By now, you will have welcomed 2018 no matter in which part of the world you may reside - and it goes without saying that we wish you all the best for the new year.
Now, the issue with writing articles such as this one is that, if you've been doing it for quite some time, at some point you run out of ideas. So you start ruminating about how you could greet your visitors without repeating the same thing over and over again.
At the same time, we are always paying attention to the statistics, so we can see what you like the most; and while, generally, we do have an idea if an article is going to prove popular or not, there always seem to be a number of unexpected ones that draw a surprisingly big number of readers. Now that 2017 is officially gone, we have the overall numbers about the past year's Top 10 stories. So, without further ado, here's the list, starting from number 10 and ending at the most read article of the past 365 days.
#10 BMW Stops Sales Of i3 And Issues Voluntary Recall Of All Models
A surprise, this one, for a number of reasons: first of all, it was published near the end of November, which didn't give it much exposure time compared to other articles. Second, it doesn't have to do with a battery fire issue or something like that, which we would expect of a full stop-sale issued by BMW for its electric hatchback, but a difference in a specific crash test scenario between the NHTSA's results and the automaker's own data. Guess BMWs are always popular and, even though EV sales haven't skyrocketed, it was enough to arouse the public's interest.
#9 Future Cars: 2019 Ford Focus ST Brings Back The Styling Magic
A photo rendering of what the next Focus might look like. Nothing to write home about, right? Well, wrong, actually, because the Blue Oval's compact hatch is, obviously, very popular and, what's more, our own Josh Byrnes, who is the one behind this almost realistic creation, has a knack for getting things right. No wonder, then that our guesstimate at how the 2019 Focus will look, and at the sporty ST trim at that, ended so high up on the list.
#8 1975 Porsche 911 Turbo Continues To Tick Away After 725k Miles
A sports car created four decades ago that a. didn't sit in the garage but was driven on a daily basis, and b. is a Porsche 911 Turbo, cracking the 1 million km (621,000 mile) mark? Surely there's a catch here somewhere. Or not; in fact, the owner went on and the 911's odo currently reads 1,165,937 km (725,000 miles) - and not even getting hit by an SUV managed to stop him. We always knew the 911 was robust, but a 930 Turbo going so far is incredible!
#7 2017 New York Auto Show A-Z Debut Guide
Auto shows always attract lots of traffic, and this year's New York event had a lot of premieres, from the first-ever Civic Type R to be introduced to the North American market by Honda, to the first SUV in the history in Alfa Romeo, the McLaren 720S or Volvo's new XC60, to name but a few. And then there were some intriguing concepts, like that of the upcoming Mercedes-AMG GT saloon and the Genesis GV80 SUV, that really caught the audience's attention.
#6 2019 Mercedes-AMG G63 Looks Just About Ready For Prime Time
It's not accidental that the name of the site is CarSCOOPS, as uncovering future models well before they are officially launched is one of our prime targets. Yet, of all the scoops that were published last year, it was the 2019 Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen that, for some reason, attracted the most viewers - bar one, which you shall see shortly. Who would have thought that the successor to the long-in-the-tooth Merc 4x4 would prove so interesting...
#5 Your 2017 Geneva Motor Show A-To-Z Guide
Not all auto shows are equal, and when it comes this year's Geneva event, there were more than 150 world and European premieres, which is more than the Los Angeles, Detroit and Chicago motor shows combined. From an artillery of Porsches to the European-spec Kia Stinger or the Alfa Romeo Stelvio, there were so many important cars present it made perfect sense for the Swiss show to be so popular.
#4 An Off-Road Porsche 918 Spyder Looks Better Than A Cayenne
Now that's a surprise, if ever we saw one. Renderings do attract lots of readers, but something so unrealistic as a Porsche 918 Spyder turned into an off-roader is just a flight of fancy. Well, no one ever said that we should stick to what is, or about to become, real and not indulge in a little "what if", did they? Still, a 918 Spyder that would happily tackle Dakar... perhaps it's channeling the legendary 959, which did just that.
#3 Volvo Accidentally Reveals 2018 XC40 SUV!
The top-ranking of our 2017 scoops is Volvo's new compact SUV. The XC40 will be the reborn Swedish automaker's first foray in the popular segment, thus it's only natural for people to be paying attention. Volvo Hungary's staff apparently weren't, though, so we had the chance to see it in production form, both inside and out, before its official launch.
#2 Future Cars: 2018 Honda Accord Goes From Placid to Playful
One man's gain is another's loss, and when it comes to the automotive world, the rise and rise of the SUV has been at the expense of the traditional mid-size family saloon. Even so, though, the Accord is a mainstay of Honda's North American operations, so when we imagined how the next-gen would look, it attracted lots of readers, though we dare say that Josh's rendering was pretty exciting in and of itself.
#1 2017 Detroit Auto Show's A-Z Debut Guide
Geneva and Stuttgart or Paris might have been the most important automotive shows in the past, but in recent years we've seen the Detroit one, aka NAIAS, overtake them not just in reader's clicks, but in the models auto manufacturers choose to debut there. With the US alone being the second-largest car market in the world after China, it's reasonable for them to do so, too.
