The paultan.org 2018 Top Five cars list – Anthony Lim

Welcome to the annual paultan.org Top Five cars list, where each author picks the vehicles that have impressed them the most over the past 12 months. We’ve switched up the formula this year – we’re breaking up the usual big roundup post to give the individual writers the space to go into greater detail with regards to their selections, and some of them also get to be on camera. Enjoy!

Diversity at this publication continues to be strong, nowhere more so than with our annual list – if anything, the change to separated posts after the six previous integrated outings highlights this aspect even further.

This year, I spent the most time behind the wheel with a new addition to the household, the resident Honda CR-V having been replaced by another CR-V, a pick in my list last year. This isn’t going to be replicated in 2019, unless that winning stub comes up, and even then, three-fifths of the selection would simply be out of bounds. I did however get a particular game console (three generations on from the first one, mind you), which will eventually allow me to drive them virtually every day.

On then to the list, which is decidedly sportier than the norm this year. Before we proceed, a honourable mention for the Perodua Myvi, which I finally got to drive at length this year – it really is quite a little gem.

5. C190 Mercedes-AMG GT C

So the car that wasn’t supposed to come came, and what an absolute toe tickler it has – again – turned out to be, sneaking in at the very death here. The soft spot that I have for the Mercedes-AMG GT S has grown less resolute in the face of the GT C, simply because it really is what the S should have been at first plot.

The correct descriptive term is accessibility, as ridiculous as it may sound for a car costing this much, but the S’ sibling is less inclined to want to have a go at you each time you suggest doing the deed, something that was already suggested very strongly during the first sampling with it in Germany last year.

Mechanical improvements abound, and the net effect is that there’s simply more manageability and suppleness across the board when you start hammering it, especially around the bends. Faster? Surely. Less hairy? Absolutely. That the game console steering feel of the initial outing has been tautened adds to the allure.

Striking and never shy, there’s no shortage of occasion with this one, and such is the visual draw that it can even get you access into a football stadium for an otherwise impossible, elevated front row shot. Okay, I know the guys in the team are going to give me stick for this, in this case very likely a physical one called a rotan, but ringgit to ringgit, this over the other turbocharged kid from Stuttgart any day, and it doesn’t matter how the flip goes.

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