Very few cars inspire the kind of instant, childish, gleeful excitement that the best supercars do.

While thirty years ago, powerful mid-engined exotics were much rarer sights on UK roads, today their greater prominence only seems to give them greater reach and impact. You see them more often, but still really notice when you do.

The technical definition of this kind of car has become a little fluid over the last few years, but essentially they aim to combine exotic and singularly purposeful looks, with kidney-crushing performance and physics-testing handling, at a price that shouldn’t mean that only billionaires need apply. This isn’t where you’ll find million-pound hypercars ranked, then; instead, those slightly more accessible dream machines that only cost the price of an average three-bed semi-detached house.

The route to outright performance has changed in these cars, too, with everything from pure ICE machines to plug-in hybrids in the mix. There’s also still a surprisingly wide array of engine layouts, as turbo V6s jostle with atom V10s and flat-crank V8s for combustive supremacy.

Even so, to take top honours in this class a contender will have to demonstrate a remarkable breadth of ability; because unlike the even more focussed hypercars, these models have to be able to cope with day-to-day duties, with owners often keen to use their purchases for more than just high-days and holidays.

Read on, then, as we reveal the supercars that cause us to issue the most superlatives.