Enough with all these boring cars, give us something wild, confident and evocative in 2025

In the spirit of optimism, I wish 2025 to bring with it a renewed sense of confidence from European car design studios. Not to generalise, but the legacy brands that used to trade on design as much as engineering prowess haven’t exactly been blowing us away in recent years. However, there’s good reason to think that there’s a lot of cool stuff on the horizon.

BMW will be one of the biggest movers and shakers of 2025 thanks to a roll-out of its Neue Klasse generation that will revitalise its exterior design language, and completely reimagine interior design and digital interfaces. Jaguar’s high-profile return is causing lots of interest, and left-field player DS looks to finally have a confident ideology behind its new models that might finally take full advantage of its unique association with Parisian luxury – if it works for bags, why not electric cars?

But it’s actually the mainstream brands that have the biggest plays at hand. Volkswagen’s ID.2all, or ID.Polo as we think it’ll be called, will need to blow our socks off when it finally arrives at the tail end of 2025. Skoda and Cupra will draw from this same renewed sense of purpose, and don’t rule out Citroen and Renault from bringing back some real Gallic innovation to the family and small car classes. 

Are we asking too much to expect true innovation and charm from brands that increasingly need to fight for every percentage point of market share? Maybe, but they’ll need to step it up or prepare to face a slow decline into irrelevance. 

Which upcoming car are you most excited about? Tell us in the comments section below...