I drove a lot of vehicles in 2024. To be exact, I got behind the wheel of 31 crossovers, nine sedans, eight coupes, seven convertibles, seven pickup trucks, four SUVs, three liftbacks, two minivans, two hatchbacks, one bonafide supercar… and two motorcycles. All in all, that works out to 76 vehicles tested… which is a lot. OK, technically there are two cars I’m slated to drive this year that I haven’t completed testing of, but that’s just a small detail.
Anyway, over the year, I’ve meticulously tracked data about the cars I’ve driven: How much I tested them, where I tested them, their MSRP, their engine size, what transmission they have, their drive wheels, their power numbers, their 0-60 times, their body style and the country that produced them are all on a spreadsheet I’ve curated since I started this job three years ago. Because I’ve got all of this data, I can look to see what the “average” vehicle I drove this year was: a mid-size crossover with a $107,846 MSRP, 415 horsepower, 431 lb-ft of torque and a 0-60 time of about 5.2 seconds. It also only had 3.95 wheels because of the two motorcycles I rode. Still, it’s an interesting look at where the car market is these days.
These numbers don’t tell quite the whole story of the market, though. I drove over $8.1 million worth of vehicles in 2024, and their median price broke down to a slightly more reasonable $78,090. Of course, there were outliers. The two Honda I rode cost around $8,000, each, and the most expensive car I drove, the McLaren 750S, stickered at $421,000. Something else to note is that with press cars, automakers tend to loan out cars with every option, so it makes sense why these prices are a bit inflated.
There was also a ton of variance when it came to the drivetrain. Of the 76 vehicles I drove, the majority had internal combustion engines, but nearly three dozen of them had some sort of electrical component, whether they were a full EV or a hybrid of some sort. That’s very telling of where the new car market is heading. Similarly, AWD and 4WD were by far the most frequent drive wheels for cars I’ve driven this year. Of the cars I drove, 60 were either AWD or 4WD. six were RWD, and eight were FWD. With the advent of electric cars and crossovers, we’re going to see those AWD numbers continue to climb. When it comes to transmissions, it’s a similar story. The plurality of cars I drove this year had one-speed automatics, meaning they were electric cars. Just four vehicles (not including the two bikes) had manuals. That makes me rather sad.
The cars I drove this year were just a tiny snippet of what’s available out there, but they do give a glimpse into where the auto industry is now, and where it’s headed. Pretty soon, those meager manual transmission numbers will dwindle even further, and we’ll see even more one-speed automatics. Prices will probably continue to trend upward, as will power numbers, while 0-60 times will get lower and lower.
I’m just glad I was able to capture it all on one big spreadsheet. If you’re a data dork like I am, this stuff is a lot of fun. Let’s see where things end up next year.
