The stars of the evo Eras tests – car pictures of the week

There are a number of boxes that need to be ticked to know you’ve got a great group test on your hands. While the cars are obviously the central component, it’s where you take them that’s the other side of the coin. Here are our favourite shots that celebrate both car and location from across the Eras tests.

The cars of course were a pre-requisite during all of the Eras tests, providing the broadest cross section of their respective decades that we could muster. While the locations and roads are the other major pieces of the puzzle, there is the caveat that even the best roads and most beautiful vistas can be compromised by challenging weather conditions and vice versa. From the North York Moors to North Wales, we were gifted on the Eras tests with both fantastic settings and great weather in which to enjoy them.

With the stages set, we were perfectly poised to conduct our observations over five decades of performance car evolution. The goal from the beginning was to work out what the era of peak performance cars was, or indeed, should a leftfield result prevail, whether the best is in the now or yet to come. Each of our testers had their own expectations, many were subverted. We think our conclusion may surprise many of you and of course, you can let us know what you think the best decade for performance cars was at eds@evo.co.uk. 

‘The first eras test was special. Perfect roads, crisp spring weather and a chance to get under the skin of six ’80s icons, cars my more senior colleagues earned their road-testing stripes in. Being evo’s resident whippersnapper, I’d be driving them all for the first time, and finding out whether the good old days really were as rosy as Dickie, John and Peter remembered. Turns out they might have been; I don’t think I’ve ever seen them smile so much on a shoot. It’s difficult to define any of the eras in blanket statements but the ’90s cars felt like a near-perfect meeting of useable performance, charisma and sheer desirability.’ – Yousuf Ashraf

‘We tried. We really did, But no matter which way we sliced it, the 2000s couldn’t be adequately represented with six cars. And so – much to the dismay of photographer Dean Smith – we went with seven. He should count himself lucky we stopped there, for we could have had ten cars and still not touched the sides. This glut of great ’00s candidates is indicative of what amounted to a gold rush for lovers of every high-performance genre. The ’10s was unique for me because I brought my 2016 Fiesta ST200 along to be part of the test. I felt a bit apprehensive as Yousuf, Sam and James headed off in turn to try the car, then proud when they returned to say how much they enjoyed it.’ – Richard Meaden