Best Performance Car Newcomer of 2016: BMW M2

Worried that M has lost its way? Don’t be. The M2 takes the very best of what made M great, adds a dash of ‘up yours, Jack’ and distils it into an intoxicating blend of powerful rear-drive juju that makes you laugh like a loon every time you turn it over.

It’s got the best steering of any BMW of the last five years, and its retro touches balance well with the punk-kid-on-steroids feel of the overblown exterior.

And it goes. Boy it goes. It’s at home on the circuit or carving through a mountain detour, and it sounds amazing in both instances. Hopefully the nanny-state self-blipping gear shift thing will disappear in the next facelift, because it’s so close to perfect it’s not even funny.

Solemnest Farewell of 2016: Ford Falcon and Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution

It’s been a long goodbye for two of our favourite cars, but 2016 marks the end of the road for the Ford Falcon and the Mitsubishi Evo, and that makes us sad pandas.

The Falcon and MOTOR go way back – it’s impossible to know how many words and pics we’ve penned and snapped of the Falcon family, including Tickford and FPV – in our 56-year history together. The FPV F6 Typhoon even claimed a PCOTY gong in 2006.

The same goes for the Evo, which first featured in these pages as a Lancer GSR (an Evo III by any other name) in 1993, before bursting into our hearts as the Evo VI Tommi Makinen of 2001. Thanks, lads. We’ll miss you.