Don’t you ever get nostalgic for the days when some new cars were really terrible? Gearsticks coming off in your hand, rust showing before you’d even had the first oil change done – the kind of thing that wasn’t uncommon when CAR magazine was founded. It’s not like we’d want to buy a shocker ourselves, you understand, but we’d love it if they were still available so that other people could. And then we’d be able to wince as they drove past, wondering what the owner could have been thinking.

But it’s been 14 years since CAR last dished out a one-star review (the 2011 Cadillac Escalade Hybrid, since you asked), and even two-star maulings are relatively uncommon in 2024. Modern cars, like the limited colour palettes on their online configurators, tend to come in shades of grey, punctuated, thankfully, by the odd, welcome highlight. Three-star reviews? Take your pick.

No truly bad cars doesn’t, however, mean no disappointments. Any car that fails to hit the modest heights of four stars, let alone five, is leaving something to be desired. Or leaving four cylinders back in the R&D workshop in the case of the Mercedes-AMG C63 S E Performance, which swapped a 503bhp twin-turbo 4.0-litre V8 for a technically spectacular 2.0-litre, four-cylinder hybrid that cranks out 671bhp.
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The new C63, which we first drove in Spain last year, but has only recently made its way to dealers in the UK and US, is rapid and refined, and the addition of all-wheel drive for the first time means it’s usable in all weathers. But it also means it weighs as much as Benz’s own GLE SUV. Or the same as an old C63 with four donut enthusiasts on board. It feels heavy and sounds dull. Sorry, planet, but can we have our burbly V8s back and just plant a few more trees instead, please?

That’s a question some Dodge fans are asking after the company revealed its new Charger, which comes in two and four doors and with petrol and electric powertrains, but never more than six cylinders. Dodge is pushing the EV message hard to its classic muscle car customers, which is a bit like trying to flog fruit juice at Oktoberfest, and will deliver the electric versions first. Frustratingly, the combustion cars people will want (and are more likely to be able to afford) to buy don’t arrive until next year.

BMW’s latest M5, on the other hand, hangs on to its V8 while also adding a hybrid system. Thought the C63 was tubby? The seventh-generation M5 packs on almost an extra half tonne for a total kerbweight of 2435kg. That’s two 1980s BMW M3s and change.

Unlike the C63, we’ve yet to drive the M5 in final production trim, so will have to reserve final judgement until we do. But the fact that the new M5 is slower to 60mph than the car it replaces and has a worse power-to-weight ratio despite cramming 100 additional horses under the bonnet hardly bodes well.

Porsche at least knows how to hybridise a car without it looking like it’s developed a thyroid issue. The clever electric assistance package in the latest 911 GTS carries a modest 50kg weight penalty and, according to our review, genuinely adds to the driving experience.

Sadly, it also takes something away, that being the clutch pedal. The GTS’s hybrid kit is too complex to work with a manual transmission (something also missing from the new Dodge Charger). And since the only other new 992.2-generation 911 on sale, the disappointingly little-changed entry-level Carrera, is only available with a PDK paddleshift ’box, as are the carryover GT3 RS and Turbo, for the first time in the model’s 60-year history, you can’t buy a 911 and row your own gears. We’ll wait for next year’s stick-shift Carrera S, thanks.

And we’d wait until you’ve had a chance to try the new Porsche Boxster EV that makes its debut later this year before signing your life – or the next three years of it – away on an MG Cyberster. It’s great to see the MG badge back on something that looks this exciting, but the driving experience doesn’t quite match the hype or the £54k-£60k price.

To give credit to MG, it says the Cyberster is supposed to be a cruisey GT, not a hero’s sports car, and we’d say the cushy ride and near-silent electric drivetrain mean it nailed that brief. But if you build the first MG roadster in 20 years, make it the quickest road car in the firm’s 100-year history (3.2sec to 62mph in its speediest form), and give the thing Lamborghini doors, you’re in danger of over-promising. And the MG does.

But not on the scale of the new Ford Capri. Having already hijacked the Mustang’s name and styling cues to sprinkle some borrowed credibility onto one electric crossover, Ford has done the same with its 1960s European copycat, the Capri, a Cortina-based coupe marketed on its debut as ‘the car you always promised yourself’.

That line was disingenuous then – the Capri was just a boring Cortina saloon in running shoes, and most were much slower than they looked. But we can see why Ford didn’t add the slogan to its shopping basket this year when it went raiding its own archive for the oval side window and black grille and quad headlight treatment it applied to what is effectively a fastback version of the Explorer SUV. No one has spent years lusting after a doughy-looking EV, especially not one that makes such a half-hearted attempted to trade on past glories.

The final disappointment of the year at this mid-point check-in is, perversely, a car that also still impresses in so many areas as much as it did when we first drove it in 2017. It’s the Tesla Model 3. But seven years on, we should be talking about an all-new Tesla Model 3 that really moves the game on, not a mildly revised car that takes several backwards steps.

Some might like the beakier, blander new nose; we think it’s worse, but dislike other aspects more. A bit of extra sound deadening and some ambient dashboard lights can’t obscure the glaring omission of a hatchback boot, or the facelifted ‘Highland’ 3’s infuriating steering-wheel-mounted indicator controls and the virtual gearstick that lives in the touchscreen.

But the Model 3 gets so much right that those missteps only lopped one star from an available five in our review. Our search for a real dud continues.