(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…