10 cars we're looking forward to in 2025

It’s a strange time for the car industry so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the cars we’re most looking forward to in 2025 makes for an eclectic mix including sports cars, compact hatchbacks and family-friendly SUVs. 

With manufacturers rowing back on very bold combustion engine phase-out deadlines amid lacklustre EV demand, there’s a slew of petrol-electric hybrid cars on the horizon that weren’t originally part of their makers’ plans. 

Of course, there are still plenty of hotly anticipated electric cars here but there are also numerous models that retain the familiar old suck, squeeze, bang and blow method of propulsion. 

So without further ado the cars we’re most looking forward to in 2025 are: 

Dacia Bigster

Not content with calling one of its cars Jogger, Dacia’s naming department has gone rogue once more. The result is known as the Dacia Bigster but looking beyond the daft name there’s plenty to be interested in here. 

It’s the Romanian brand’s biggest ever SUV, set to take on the Nissan Qashqai while being quite a bit cheaper and almost certainly less boring. With what looks like an abundance of ground clearance, it should even be half decent on rougher ground — certainly better than most SUVs of a similar size. 

Aesthetically the relationship with the smaller Dacia Duster is clear. That’s no bad thing — we’re big fans of that car’s new, chunkier look. The Duster’s Bigster brother (sorry) should land in the UK during spring. 

Fiat Grande Panda

Although it arguably kept the last Fiat Panda going a little too long — who can forget that infamous zero-star Euro NCAP crash test? — we were nonetheless sad to see the plucky little city car leave showrooms. But for 2025 it’s back! Well, sort of.

What you’re looking at here is the Fiat Grande Panda which is best thought of as a Citroen e-C3 that’s more into tiramisu than macarons. 

Since the previous-generation Panda came out, Fiat has been absorbed into the huge Stellantis group of brands which has resulted in some of the most prolific platform sharing ever seen.

In the case of the Fiat Grande Panda that means the use of the new Smart Car platform — apparently no one at Stellantis thought that’d lead to confusion with the wholly unrelated Smart brand… As well as the Citroen e-C3 they’re essentially the same underpinnings in use by the Vauxhall Frontera, the Citroen C3 Aircross and many more models still in the pipeline. 

Stellantis has done a reasonable job of retaining a decent amount of character for each brand’s cars despite all the homogenisation going on and the Fiat Grande Panda certainly looks the part. And no, it won’t only be available as an EV — the Smart Car platform can take engines too, so you’ll also be able to have one with a 1.2-litre three-cylinder engine and mild hybrid assistance. 

Honda Prelude

Despite being revealed in concept form, it won’t be possible to drive the all-new Honda Prelude in 2025. We should see it in full production guise, though, hopefully with minimal changes to make this slinky number showroom-ready. 

It’s a real surprise to see a mainstream manufacturer like Honda to launch a fresh coupe in this day and age, and we’re all for it.

Its engine and gearbox will also prove to be a talking point. The Prelude will get a version of the Honda Civic’s hybrid powertrain but to add driver engagement its single-speed electric transmission will have simulated gear ratios that the driver can manually operate via steering wheel paddles.

Hyundai Inster

Simply because of its adorable looks we love the Hyundai Inster already, without having driven it. Besides its small, boxy charms it’s also going to be a very affordable EV with a starting price of £23,495, yet comes with a healthy 229-mile range figure. 

Having gotten frankly quite bored of the succession of expensive electric SUVs in the last few years, cars like the Inster and its rivals including the Citroen e-C3 are a breath of fresh air. Here’s hoping for more of this sort of thing in 2025 and beyond. 

Jeep Recon

In terms of off-road prowess the Jeep Wrangler is hard to beat. The only problem is on the asphalt, where you’ll spend most of the time, it’s rather less pleasant. That’s what makes the incoming Jeep Recon particularly interesting.

It will still be able to handle chunky trails but as it’s based on the Stellantis STLA Large Car platform rather than an old-school body-on-frame arrangement, it should make for a far nicer vehicle to drive most of the time. 

Although the headline-grabbing one will be all electric, the underpinnings can also take hybridised combustion engines, so we’re not expecting it to be EV-only like the forthcoming Jeep Wagoneer S will be.

The Jeep Recon will also have removable doors like the Wrangler, although driving without them is probably going to be less fun on a rainy journey around the M25 than when bouncing down a rough track in Utah. 

Kia EV5

We’re big fans of Kia’s futuristic-looking electric SUVs, so 2025’s arrival of the Kia EV5 has our appetites whetted. As keen mathematicians may rightly assume, EV5 will slot between the chunky Kia EV3 and the much sleeker Kia EV6.

It’s about the same size as the Kia Sportage, which is also being facelifted in 2025 to give it a similar front to the EV5.

The UK is a little late to the party in receiving the Chinese-built Kia EV5 which has been on sale in other markets for a while now. It’s expected to offer good value, a healthy equipment list and decent range figures wrapped up in that appealing, boxy body. 

Jaguar 'Type 01'

There was such a furore over that colourful, baffling rebranding video that the Jaguar Type 00 concept car revealed a little later was somewhat overshadowed. Still, it’s certainly a striking design and represents one hell of a gamble for Jaguar which has already ended production of all of its ranges. 

Whether you agree with the company’s new direction or not, it will be fascinating to see how all of this pans out. We’ll get a better idea of how the company’s future looks when the four-door production version of the concept is revealed later this year.

It will be toned down for production but is still likely be pretty outlandish. This is, after all, a car expected to have a six-figure price tag. As for its name nothing has been confirmed — Jaguar Type 01 feels like a logical punt given the concept’s zero-zero tag.

Porsche Boxster Electric & Cayman Electric

Making an electric car really, really fast is relatively simple. Making an electric car fun to drive, on the other hand, is more difficult. Aside from the lack of engine noise, you have to contend with the hefty weight figures associated with big battery packs. And weight is the enemy of fun. 

Porsche has its work cut out for it in making all-electric successors for today’s 718 Boxster and 718 Cayman, then. We’ll see the fruits of its labours at some point in 2025 which will involve an all-new platform that places the batteries behind the driver rather than underneath as is usually the way with EVs.

The benefits are twofold — for one, the cars will have a similar weight distribution to their combustion-engined predecessors, plus it means the driver can sit nice and low, just as they should in a sports car. 

BYD Sealion 7

This really isn’t going to be a good year for car names, is it? We shouldn’t be surprised in the case of the Sealion 7 - which sounds like boyband made up of large anthropomorphised aquatic mammals — as BYD has form in this regard.

Don’t forget the BYD Dolphin and BYD Seal are already sold here — plus there’s the Hyundai Inster-sized BYD Seagull waiting in the wings, so to speak.

Anyway, if you can live with the name — at least BYD has stopped slapping 'Build Your Dreams' on the rear of its cars — the Sealion 7 looks like a very tempting alternative to the likes of the Tesla Model Y and even some of the cheaper versions of the Audi Q6 e-tron Sportback and Porsche Macan Electric cousins. 

What’s more, it will have stacks of equipment, and the starting price of £44,990 is very competitive. The versions with the biggest battery packs will be able to travel up to 311 miles on a charge according to the official figures which should make for a decent real-world range of about 250 miles.

Polestar 5

As if the Tesla Model S didn’t have enough to worry about in 2025 besides its age, it will also need to contend with the Polestar 5. The debut of this car has been delayed a fair bit already to the end of 2025 but, by the looks of it, the wait will have been worthwhile. 

Volvo’s electric offshoot brand has some attention-grabbing headline figures of 884PS and 900Nm in its arsenal, although less-pokey single-motor models will follow.

It also looks the business but like the Polestar 4 it controversially lacks a rear windscreen — instead it relies on a backwards-pointing camera to provide a feed to a screen where the rear-view mirror would otherwise be.