(Bloomberg) -- One thing I love about my job is the variety of vehicles that come my way. One week I’ll be driving a stoplight yellow Porsche up a mountain highway; the next week I’ll be crab-walking an electric Hummer in the Arizona desert.  

The good ones all have certain things in common: the ability to deliver from behind the wheel what their aesthetics promise from the exterior, and the ability to do that at a fair price within the competitive set. This year proved delightfully diverse.

Here are the best of what I drove—and why—in several categories.

Sports Car: Ferrari 296 GTB

I’m a sucker for a historic reference, so I was probably already halfway gone when I got behind the wheel of the Ferrari 296 GTB last March in Seville, Spain. This was the first time Ferrari had put a V6 engine in a production car since it stopped making the painfully stylish mid-engine Dino in 1976. The 296 GTB has some great performance numbers: Its hybrid engine achieves 819 horsepower and gets to 62 mph in 2.9 seconds. Top speed is 205 mph. The 296 GTB is even faster around Ferrari’s test track in Fiorino, Italy, than the $1.5 million LaFerrari. But it will also suit those who would like to drive it off-track, even daily. You can toggle through drive modes to help accommodate surface conditions; the front splitter will easily clear divots and dips in the road; the seats and chassis are less stiff than what we’ve come to expect in Ferrari supercars like the half-million-dollar SF90 Stradale.

Back when it debuted in the 70s, the Dino was an entry-level afterthought in Ferrari’s portfolio. With those performance numbers and a starting price of $318,000, the 296 GTB is not entry-level. But it still beats the Lamborghini Aventadors which have roughly the same numbers but cost several hundred thousand dollars more. For what it’s worth, these days original Dino prices routinely brush $500,000 - $600,000 on BringaTrailer.com. The way I see it, the 296 GTB is practically a steal.

Sedan: Rolls-Royce Phantom II

I love how unapologetic this car is, and Rolls-Royce for making it. The Rolls-Royce Phantom Series II is longest-running nameplate of the 116-year-old brand. Promoters say it represents the most quiet and luxurious a car can be if pricing is no object, and it just about lives up to that promise. It boasts a 563-horsepower V12 engine, 12 mpg in the city, and a price tag that, for most buyers, will approach $700,000. Still with me? Great. Because if you can get past those figures, you’re in for a treat.

More than a car, Phantom II represents an entire lifestyle. This year Phantom II offers new headlamps with 820 tiny bezel-cut stars surrounding them, new wheel options, and a slightly shifted grille, but its main focus is on letting clients do even more to make the car feel like their own. (That’s where the astronomical pricetag comes in: hand-hewn woods, sumptuous wools and specially-made silks aren’t cheap, especially when you want them colored to your own exact specifications.) Even normal-ish things here cost a lot: up-lighting on the Spirit of Ecstasy ($4,950), elevated footrests ($6,325), a rear theater ($14,525), refrigerated Champagne cooler ($3,500), 22-inch forged black disc wheels ($13,000), and picnic tables covered in wood veneer of your choosing ($4,100) are some of the more conventional options.

Unapologetic, indeed. But as I wrote in my review, you won’t just feel special when riding inside the Phantom’s vault-like confines; you’ll feel superior.

SUV: Audi Q4 e-Tron

It’s difficult to make a midsize family SUV interesting, let alone memorable. They often remind me of a Labrador Retriever–reliable, stable, safe, but kind of interchangeable. So it’s unique to drive one that I even remember four months later. But I still think about the Audi Q4 e-Tron, and not just because of how proud Audi’s designers were of it. Audi’s new EV Q4 comes in two forms: the Q4 e-Tron, which has a more traditional rear end shaped like a softly rounded rectangle, and the Q4 e-Tron Sportback, which has a sportier (sleeker) rear roofline. They both get 241 miles of driving range and can do 0-60mph in 5.8 seconds with a top speed of 112mph. Driving range in both is 265 miles per charge under the best conditions. The Sportback costs roughly $3,000 more.

The Q4 e-Tron drives as sure-footedly and strongly as any of the others in the excellent e-Tron lineup. But it was the attention paid to the interior setup and build quality that made it feel superior to the electric SUVs from Tesla and Cadillac. A healthy mix of touchscreens, buttons, and knobs gave it a futuristic but familiar feel. Bottle holders were set flush to the inside of each door; sideview mirrors were shifted to allow more sightlines around the front and sides of the vehicle. There was ample head- and legroom in the back and a generous 54.4-cubic feet of storage in the rear with the seats folded flat. It basically felt like the parents of the world had sat down and made a list of the things they wanted in an electric SUV in 2022, and Audi made that.

Priced at $48,800, less than the comparable Q5 Sportback, the Q4 e-Tron bodes well for more EVs from Audi.

Convertible: Mercedes-AMG SL 

This year brought another modern take on a famous historic model, the Mercedes-Benz SL. (You know the one, it’s in half the driveways in upper middle class neighborhoods like Silverlake in LA and in plenty of holiday ads including, most recently, Gwyneth’s holiday ad that shows her driving a white one. I owned a 1988 560 SL, so I was very curious to see how the newfangled Mercedes-AMG SL version—yes, they all are convertibles—would compare.

It shares exactly zero components with its predecessors; the only thing they have in common is the name. But that didn’t bother me. My original SL was lucky to maintain 80 mph cruising speed on the highway. But this new one, I had to actively rein in. It comes with a V8 bi-turbo engine that gets 577 hp with 590 pound-feet of torque. It has a 0-60 mph time of 3.5 seconds and a top speed of roughly 200mph. As I wrote in my review, the S L exhibited thrilling torque, stability, and balance, thanks in part to a new AMG-developed architecture, a complex composite chassis that maximizes rigidity, and a first-ever AMG-tuned all-wheel drive. It drives great.

The new SL has two back seats and comes only with a soft-top that deploys in 15 seconds. (The original offers a removable hardtop but no rear seats.) Total trunk space tops out at less than eight cubic feet, about enough to hold a golf bag and a duffel bag–perfect for a holiday retreat. Pricing starts at $137,400, about what you’d spend on a competitor like the Porsche 911 Carrera S Cabriolet.

Hypercar: Rimac Nevera

Pure electric hypercars, while technically real, are still sort of a hypothetical. Only a very few have been made. It’s impossible to know exactly how many, since these companies don’t have to release production numbers, but safe to say there are fewer than 100 in customer hands worldwide. I’ve driven a couple of them and eagerly anticipate more. The best among their lot is the Rimac Nevera, the 1,914-horsepower beast that just broke the record for the fastest EV on the planet. (Top speed: 256mph; 0 to 60 mph is 1.85 seconds.) It costs $2.1 million. It looks like something you’d want to drive to Las Vegas during the height of F1 next year and have all your high school enemies watch you arrive. It’s the opposite of a necessity.

But it does accomplish an important task: Making us all excited about what electric power can do. Better yet, in founder Mate Rimac and partial owner Porsche it has the stalwart, steady leadership and powerful backing it needs to ensure its long-term viability and success. I look forward to what comes next.

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