The nine best road cars from the 1990s

23rd August 2022

Henry Biggs

Great things happened in the car world in the final decade of the 20^th Century. Not least of which was the creation of a small gathering of enthusiasts in West Sussex under the name of ‘The Festival of Speed’.

It was also the era when a lot of the innovations we now take for granted became established from airbags to ESC. Even fuel injection didn’t really displace the carburettor in new cars until then. We’ve already picked the best supercars, hot hatches and even homologation specials from the decade so it’s about time we talked about the normal(ish) stuff too.

Lotus Carlton (1990)

Normal-ish is exactly what the uninitiated might think of the Lotus Carlton at first glance, looking as it does much like the Vauxhall upon which it was based, certainly by the be-scooped and big-winged standards of today’s super saloons. GM had bought Lotus in 1987 and its then CEO Mike Kimberley suggested to his new overlords a mutually beneficial brand-building exercise similar to the Lotus Cortinas of the 1960s. It would also get its own Lotus type number, 104.

Vauxhall Carltons/Opel Omegas were taken off the assembly line in Germany and sent to Hethel where their straight-six engines were enlarged to 3.6-litres and gained two intercooled Garrett T25 turbochargers, raising output to 382PS (281kW) and 568Nm (419lb ft), both well in excess of the contemporary BMW M5. Suspension and brakes were likewise reworked by Lotus and power fed to the rear wheels via a Corvette ZR-1 sourced six-speed manual. A supercar-slaying saloon with a top speed above 180mph prompted much predictable hand wringing among the Daily Mail classes – the newspaper tried to have it banned – but even the motoring press thought it excessive, calling for its top speed to be restricted.

Fiat Coupe (1993)

Here’s a hot take; have any car designers’ creations aged better than Chris Bangle’s? So disliked at the time that there were public petitions calling for BMW to sack him, yet today they look handsome, muscular and well proportioned. Before Bavaria, the American-born Bangle worked at Fiat’s Centro Stile at a point when the company was looking for a coupe based on the Tipo platform that could be built at the Pininfarina factory, vacant after the collapse of the Cadillac Allante project.

Pininfarina put up its own design against the Bangle-led in-house effort which won. Pininfarina would subsequently sell its design to Peugeot where it became the 406 Coupe. Looking like nothing else on the road at the time, it is easy in retrospect to see early design cues that would later take their place in BMW concept and production cars. The Coupe was initially available with the Fiat-Lancia 2.0-litre twin cam including the turbocharged variant that was dominating global rally stages in the Lancia Delta Integrale. Later versions got naturally aspirated and turbocharged five-cylinder engines, the latter with 220PS (162kW) and a limited-slip diff.

Audi RS2 (1995)

The Ur-Quattro might have been the first modern performance Audi but it was the car to which it donated its engine that founded the ‘RS’ lineage, and it was built by Porsche. The Stuttgart sports car maker was chosen because Audi at the time lacked the relevant expertise. And as luck would have it Porsche was looking for a new product to replace the Mercedes 500E it had built on its Rossle-Bau production line. And because clearly a fast estate is the best of all things, the Audi 80 Avant was the starting point.

The shells were built by Audi before being sent to Zuffenhausen where they received the brakes, wheels and tyres from a Porsche 968 Clubsport and, for some reason, the wing mirrors from a 964 Turbo. Meanwhile the five-cylinder engine was heavily breathed on with a bigger turbo, intercooler and injectors as well as a new camshaft to produce 315PS (232kW), still the second highest specific output of any Volkswagen Group engine. It would fling the Audi RS2 to 62mph in less than five seconds and to 30mph in 1.5, quicker than a McLaren F1.

Honda Integra Type R (1995)

The Integra first debuted in the mid-1980s as a sportier and more luxurious variant of the Civic line. A decade later and it was into its third generation, at which point Honda decided to dial the sporty all the way to 11. And as ever with Honda, this was done with impeccable attention to detail and the best kind of engineering nerdiness.

By that we mean a chassis with extra spot welds to increase stiffness, weight taken out thanks to less sound insulation, a ten per cent thinner windscreen, lighter wheels and an engine with an 8,700rpm redline. That engine was a handbuilt 1.8-litre VTEC inline-four with high compression pistons, ported and polished intake and undercut valves. It produced close to 200PS (147kW) and fed power to the front wheels via a close-ratio five-speed gearbox and limited-slip diff. Capable of reaching 60mph in just over six seconds the Integra Type R is still proclaimed the best handling front-wheel drive car of all time.

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Lotus Elise (1996)

We’ve written before about cars so bad they killed off their makers but it’s almost impossible to read a modern article about the first generation Lotus Elise without it being dubbed ‘that car that saved Lotus’. Determining whether that is true or not is the scope for a very different and boring article about revenues, profits, losses and taxation of small Norfolk-based engineering firms.

We’re here to talk about the car which had the distinction of being ground-breaking and also utterly faithful to Lotus’ heritage of innovative engineering and lightweight ethos. Extruded aluminium was bonded together to create a stiff, lightweight chassis that relatively simple powertrain components could be bolted into and topped with a Julian Thomson-designed body of absolute rightness. Weighing just 725kg, a 1.8-litre revvy Rover K-series engine was enough for a new generation of drivers to discover the joys of delicate steering and pin sharp handling.

Porsche Boxster (1996)

Here’s another one credited with saving its company, although we would probably give that accolade to the Cayenne which appeared in 2003. Actually, what saved Porsche was Toyota, the Stuttgart company consulting the world’s largest car maker for help with cost-cutting and parts sharing. And if you’ve ever wondered why the Boxster and 996 generation 911 share the same nose, now you know.

The Boxster – a portmanteau off ‘boxer’ referencing its flat-six engine and ‘roadster’ for its two-seat, droptop layout – was revealed as a concept in 1993, its design based on the 356 Speedster and 550 Spyders of yore. Mounted amidships were smaller-capacity versions of Porsche’s first water-cooled flat-six which would later appear in the 996. Small, light and relatively simple, the Boxster was an instant hit, becoming Porsche’s bestseller until the Cayenne came along.

Alfa Romeo 156 (1997)

The Alfa Romeo 155 will always have a special place in our hearts thanks to the bonkers DTM version, but it was looking decidedly early-1990s angular by the middle of the decade. Its replacement, the 156, was designed by Walter da Silva at the company’s Centro Stile and happily harked back to Alfas of old with its heart-shaped grille surrounded by 158-style cutouts, deeply recessed instruments and hidden rear door handles for a coupe-like look.

Powered by the venerable Alfa Twin Cam or almost equally as senior Busso V6 the 156 brought some Italian verve to bear against the typical triumvirate of Audi A4, BMW 3 Series and Mercedes C-Class, picking up the Car of the Year award in 1998. The Sportwagon estate version looked even better and you could buy it in range-topping GTA form.

Ford Puma (1997)

There was a time in the 1990s when manufacturers would coupe all the things, much as every car is currently either an SUV or about to become one. The Ford Puma was based on the then current mark four Fiesta, itself not a bad starting point as Ford had rediscovered its handling mojo during the decade thanks to the first-generation Focus.

Ford’s New Edge styling was toned down somewhat from the Ka and the Fiesta’s underpinnings lent themselves nicely to a handsome, well-proportioned coupe with a wider track, stiffer suspension and close-ratio gearbox. The Puma’s engines were co-developed by Yamaha, with the 1.7-litre version being sent to Japan as rough-cast blocks for completion before being shipped back to be installed into the cars. Europe-wide over 130,000 Pumas were sold over five years. We really like the current, small SUV Ford Puma but still hanker after the original.

Honda Insight (1999)

Toyota deserves the plaudits for launching the first production hybrid car, even though the engineering approach has become much more focused on performance than economy these days. Honda missed out on the accolade by a couple of years but there is no doubt its effort was the more interesting and innovative. It was, for a start, a two-seater and, while no sports car, came with a manual transmission.

Providing power created by internal combustion was a 1.0-litre inline-three which made extensive use of aluminium, magnesium and plastic in its construction to save weight. Producing just 68PS (50kW), it was boosted to 74PS (54kW) by an electric motor with the aim of reproducing the typical power of a 1.5-litre engine. Housed in an aerodynamically optimised (0.25 Cd) body that weighed around a third less than a Prius, the Insight was until 2015 the most fuel-efficient vehicle the US Environmental Protection Agency had ever tested.