggest their own star car.

1      Range Rover
2      Lotus Elise Mk2
3=    Bugatti Veyron and Nissan GT-R
5      Vauxhall VX220
6      Toyota Prius Mk2
7      Tata Nano
8      Mini Cooper
9      Ford Focus
10    Jaguar XF