Best five sports cars to buy in 2025
The vehicles that put the driver front and centre
If the joy of the open road seems an impossible fantasy in our day and age, considering the overcrowded and speed-camera-infested highways, we’re here to tell you that driving fun can still be found in the 2020s — especially if you pick a really well-sorted sports car.
Be they a convertible or a coupé, a hot hatch or a high-powered icon of the automotive world, really good sports cars should put the driver right at the centre of the action, and provide a thrilling and rewarding experience even when you’re not driving them like you’re on a racetrack.
Here are five of the best sports cars for 2025 and beyond.
Mazda MX-5
From £28,015
Where would any list of great sports cars be without one of the all-time global best-sellers? There’s a reason the Mazda MX-5 has remained so popular since it first appeared back in 1989, fully four generations ago: it’s consistently completely brilliant.
What the rear-wheel-drive MX-5 does so well is provide a huge amount of driver engagement at an incredibly approachable level. We don’t just mean with its pricetag, either — no, we mean it doesn’t achieve motoring nirvana simply by means of providing huge horsepower. Instead, it’s all about low weight; the Mazda can get away with deploying a mere 130bhp from its 1.5-litre engine and still feel like it’s full of fizzy fun.
A more potent 2-litre, 181bhp petrol four-cylinder is also available, but even that is not mega-powered by current standards, which means you may enjoy driving the MX-5 hard without permanently fretting about the health of your licence. Therefore, your only real dilemma is whether you opt for the soft-top Roadster body or go for the folding metal roof mechanism of the RF.
The latest model feels a little more snug than the Mk3 for taller drivers, but other than that you really cannot go wrong with the latest version of the evergreen Mazda MX-5.
Caterham Seven
From £29,490
All the other cars on this list could be used as a person’s daily driver without too much in the way of compromise or discomfort. But commuting to work on a cold, wet winter’s morning in a Caterham Seven would take bravery of the highest order. Or should that be stupidity?
Little has changed in the Seven since it first wore a Lotus badge back in the 1960s and, now as then, it’s a car for people who care about driving pleasure more than anything else.
The Caterham is not especially comfortable, it’s not at all practical, and its safety tech starts and ends with a rollover bar. What the Seven is, though, is pure undiluted fun, and we love it.
With prices starting from a fairly reasonable £29,490 for one of the 84bhp 660cc three-cylinder turbocharged models, and reaching upwards of £58,490 for the raw, visceral experience of the 310bhp supercharged 620, (or as much as £79,995 if you can find one of the 20 CSR Twenty limited edition models), the Seven is available for drivers of varying levels of skill (and nerve) but all versions are guaranteed to put a smile on your face.
BMW M2
From £65,915
For many years, the BMW M3 coupé was the sweet spot of everyday performance car accessibility. Through generation after generation, it set the benchmark for how a compact, muscular, rear-wheel-drive coupé should feel, and how it should truly engage its driver.
And then the coupé version became the M4, it gained turbochargers, it got fat and it even had to sprout four-wheel drive in later iterations in order to corral its massive power and torque. It’s also, in the UK, a car that’ll set you back nearly 90 grand, so it’s in no way financially accessible any longer.
Step forward, then, the M2. BMW’s smaller M car is precisely what enthusiasts might have hoped the vaunted third-generation E46 M3 (made from 2000-2006) would one day evolve into: a brawny, wide-shouldered coupé with a reasonable road footprint, a straight-six engine of serious potency (473bhp) and a chassis of glittering talent underpinning it all.
Yet the M2 is in no way a “baby” M car. It’ll run 0-62mph in 4.2 seconds, it remains rear-wheel drive, so it commands respect amongst the serious-driving fraternity, and it is wonderfully still available with the option of a proper, H-pattern, six-speed manual gearbox.
OK, it’s not exactly cheap, but it’s less than an M4 and, frankly, it’s the superior car of the two if you want to put a beaming big smile on your face while behind the wheel, partly because it’s trickier to drive on the limit due to its shorter wheelbase (the distance between the front and rear axles). This is a car for proper drivers.
Ford Mustang Dark Horse
From £67,995
It’s easy for sneery European performance-car fans to dismiss the Ford Mustang as an American pseudo-muscle-car anachronism; all rough around the edges and lagging well off the dynamic pace of its more advanced competitors from the Old World. But since the Mustang officially came to the UK as part of the last, sixth generation of the “Pony Car” line in 2015, audiences have been catching on that it’s not as uncultured as it’s made out to be.
That’s certainly true of the new car, with its glitzy, high-tech interface in the cabin and aggressive, race-car-like looks outside.
The latest Mustang reaches its apogee with the Dark Horse, the more focused variant of the two available. This is equipped with a 447bhp 5-litre V8 engine with no turbochargers and a soundtrack to die for, and it powers the rear wheels through — incredibly for this day and age — a six-speed manual gearbox (a ten-speed automatic is an option, but we’d suggest you ignore that version).
That combination of V8, rear-wheel drive and a manual in a genuinely charismatic body shell, all for a reasonable outlay, not only makes the Mustang Dark Horse unique these days, but also one of the most enjoyable sports cars out there. It turns every journey into an event, while simultaneously allowing its owner to stand out among people who simply default to some anodyne, turbocharged, four-wheel-drive European performance car instead — like, for instance, a Volkswagen Golf R.
Porsche 911
From £99,800
We conclude this list with a perfect bookend for the Mazda MX-5, because these two between them are the biggest-selling sports cars of all time. That’s partly due to longevity, of course — the Mazda has been around for 35 years, the Porsche for more than 60 — but it’s also because they’re both superb. And there’s a good argument to say that the 911 is the most superb sports car of them all.
It retains its singular character going into 2025 courtesy of the placement of its engine. Some still argue that it is entirely in the wrong place, slung out behind the rear axle, but clever engineering has shifted much of the weight further forward and the balance of a 911 has for a long time been simply wonderful. It also imbues the car with an immense amount of charm and a feeling when you’re behind the wheel that’s unlike anything else on the market — other Porsche sports car models included.
The big news for the latest “992.2” variant of the 911, which is what those in the know call the facelifted example of the eighth generation, is that it comes with hybrid power in the GTS model. However, purists should know that a base-spec Carrera retains its “pure” 3-litre flat-six motor, and veterans of the marque will tell you that an entry-level Porsche is often the pick of the bunch.
Every single 911 is outrageously fast, and even the 389bhp Carrera is capable of 0-62mph in 4.1 seconds before hitting its top speed of 183mph.
From there, you can trade up to some mind-bendingly quick models, such as the bonkers 641bhp Turbo 50 Years, but rest assured that any 911 is a stunning thing to drive, with a mega chassis and a sense of driving fun imbuing every single thing it does.
About the only black mark on the 911 these days is it’s exorbitant pricing. But still, if you want one of the finest sports cars of all time, look no further than the quintessential Porsche.
Related articles
- If you are interested in the best sports cars to buy in 2025, you might also like to read our review of the Aston Martin Vantage, which would be included if our list extended to six models
- Speaking of Aston Martin, it’s going mid-engine with the wild Valhalla plug-in hybrid supercar
- Did you know Alfa Romeo is thought to be plotting an electric sports car to succeed the 4C?
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