Our annual awards cut through the crowded market of more than 300 cars, trucks, SUVs, and vans to find the 10 that live up to their purpose while delivering incredible value and a great driving experience.
At 40 years old, our 10Best award remains fit, vigorous, and full of automotive goodness. Our keenest readers will immediately notice that 2022 adds several new vehicles to our list of favorites, which means a few of last year's winners have been vanquished.
What makes our award different is that a vehicle can earn and then maintain a position on the list year after year. A 10Best nod also ensures that the cars and trucks so honored aren't just the best of what's new but the best of what's for sale for less than our base-price cutoff of $90,000.
For two full weeks, former winners face new cars and trucks. After driving, probing, climbing into third rows, opening trunks, learning infotainment systems, doing instrumented testing, and taking diligent notes, we score each vehicle on a 100-point scale. The cars and trucks that emerge all have something unique, a special power that makes them better than the rest. Keep reading to see the 10Best heroes of 2022.
2022 Cadillac CT4-V Blackwing: Car and Driver 10Best
Perhaps you're thinking that the 472-hp Cadillac CT4-V Blackwing is a mere sidekick to the 668-hp CT5-V Blackwing. This notion, while seemingly logical, is quite wrong. Even those staffers who prefer the larger Blackwing admit that the smaller Blackwing is a spectacular car in its own right. Now, staff opinion is not unanimous on the subject, but by the end of 10Best testing, the true believers stood up to proffer that the CT4-V Blackwing is the better sports sedan of the two.
To make that case, they first pointed to the CT4's $59,990 base price, a major $27,100 less than the bigger Blackwing. The smaller-is-better crowd also pointed to the CT4's 3851-pound curb weight—279 pounds less than the CT5-V Blackwing—and tidier dimensions. Less is more, they said, before quoting the psalms according to Colin Chapman in the book of Lotus, Chapter 7.
Out on the twisting and often scabbard 10Best loop, the CT4-V Blackwing makes an even more compelling case for itself. Magnetic dampers heal broken pavement while keeping the tires in constant and reliable contact with the road. Through the corners, the CT4 flows more gracefully, turns in more eagerly, and moves with a deftness that its big brother can't quite match. Confidence born of clear feedback from the steering and chassis builds until you're exploiting nearly all of the 1.01 g of grip. Stomping the firm brake pedal bites off huge chunks of speed without a hint of fade.
The twin-turbo 3.6-liter doesn't roar or dial up speeds the way the CT5's 6.2-liter V-8 can, but the V-6 also doesn't constantly light up the rear tires or have the traction-control system crying for mercy. Driving a CT5-V Blackwing in the rain is hilarious—but in the same way that watching people slip on ice is kind of funny, you sadist. There's a six-speed manual, proof that Cadillac cares deeply about those of us who love cars, and a prescient 10-speed automatic transmission for those of us who suffer in traffic. With the manual, 60 mph is gone in 4.0 seconds, the quarter passes in 12.4 at 116 mph, and the V-6 gets titanium connecting rods. General Motors promises a 189-mph top speed.
Numbers are important, but what lofts this Cadillac onto the 10Best list is the joy it brings you with every move. You could drive it every day and revel in the solidity, refinement, and comfort, but that would be wasting its potential when every primary control is alive and begging you to push harder, to go faster, to revel in the dopamine rush of a perfectly clipped apex or a seamless heel-toe downshift. No, it doesn't have a great interior; it looks more like a Chevrolet rental than a luxury car should, but at least things work as expected. Function uber form, as the Germans like to say.
Buying this car says you understand and know the difference between what has a good reputation and what's actually good. It's a vote for hardware over marketing. Cadillac put the driver's needs and wants over everything else, and the result is a sports sedan that will delight and impress for years to come, at least in part because nothing like it is likely to come along again.
2022 Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing: Car and Driver 10Best
As far as we know, Vegas oddsmakers don't take wagers on the winners of our 10Best list. But if they did, the Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing likely would have been an odds-on favorite. Its stats are certainly impressive. All right, they're staggering: a supercharged 6.2-liter V-8 making 668 horsepower and 659 pound-feet of torque and burdened with just over two tons of curb weight, a standard six-speed manual transmission, and the purity of rear-wheel drive.
Regular readers might have laid money on a 10Best appearance for Cadillac's new supersedan after our first instrumented test, wherein we called the CT5-V Blackwing "one of the best sports sedans not only in recent memory but ever made."
The odds probably would have increased further after the CT5-V Blackwing vanquished the BMW M5 Competition and the Audi RS7 in a comparison test, racking up perfect scores in the categories of performance, steering feel, brake feel, handling, and ride.
Still, making C/D's 10Best list is never a given. A car has to prove its mettle at our two-week testing event (which saw 67 contenders this year) and effectively also must knock out one of the previous year's champs. The big-daddy Caddy, though, was the most talked-about car there, and the superlatives poured in: "Unbelievably quick and composed." "Takes your breath away." "Simply epic."
Perhaps another leading indicator was that the CT5-V Blackwing didn't come out of nowhere. The car is built on General Motors' Alpha architecture, which has given us keen driving machines such as the track-monster Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE and the 10Best-winning Cadillac CTS V-Sport. Even the regular CT5-V is a compelling sports sedan in its own right. More broadly, the CT5-V Blackwing is the culmination of a two-decades-long effort to create for Cadillac a world-beating sports sedan.
Well, it's here. The car has an insane powertrain and a chassis to match. GM's magnetorheological dampers do their usual brilliant work. Tactile, perfectly weighted steering makes an M3's steering feel synthetic by comparison. Underfoot, there's a fabulously firm brake pedal that doesn't need multiple modes, but it has them.
Of course, we love that the Blackwing comes standard with a six-speed manual transmission, which signals this car's uncompromising driver focus. But if its muscle-building clutch is too much for your traffic-clogged commute, there's always the 10-speed automatic. With the latter, the Blackwing hits 60 mph in 3.5 seconds and punches through the quarter-mile in 11.4 at 128 mph; the manual is 0.1 second and 3 mph behind.
As monumental as the performance is, there's more to the Blackwing. The cohesiveness of the controls sizzles your synapses even when you're exploiting just a fraction of the car's abilities. Granted, it's expensive, with an $87,090 base price, which easily limbos under our $90,000 cap (unlike its comparison-test challengers).
The electric supersedans that are arriving now, and the many more still to come, might surpass this car's test numbers, but it'll likely be more than just a few generations until they are as rewarding to drive as this Cadillac. The CT5-V Blackwing is one for the ages. So, yeah, it's a 10Best winner. Always bet on Superman.
2022 Chevrolet Corvette: Car and Driver 10Best
We love performance. But we also love saving money. That's why the Chevrolet Corvette's appeal, its superpower, and the quality that sets it apart from the hundreds of other cars, trucks, and SUVs on the market today that didn't get the votes, is one we hold dear: It's the best performance bargain. But should you be thinking that the Corvette is more about the deal than the business of going fast, it is flat-out quicker around a challenging track than anything else on the list, even the lighter and purer-driving Porsche Boxster and Cayman.
The Corvette delivers a supercar experience at a sports-car $62,195 starting price. And that next-level vibe extends beyond its go-fast abilities and test numbers. This eighth-generation Corvette has a no-excuses interior in its upper trim levels, with a nearly Italian flair to its multitiered and multicolored leather trim. Chevrolet also now offers more customization options than before, in terms of interior, brake-caliper paint, and, yes, even seatbelt colors. You can even choose your own VIN or take delivery at the National Corvette Museum, adjacent to the assembly plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The sea change in moving the engine behind the driver comes with some negatives, such as atrocious rear visibility and the lack of a manual transmission. But the mid-mounted engine hasn't harmed the Corvette's practicality; it retains a sizable rear trunk that will swallow a twosome's golf clubs.
Once you plop into the Corvette's driver's seat—entry into its low cockpit is often more fall than fluid—its powers are now yours. A narrow driver's area and the tall wall of buttons bisecting the cabin keep things focused on the seat where the best stuff happens. The 490- or 495-hp 6.2-liter V-8, combined with the launch-control abilities of the dual-clutch automatic and the newfound traction from the mid-engine layout, enables blasts to 60 mph in 2.8 seconds. Sharp steering makes it easy to slice and dice corners at up to its heady 1.03-g cornering capability. Don't worry about going fast, because repeated stops from triple-digit speeds take place without the slightest fluster. No matter whether you've selected the targa or the convertible, the roof comes off should your mood go from lap times to cruise time.
It's not just the top that adapts to your mood. Whether you're using it for a dull commute or a weekend away and with or without the truly excellent optional adaptive dampers, the ride isolation and interior noise levels are almost mid-size-sedan pleasant.
This year marks the Corvette's 23rd time on the 10Best list. This latest one—more than anything else on the list and more than any Corvette before it—makes good on the design's superhero looks.
2022 Ford Bronco: Car and Driver 10Best
For decades, Jeep Wrangler buyers have settled for less because that's just the way things had to be if you wanted a go-anywhere four-by-four with roof and doors that could be removed. While there's an argument to be made that much of the Jeep's appeal lies in its antiquated charm, Ford's new Bronco proves that there is a much better way.
Whereas the Wrangler is stubbornly archaic, the Bronco is charismatically nostalgic. It effectively evokes the spirit of its ancestor—the beachy first-gen Bronco from the 1960s—while tweaking the formula just enough to be a modern SUV that's pleasant for daily driving. The Wrangler sticks with recirculating-ball steering and live axles front and rear; by contrast, the Bronco's more modern rack-and-pinion steering and independent front suspension make it far more comfortable and refined on the road without sacrificing much rock-crawling capability.
We didn't choose the Bronco for this award simply because it's a better Wrangler—it's much more. Brimming with personality, it represents a triumph of smart ideas, clever engineering, and good timing. Though the Bronco name had been gone from Ford dealerships for about two decades, its return has inspired a level of fanaticism seen only in rare moments when a much-anticipated new release actually lives up to the hype.