355 Top Gear: Celebrates 30th Anniversary with best cars from each year. Ferrari F355 makes the cut!.

https://www.topgear.com/car-news/top-gear-magazine/new-issue-out-now-celebrating-30-years-top-gear-magazine

"We thought about it of course, getting every new car currently on sale in the UK together on the Brooklands banking for a precise tribute to the cover of issue #1 of Top Gear magazine... for about a minute. Such is the proliferation of choice over the past three decades that would plainly be idiotic, we’d need to shoot it from space. Needless to say, BBC budgets don’t stretch to away days on the ISS.

So, for our bumper 30th anniversary issue, we refined the idea to a Brooklands gathering of the 30 greats, one per year we’ve been around. Much more manageable. For most these would be official ‘Cars of the Year’, crowned at the time in our annual Awards. For a few, mostly in the early days before the Top Gear Awards existed, we had to fill in the gaps.


Want to know what made the cut? Well, the big shiny collector’s edition issue is on sale now and features more pages, more cars and more exclamation marks!"

 

https://topgear.fandom.com/wiki/Car_of_the_Year

Introduced in 1997, the Car of the Year award is presented by Top Gear towards the end of each year. From its inception in 1997 through to 2009, the award was also given by the Presenters during each Autumn series of the show, although during the mid 2000s, the award given by the Presenters differed to the one given in the magazine. The Awards were print-only in 2006, owing to Hammond's accident in September of that year, but were held for the next 3 years thereafter. Since 2010, this award, along with all the other Top Gear Awards, has been presented solely in the Magazine.

Ford has won this award more than any other manufacturer, with 7 wins; 1997 with the Puma, 1998 with the Focus, 2001 and 2007 with the Mondeo (joint with the Subaru Legacy Outback in the case of the latter), 2013 and 2018 with the Fiesta ST, and 2015 with the Focus RS. Products from the Ford Motor Company as a whole have won this coveted award a further three times, with the Range Rover in 2002, the Jaguar XJ8 in 2003 and the Jaguar XK in 2006.

• 1997 – Ford Puma
• 1998 – Ford Focus
• 1999 – Toyota Picnic
• 2000 – Fiat Multipla
• 2001 – Ford Mondeo
• 2002 – Land Rover Range Rover
• 2003 – Rolls-Royce Phantom (TGM: Jaguar XJ8)
• 2004 – Volkswagen Golf GTI (TGM: Nissan 350Z)
• 2005 – Bugatti Veyron (TGM: Toyota Aygo)
• 2006 – Jaguar XK
• 2007 – Ford Mondeo/Subaru Legacy Outback
• 2008 – Caterham Seven R500 (TGM: Volkswagen Scirocco)
• 2009 – Lamborghini Gallardo Balboni (TGM: Ferrari 458 Italia)
• 2010 – Citroën DS3
• 2011 – Range Rover Evoque
• 2012 – Toyota GT86
• 2013 – Ford Fiesta ST
• 2014 – BMW i8
• 2015 – Ford Focus RS
• 2016 – Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio
• 2017 – Honda Civic Type-R
• 2018 – Ford Fiesta ST

 

"For a few, mostly in the early days before the Top Gear Awards existed, we had to fill in the gaps."

... fill in the gaps for 1993, 1994, 1995, and 1996. The implication is Top Gear staff recently made a decision to include the Ferrari F355 as the "Car of the Year" for one of those years. Modern day recognition for a deserving past recognition. Better late than never .

I'm curious to see what the thought process was in including the Ferrari F355 into this group.