Our Favorite Cars of the Year! _ 2021 Year in Review

To put it lightly, the last 12 months have been weird. But throughout all the chaos, dealerships still sold cars, and shoppers still bought cars, and we, we still reviewed cars, a lot of cars. You can head to the CarGurus.com research pages and read nearly 200 test drive reviews that we've published in the last year. And you can subscribe to the CarGurus YouTube channel to watch all of our video reviews. In August, we announced our best used car award winners, but now let's take a look back on some of our favorite new cars of the year. If we had to pick one car that just did it all and did it at a reasonable price, well, we would look to the 2022 Subaru Outback Wilderness. The most popular model from a brand known for practicality, value, and capability got a lot more adventurous in 2022. The Wilderness trim stands nearly an inch higher above other Outbacks, offering nine and a half inches of ground clearance. The roof rack can support up to 700 pounds of static load. The upholstery is water repellent, the tires are all-terrain, and the price is less than 40 grand. The Outback is a top safety pick plus from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and it received five stars from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Wilderness trims benefit from the terrific 2.4-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine. The only thing we didn't love? Too many functions buried within its touchscreen, but I'm willing to concede that for a lot of shoppers, this tech looks pretty cool. The Outback is a perennial favorite, and the Wilderness trim just gives it that extra push to put it into special consideration territory. Whether you like the increased capability or you're just here for the extra chunky looks, we think that the 2022 Outback Wilderness is a winner. Okay, now we have tested quite a few trucks this year. There was the Ram 1500 TRX, a truck literally designed to eat the Ford F-150 Raptor's lunch, which brings me to the F-150 Raptor. We also tested that one. We drove the Tacoma, the new Frontier. We drove the old Toyota Tundra. We looked at the new Tundra. And yet, when the automakers came to take their trucks back at the end of our week-long loans, the one that I didn't like seeing leave was this little guy. The Hyundai Santa Cruz might not breathe fire like a TRX or a Raptor, and it might not have the off-road chops of a Tacoma or a Frontier, but this truck absolutely changes the equation for folks who need a crossover but secretly want a pickup. Its tiny bed won't be much help if you need to carry anything too long, but it has surprisingly impressive payload capacity, and the Santa Cruz is a delight to drive, particularly with a 2.5-liter turbocharged engine. It looks great, drives beautifully, and probably delivers 90% of the capability needed by 90% of truck buyers. We expect to see a lot of Santa Cruzes on the road. So often, luxury cars are a lot of flash and glamor without, well, without actually being that good. I mean, sure, a car might give you front massaging and ventilated seats that are upholstered in baby kangaroo leather with beaver tail accents stitched into the bolsters and premium audio speakers nestled in the headrests. But the same car that gives you that might have an underpowered engine or a suspension that's too soft or more likely too firm, or it's a pain to get in and out of, or it gets bad fuel economy, or, most likely, it costs so much that they would never let us into the dealership. The 2022 Genesis GV70 is pretty much the polar opposite of all that. This luxury crossover is beautiful. It is well-rounded. It feels powerful yet comfortable, and its interior is a genuine showstopper. Curves and angles blend together for a design that's both high-tech and organic. Our test car, a 3.5T Sport trim, it had red seat belts and stitching over blue leather upholstery. It made 375 horsepower. Best of all, that trim's starting price sits at $52,600, and the base trim starts at $41,000. That's an absolute steal in the luxury crossover market, and it would make the GV70 worth consideration all on its own. Add in the GV70's do-it-all appeal, and it's one of our favorite cars of the year. 2022 is shaping up to be a big year for electric vehicles, and that's saying something, because 2021 was absolutely massive. We tested the Ford Mustang Mach-E way back in February, and since then, we also looked at the Polestar 2, the Volkswagen ID.4, the Jeep Wrangler 4xe, the Chevy Bolt EV, and the Mazda MX-30. And over in the UK, CarGurus even published an EV mega-test, comparing 10 top EV options to decide which one was the best. Through it all, though, this is the one that stole our hearts. The Mustang Mach-E gives the high-tech, future-focused world of electric vehicles a dowsing of Americana. It's fast, it's gorgeous, it's perfectly practical, with plenty of room in the back and lots of cargo space, plus a front trunk under its long hood. It offers genuinely usable range, up to 305 miles, and it doesn't feel like you're driving a science experiment. Next year is going to bring a lot of competition to Ford's doorstep. We'll have the new Subaru Solterra and the Toyota BZ4X. We're going to start seeing Rivians on the road, and then there's the Nissan Ariya, the Polestar 3, the Lucid Air, the Hyundai Ioniq 5, and the Kia EV6. But for now, for right now, the Ford Mustang Mach-E is our winner. All right, all right, all right. Every year brings its own share of surprises, and in 2020, the big one was probably the GMC Hummer EV, although we're still waiting for that super truck. In 2021, we got a much more immediate surprise, the 2022 Kia Carnival. The outgoing Kia Sedona was always pretty well-liked around here. It was practical and a good value, and it gave you the sort of feeling we often get from minivans. The Carnival, on the other hand, is anything but boring. This is the vehicle that Kia chose to use for the debut of its new logo, and we can't say we blame them. SUV-like styling, hammered chrome-looking accents, and available VIP lounge seats that would look more at home in a sharper image catalog than a minivan, let alone a Kia minivan. Even better, the Carnival is as great to drive as it is to lounge in, and like all minivans do, it combines the right level of form and function with technology and safety, all in a cost-effective package. So yeah, a luxe Kia minivan that looks genuinely cool, the Kia Carnival is our favorite surprise of 2021. It's been a long year with plenty of ups and downs, but through it all, we've loved making these videos, and we're grateful for you, the audience, because without you, none of this would be possible, and surely none of it would be worth doing. So head to the comments section and let us know what you thought were the best cars of 2021, and let us know what you're most excited to see over the coming year. Thank you. We'll see you next time.