As electric cars continue to gain a foothold on our roads, design has become an ever more important element that separates one car from another. So, alongside the revolution of powertrains and chassis development, design is being pushed and pulled in all directions, anxious to grab your attention.

Consider this our official list of the best new car designs for 2024. What might surprise you is that many sit on the more affordable end of the spectrum.

Alfa Romeo Junior Veloce

Alfa Romeo’s new baby SUV had a rough ride into life thanks to a not-exactly-endearing leak of a white prototype hidden away in some Italian garage. But as glow-ups go, the new Junior’s already had a huge one.

Quite scandalously, the Junior was meant to be called Milano. That was until the Italian authorities discovered it was actually being built outside of Italy and enacted a law prohibiting the misrepresentation of ‘Italian’ goods.

Anyway, when Alfa Romeo finally got everything in order, they revealed a fantastic-looking little SUV that promises to be just as dynamic to drive as it looks. The design itself is also very important, as it indicates Alfa’s future aesthetic direction.

Up until now, models like the Giulia and Stelvio have been curvy, sinuous and sleek, but this is about to change for Alfa’s EV models as the brand launches a new family of platforms that are taller, stubbier and come with shorter overhangs.

As a result, Alfa Romeo’s head of design has since confirmed that it will look to models like the iconic Zagato-designed SZ of the early 1990s for inspiration – something very clear in the new Junior. Its high shoulders, blocky volumes, separated glasshouse and contrasting roof colour are all directly inspired by the SZ and, in the Junior Veloce’s case, offset with a fabulous set of 20-inch four-spoke wheels and lots of clever detailing.

It’s not the most expensive or elegant Alfa Romeo ever, but it doesn’t half look brilliant in its class of mediocre rivals.

alfaromeo.co.uk

Land Rover Defender Octa

The Land Rover Defender has been an unmitigated success for the brand, based largely on its design and incredible capability. But it’s always a difficult thing to take that and run with it to the extreme without losing what made the original so good. With the Octa, Land Rover’s managed to strike the perfect balance.

The new Octa is the brand’s high-performance, ‘ultimate Defender’, featuring bespoke suspension, a powerful twin-turbocharged V8 and a brand new aesthetic. Land Rover’s balance of clean, modern design with the hard-wearing nature that underpins the off-roader’s underlying capability has always been its best asset, and with Octa, the high-performance aspect has been beautifully integrated into it.

Elements like the wheel arch extensions, cleverly integrated front intakes and completely redesigned lower rear bumper all work with the existing design to create something befitting a price tag more than double that of many Defender models.

The cabin’s been updated, too, and it’s here particularly that Land Rover’s skill in material technology, such as futuristic three-dimensional pressed fabrics mixed with high-quality natural materials, helps make Octa feel worth every bit of its exceptional price tag.

landrover.co.uk

Fiat Grande Panda

A new Fiat Panda doesn’t come along often. But when the iconic Italian people’s car is reformed, there’s always a lot of angst about whether it’ll pull off being practical yet lovable and charismatic. Thankfully, Fiat looks to have pulled a blinder with the new Grande Panda because, by all accounts, this could just be the best new design of the year.

The new Grande Panda is underpinned by a fantastic set of proportions that are still compact and city-friendly. This has also allowed Fiat’s designers to create a blocky, almost Lego-like feel. Being a Panda, it’s no bad thing to look upright and narrow, but the new model’s flared arches and clever use of black plastics keep it looking modern and chunky.

But more impressive than the overall proportions is the Grande Panda’s clever detailing. The Panda is full of cool elements, like the use of debossed ‘FIAT’ and ‘Panda’ graphics in the door and tailgate pressings, the modern, three-dimensional LED lighting and even clever little elements like the ‘90s two-way panels behind the rear door show the contemporary Fiat script on one side and the classic four-strake Fiat logo on the other.

The new Grande Panda is a design triumph, and proof great design needn’t be exclusively associated with expense.

fiat.co.uk

Lancia Ypsilon

Another relatively affordable Italian car makes our list, and this time it’s the lesser-known Lancia Ypsilon. This eccentric-looking hatchback resides from the same technical family as the Alfa Romeo at the top of our list, yet you wouldn’t know it by looking at the two of them.

Like Alfa Romeo, Lancia has a long and rich history of high design. As part of the brand’s massive relaunch back into the mainstream, it’s been given the chance to level up in style and aesthetics—something its designers have not held back on.

The Ypsilon’s overall feel was inspired by the Pu+Ra concept car from a few years back. The concept was to be a vision into the brand’s future, taking design inspiration from iconic Lancia models like the Stratos, thus creating a brand new aesthetic. The amazing thing is, despite the concept and supermini being two completely different shapes, Lancia has somehow taken the best bits from the concept and brought it into production with a lot more subtlety and grace than anyone expected.

Look beyond the black bar across the nose or the eccentric wheel designs, and you’ll see things like the volumes are perfectly balanced across the body. This isn’t just different from other supermini-sized cars but also the various superminis that it shares lots of mechanical components with, like the Peugeot 208 or Vauxhall Corsa.

Lancia is now a bright light in the car design world for coming back with such an impressive new model—and it’s just the start, with two more models coming next year and the year after.

lancia.com

Mercedes-AMG GT

Design at Mercedes has been a contentious topic over the last few years. Models like the EQ range have been very controversial for various reasons, not least their augmentation of traditional proportions and packaging, tuning its stately saloons into amorphous blobs. But when Mercedes goes classic, it knows what it’s doing, as is the case with the new AMG GT.

This all-new model has been designed to replace a previous generation that pushed the front-mid engined proportion set to the extreme, with mixed results. Yet this time around, the cabin has been pushed forward slightly to create a more familiar shape on the road, which has been perfected with excellent surfacing and subtle, but still aggressive detailing.

Highlights include the ultra-low bonnet line over the front wheels and the clever three-dimensional rear lighting elements which pop out from their darkened home on the tailgate. Not only is the new GT more aesthetically pleasing, though, but it also now includes a small set of rear seats and a vast boot.

mercedes-amg.com

Alpine A290

Another small European hatchback rounds out our list of the best car designs of 2024, but this time with a distinct French overtone. Alpine, Renault’s high-performance brand and F1 racing team, has revealed its second road-going model since being reborn in 2018 as a new small electric hot hatchback with some serious attitude.

Unashamedly based on the new Renault 5, the A290 takes that car’s retro themes but applies an aggressive set of unique features overtop to create something decidedly more aggressive.

This starts with some quite substantial changes to the body, including not just unique front and rear bumpers but also new side skirts and a new rear door with lines reminiscent of the original Renault 5 Turbo. The bumpers themselves are almost caricature, with massive splitters and diffusers and the use of pinstriping and glossy black.

Alpine’s also been busy with some of the finer details, too, including new 19-inch wheel designs and the option of tri-colour liveries inspired by the A290 Beta concept revealed a few years back. A high-performance hot hatchback with retro overtones is nothing new. MINI and Abarth have been doing it for years, but the new Alpine is quite a statement and should make for a fun little city-based runaround when it goes on sale at the tail end of this year.

alpine-cars.co.uk