What Reviews and Buying Guides Does Drive Offer to Help Choose a Car?

Updated

Drive (drive.co.uk) publishes two kinds of editorial content to help you narrow down a car choice: model reviews grouped by body type, and buying guides grouped by use case. Both are free to read on the site and sit alongside the used-car listings and new lease offers, so you can move from "which car suits me" to "what does it cost" without leaving the site. The reviews cover specific models from Volkswagen Group brands and others, while the guides take the opposite approach — starting from a need (cheap to run, family-sized, electric) and naming the cars that fit.

Model reviews, organised by car type

Drive groups its reviews under four headings, which makes it easier to compare within a category rather than jumping between unrelated models.

Electric cars

  • CUPRA Born review
  • Volkswagen ID.3 review
  • Skoda Enyaq review
  • Audi Q4 e-tron review
  • Volkswagen ID.Buzz

Small SUVs

  • Skoda Kamiq review
  • Volkswagen T-Cross review
  • SEAT Arona review
  • Audi Q2 review
  • Volkswagen Taigo review

Hatchbacks

  • Volkswagen Golf review
  • Skoda Octavia review
  • SEAT Ibiza review
  • Volkswagen Polo review
  • Audi A1 review

Family SUVs

  • SEAT Ateca review
  • Volkswagen Tiguan
  • Skoda Kodiaq review
  • Audi Q7 review
  • CUPRA Formentor review

If you already have a shortlist of two or three models, reading the reviews side by side within one group is the fastest way to see how they differ. If you are still open on body type, start with the guides below instead.

Buying guides, organised by what you need

The guides answer a different question: not "what is this car like" but "which cars are best at this particular job". Drive's guide sections cover:

Guide group Examples
General car guides Best hybrid cars, best small cars, best family cars, best estate cars, best sports cars
EV guides Best electric cars, cheapest electric cars, best electric SUVs, best small electric cars, fastest electric cars
SUV guides Best SUVs, best small SUVs, best hybrid SUVs, best family SUVs, best 4x4s

A practical way to use these together: pick the guide that matches your budget and usage (for example, "best small electric cars" if you mostly drive in town), then read the individual model reviews for the two or three cars the guide highlights. That gives you a shortlist plus a detailed view of each contender.

Advice and running-cost data

Beyond reviews and "best of" lists, Drive carries reference pages that matter once you have a shortlist:

  • Car tax rates 2026
  • Cheapest cars to run
  • Cheapest cars to insure
  • What is Euro 6? (emissions standard explainer)
  • Your parking rights

These are the pages to check when two cars look equally good on paper but differ on ongoing cost or compliance — for example, whether a used diesel meets Euro 6 if you drive into a clean air zone, or how much tax a shortlisted model attracts.

How to move from research to a car

The editorial content is designed to feed into the listings rather than stand alone. A workable sequence:

  1. Start with a guide that matches your need — family car, small EV, cheap to run.
  2. Read the model reviews for the cars it names, using the car-type groups above to find them.
  3. Check the advice pages for tax, insurance and emissions on your final two or three.
  4. Search the listings by make and model, or browse by car type (electric, SUV, automatic, hatchback, estate, vans, 7 seaters, MPV), to see what is actually available.

Drive's listings cover used vehicles from Volkswagen Group and other authorised retailers, alongside new lease offers from Volkswagen Financial Services, and the site states that vehicles are warranty-backed and come from approved retailers. Finance options, monthly payment comparisons and affordability tools are also part of the site, so you can compare a purchase or lease on the same models you have been reading about.

One limitation worth knowing: the reviews and guides are editorial and brand-weighted toward Volkswagen Group marques (Volkswagen, Audi, SEAT, Škoda, CUPRA, Porsche, Bentley, Lamborghini), though other makes such as BMW, Ford, Kia, Toyota and Volvo appear in the brand list. If your shortlist is entirely outside that group, use the guides for general category advice but expect thinner model-level review coverage.